The federal government has announced that it will not allow any legislation that regulate e-cigarettes — a reversal of prior indications.
The lobbyists for the e-cigarette companies have convinced the administration that their supporters like to vape — and therefore the administration will not allow any legislation that might curb the vaping epidemic.
This announcement leaves the work of protecting the health of children, teenagers, and adults to the states.
As of Nov. 13, 2019, the officials at the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) counted 2,172 cases of vaping-related injuries in every state except Alaska as well as in the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. At least 42 deaths have been confirmed in 24 states and the District of Columbia.
In a Washington Post report, doctors in Michigan said they had performed what they believe is the first double lung transplant on a patient whose lungs were damaged from vaping, highlighting the extreme steps medical experts are taking as they confront a nationwide rash of vaping-related illnesses. Hassan Nemeh, the Michigan hospital’s surgical director of thoracic organ transplant, said at a recent news conference, “What I saw in his lungs was nothing that I’ve ever seen before. This is an evil that I haven’t faced before.”
Another study has now shown that e-cigarettes are even worse for a person’s heart than it is even for lungs. The study showed that e-cigarette smokers were worse off than conventional cigarette smokers in terms of coronary microvascular function.
Clearly we have a health crisis with a federal government that refuses to act. E-cigarettes are yet another example of a dangerous product getting onto the marketplace without proper testing and then leaving it to non-profits and state governments to pick up the pieces.
Connecticut, and now other states, are left to do just that: pick up the pieces in order to protect the citizens of this country. Connecticut will have to act if the health of Connecticut’s children, teenagers and adults are to be protected.
Nancy Alderman is President of Environment and Human Health, Inc.
The only “Health Crisis” going on here, is that a teeny tiny subset of the vaping population decided to vape something that should never have been put in a vape pen. Some died.
Guess what? Some people sniff paint. Does that mean that people who use it safely should be restricted or heavily fined in the form of outrageous taxes?
How about letting people make up their own minds? We don’t need a Big Brother Nanny State telling us what we can do with our lives. It’s time these elites give us, the citizens, some credit for possessing some degree of intelligence. People do dangerous things every day – free-climbers, sky-divers. They know the dangers. But talk to some of them and they love it. People vape and smoke they know the dangers and they are willing to take a chance doing something they enjoy. The government and the self-serving “non-profits” should just stay out of it – completely!