Vaping Links To Covid Are Becoming Clear

Presently nicotine vaping can’t be sold in Australia. You can however import it for personal use. That due to change but total ban is being put back 6 months now due late 2021. Sorry tried to post a link but failed thus far

by Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, Director, Center for Tobacco Research Control & Education

Reduce Your Risk of Serious Lung Disease Caused By Coronavirus by Quitting Smoking and Vaping

More alternative delivery systems for the poison, nicotine.

FDA In Brief: FDA Warns Maker of Nicotine-Containing Toothpicks of Several Violations, Including Illegal Sales

The very idea that people would vaporise liquid nicotine rather than smoke tobacco seemed like something dreamed up by a second-rate science fiction author to illustrate how bland the future would be. (The fact that the new technology is now linked to a mysterious and deadly illness significantly improves the story, at least from a literary point of view).

The thing is, I smoked cigarettes, and the very real downsides of that habit were beginning to seem a lot more pressing than my theoretical objections to vaping. Smoking is miserable both physically – it makes you smell, cough and eventually die – and mentally, in that it makes you aware of how little control you have over your own decisions. It gets a little harder to pretend you enjoy tobacco each time you arrive home from the pub, pour water on your remaining cigarettes, throw away your lighters and swear you’ll never smoke again. In fact, by the third night in a row I find it’s virtually impossible.

So despite my misgivings, earlier last year I decided it was time to become a vape lord. I figured it would be cheaper, better smelling and less lung clogging than smoking. I don’t claim that reasoning was good or logical, only that it was my reasoning. I went out in Toronto and bought a Juul, which in case you haven’t been paying attention is something like the iPhone of vapes, only more popular with teenagers. It’s a nifty piece of kit, all smooth and dark, with a pulsing LED light and a magnetic USB charger.

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My first puff felt like a pair of tiny, dry fingers were pinching my uvula. I coughed my guts up. Apparently, this is normal. It took a few attempts to get used to, but say what you want about smokers: we know how to endure an objectively unpleasant experience until it becomes faintly enjoyable.

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And faintly enjoyable it was. The vapour is easier to inhale than cigarette smoke, though a little anaemic in comparison. Nicotine, vaping helps you to realise, is a pretty pathetic drug. When you strip away the ritual of lighting up and scorching your lungs, you realise that the ritual and the scorching of the lungs were a large part of the appeal. (Research on the health effects of vaping is not yet conclusive enough to tell whether it’s an effective way of indulging the death drive, though the news on this front is more promising every day).

Which is not to say that vaping isn’t addictive. In fact, I found it far more addictive than smoking because, for all its many faults, smoking is an analogue technology that involves lighting something on fire. This imposes certain inbuilt consumption limits. Smoking sets off smoke detectors and landlords and makes your soft furnishings smell, so you generally avoid doing it indoors. It leaves a foul taste in your mouth and clogs your lungs, so you try not to do it every minute of the day.

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This is not true of vaping. You can Juul when you wake up, Juul while writing, Juul on camping trips, Juul at the airport, Juul in bed. The Juul stores a packet of cigarettes’ worth of nicotine in a container the size of your thumbnail. It snaps, crackles and pops in satisfying ways. It is a supremely well-designed little addiction stick.

Within a few weeks my habit was so ingrained that the thought of a trip home to Australia, where the retail sale of e-cigarettes containing liquid nicotine is banned, threw me into a state of anxiety. How was I going to get my fix? Would I get busted if I brought pods through customs?

How would I explain that to my cellmate? “What’d they get you for, mate? Coke? Shard? Fentanyl?”

“Actually, it was a packet of mint Juuls.”

I needn’t have worried. Like all prohibitions, Australia’s policy has created a black market, and a thriving one if my experience is anything to go on.

“Are you a fed?” I was asked by one Sydney tobacconist, cinematically.

“Er, no,” I replied.

He shrugged as if he hadn’t really cared in the first place and opened a yellowed microwave oven behind the counter, revealing six packets of pods stacked on the lazy Susan.

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“Only tobacco and fruit salad left,” he said, spreading them on the counter like a hand of cards. What a thrill. I took one of each.

Nicotine sickness: the latest vaping scare

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A week later, I asked another tobacconist what flavours he had in stock. He waved his hand stylishly: “All of them.”

It would have been even easier, though perhaps less enjoyable, to have bought them from one of the dozens of websites that offer pods shipped express from the US at a mere 50% mark up.

In any case, maintaining and intensifying my addiction was no trouble. Soon I was spending a good part of each day enduring pressure headaches brought on by too much nicotine. They would clear up if I went for a walk, but that was easier said than done. Much easier to lie on the couch, helplessly Juuling through my discomfort.

I began to suspect that all the cutting edge technology and modern industrial design in this little addiction machine were not there for my benefit.

Vaping was making me feel just as bad as smoking. Addiction, whether to cigarettes or alcohol or liquid nicotine, forces you to confront how pathetic and powerless you are, how little agency you have, how the idea of free will is a bad joke in the face of the body’s needs. This is probably true for all of us, but non-addicts at least get to pretend they’re in control.

That’s why after leaving the pub one night last month, I decided to take another cue from the teens and destroy my device. I threw the stick in a dumpster, poured water on the charger and swore I’d never vape again. That was two Juuls ago now.

An often-made claim that e-cigarettes are '95% safer' is not valid

and remains to be seen how much power FDA's Enforcement Policy will have 

if the executive branch of the government undermines the science and the work in favor of The Big Addiction Business.

FDA finalizes enforcement policy on unauthorized flavored cartridge-based e-cigarettes that appeal to children, including fruit and mint

Here is more information from Politico

Trump's dialed-back vaping ban angers anti-tobacco groups

Juul Labs CEO,  Kevin Burns

apologized to parents of teenagers

in a new documentary for the vaping “epidemic” that has hit high schools across the country.

The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, examines the link between e-cigarette use and respiratory disease in the long-term.

Nicotine Sickness: The Latest Vaping Scare

Nicotine poisoning is very dangerous and can happen with Nicotine gum or lozenges and patches, liquid tobacco, cigarettes...nicotine in any form is a poison.

From The American College of Medical Toxicology

The Road To Vaping

"This story is part of Vape Fail, a CBC News series examining some of the policy failures that led to the adoption of vaping as a smoking alternative and the resulting consequences."

The council’s vote — which was unanimous — will outlaw the sale of flavored tobacco products, including e-cigarettes or vapes, flavored chewing tobacco, cigars and shisha within city limits.

The ordinance will require tobacco retailers to become licensed with the city and set limits on the minimum prices set for products, such as cigarettes or cigars. The ordinance also establishes regulations on how close retailers can be located to youth-populated areas, such as schools. 

The council amended the ordinance to include a ban on the sale of menthol cigarettes and mint- or wintergreen-flavored products. Those flavors were exempt from the ordinance that was prepared by the City Attorney’s Office.

City Attorney Thomas Watson said the ordinance will go into effect on July 1, 2020, to allow time for outreach, education and possible amendments prior to starting any enforcement. 

Approximately 30 people spoke during public comment on the ordinance, with a little more than half of the speakers voicing their support for the ban.

Written letters in support of the flavored tobacco ban also were submitted to the City Council by 13 people, including Foursquare Church associate pastor Sergio Gomez, Santa Maria-Bonita School District Superintendent Luke Ontiveros, dentist Michael Gomez and Santa Barbara County First5 Executive Director Wendy Sims-Moten.

Edwin Weaver, executive director of the nonprofit Fighting Back Santa Maria Valley, said a ban on the flavors would help protect kids from marketing aimed at getting young people to use an addictive substance.

“This strategy of marketing to our children has to stop,” he said. “The best place to stop this is banning flavors so they will no longer be attracted to these products.”

Several of the proponents of the ban on flavors were students who spoke about classmates or siblings using vaping products.

Quentin Moore, an 11-year-old who said his older brother was briefly addicted to vaping, urged the council to adopt the flavor ban.

“I want to encourage you to take away access to flavors — all flavors — of nicotine,” he said. “Nicotine tastes gross because it is gross and destroys brains. There is no flavor that should sugarcoat it.”

Many of the opponents of the ban said they struggled to quit smoking cigarettes before they turned to vaping and that different flavors were one of the things that assisted them in quitting tobacco.

“The flavors are what got me to quit smoking when I left the Marine Corps,” said one speaker. “Cigarettes, in general, taste terrible, but I was addicted. Vaping came along and I gave it go — I had tried everything else. The day I started vaping, I never wanted another cigarette again.”

Frank Compston, who used to own a vape shop in Santa Maria, said the city should focus on enforcement against retailers that are not following the age requirement, noting law-abiding retailers would turn away any customers under the age of 21.

“Let the parents be the ones to regulate their kids,” he said.

By AMANDA EISENBERG from Politico.Com

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/walmart-stop-selling-e-cigarettes-amid-national-outbreak-vaping-illnesses-n1057056#targetText=The memo%2C which Walmart confirmed,continue to sell tobacco cigarettes.

*these are my words.  I do not wish to disclose my full name but will claim authorship as rstrn.

Outbreak of Lung Injury Associated with E-Cigarette Use, or Vaping

As of September 17, 2019 at 5pm,  530*  cases of lung injury associated with the use of e-cigarette  or vaping products

*These numbers may change frequently.

CDC has data on 373 of 530 cases.

Three fourths (72%) of cases are male

Two thirds (67%) of cases are 18 to 34 years old

16% of cases are under 18 years and 17% are 35 years or older

Seven deaths have been confirmed.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5917942/middlesex-london-health-unit-youth-vaping-illness/

"Lung Illnesses Associated with Use of Vaping Products"

                FDA Vaping Page

(from CNN)

California Man Dies In 7th Vaping Related Death

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/vapers-seek-relief-nicotine-addiction-wait-it-cigarettes-n1054131