Trump Just Announced A Nationwide Ban Of Flavored Vape Cartridges Except Tobacco And Menthol

Around 1 in 4 high school students has vaped in the last month, according to national surveys.

Dan VerganoBuzzFeed News Reporter Last updated on January 2, 2020,

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

The Trump administration on Thursday announced plans to bar sales of flavored e-cigarette cartridges, except for menthol and tobacco flavors.

\”The United States has never seen an epidemic of substance use arise as quickly as our current epidemic of youth use of e-cigarettes,\” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement about the change, which goes into effect in 30 days.

The FDA released its statement announcing the new policy on Thursday, saying the move was not a \”ban\” but an announcement prioritizing the agency\’s law enforcement powers against tobacco products. The agency \”has attempted to balance the public health concerns,\” the statement said.

The move would exclude refillable vaporizer liquid flavors also sold in vape shops. Unlike the cartridges, which are commonly used in e-cigarette devices like Juul, the exempt liquids are used in vaping devices that come with a refillable reservoir tank.

The partial flavor \”enforcement policy\” comes as a retreat from the president first saying he would ban all flavored vapes in early September. Last month, Trump signed the federal spending bill that raised the age to buy both tobacco cigarettes and e-cigarettes to 21, up from 18 nationwide. That age increase covers flavored nicotine liquids sold to refill larger vaporizers, which are exempted from the new ban.

“We’re going to protect our families, we’re going to protect our children, and we’re going to protect the industry,\” said President Donald Trump on New Year\’s Eve. \”People have died from this.\”

In November, survey results reported by the Journal of the American Medical Association suggested that more than 1 in 4 high school students (more than 5 million teens nationwide) now use flavored e-cigarettes monthly, a significant increase from last year that alarmed public health officials. Mint was the most popular flavor among high school students, according to the surveys, followed by mango.

Jose Luis Magana / Getty Images

In October, the e-cigarette giant Juul announced the suspension of US sales of mango, creme, fruit, and cucumber flavors, but not mint and menthol flavors. The company added mint to its suspended list in November, following the release of the JAMA results about teens\’ use of flavored e-cigarettes. Fifty-nine percent of the students surveyed reported using Juul, by far the leading brand used among high schoolers.

Much of the furor over e-cigarettes has sprung from a nationwide outbreak of vaping-related lung injuries that peaked in September, now at more than 2,500 cases nationwide, with at least 55 deaths. Although those cases largely appear to be related to vaping of illicit THC-containing liquids in refillable devices, pressure has increased on public officials to stem use among teens of e-cigarettes amid the outbreak.

E-cigarette advocates called the Trump administration\’s announcement only a partial victory. In May, the FDA will require shops to prove the exempted flavored liquids pass a costly public health review process to remain on the market.

\”President Trump will get the blame if America\’s vape shops are forced to close their doors in May,\” American Vaping Association President Gregory Conley told BuzzFeed News in an email.

Public health experts decried the ban\’s exemptions for menthol flavors and refillable tank liquids, with a coalition of health organizations such as the American Heart Association and Parents Against Vaping E-Cigs protesting the announcement on Thursday as a capitulation to the tobacco industry.

\”This isn\’t solving the problem – it\’s prolonging it,\” the American Lung Association\’s Erika Sward told BuzzFeed News. \”Keeping menthol-flavored cartridges and flavors sold in vape shops on the market will keep kids addicted.\”

Roughly 1 million high school students are daily e-cigarette users physically dependent on nicotine, surveys suggest. They are likely to just switch to menthol cartridges or start using refillable bubble-gum liquids bought at a vape shop, Sward said, rather than quitting nicotine cold turkey because of the partial ban.

\”It is disappointing to see that this is the industry policy that they have put forward when this should be about kids\’ health.\”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/trump-juul-flavor-ban

The true cost of cannabis: Why don\’t its illnesses, deaths command media headlines?

In August, I started covering vaping lung injuries from high-potency THC. Next, I added the link between cannabis and mental illness, but it\’s lonely.

Jayne O\’Donnell  USA TODAY

I\’ve covered things that injure, sicken and kill kids and adults for more than 30 years. From auto safety to medical errors, I\’ve competed to break stories on the latest deadly defect or health policy change, most recently on electronic cigarettes.

In late August, I added vaping-related lung illnesses to the beat.  Last month, I added marijuana, psychosis and other mental illness. 

It\’s a pretty solitary place to be.

We reporters covered the heck out of vaping lung illnesses starting in August. Once it became clear the culprit was THC and not nicotine, however, the news media seemed to lose interest, said former Food and Drug Administration chief Scott Gottlieb at a breakfast event I attended in early November.

The spike of mysterious vaping-related deaths could have been a moment for the media to warn the public about black-market marijuana oils. But that message clearly didn\’t get through all the noise on the topic. Here\’s proof:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/marijuana-vaping-by-teens-surges-2019-government-survey-says/2019/12/17/913d87ba-20fb-11ea-a153-dce4b94e4249_story.html?utm_campaign=to_your_health&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Newsletter&wpisrc=nl_tyh&wpmm=1 …

The deaths and injuries from lung illnesses are declining, but they\’ve hardly abated and are clearly a sign of a much larger problem with excessive marijuana use among young people. Yet families from the D\’Ambrosios in California to the Donats in Connecticut were caught unaware.

Families caught by the consequences

Ricky D\’Ambrosio, 21, was in a medically induced coma for four of the 10 days he was hospitalized in late August after vaping THC he bought from a dispensary. He had a medical marijuana card.

D\’Ambrosio\’s recovering well now, but my Connecticut high school friend Billy Donat\’s family wasn\’t so lucky.

On Dec. 29, Donat emailed me for the first time ever. It read:

\”Sometimes we reach out to old friends at the worst of times, this is one of those times. On Christmas Day, my son of 22 years put an electric cord around his neck and hung himself one day after his release from Yale Psychiatric Hospital. On the table in the living room was a copy (of) USA Today dated 12/16/2019. I told my son that you had written an article about his condition linking pot to psychosis. SCHIZOPHRENIA. I had read the front page at the news stand. I wish I had turned to page 6 and finished the article.\”

If he had, he would have seen that the federal \”mental health czar\” and psychiatrist, Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, lamenting how little attention the \”settled science\” on pot and psychosis gets and the huge increase in suicides among young people with marijuana in their systems in Colorado.

On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 2,561 people have been hospitalized with vaping-related lung illness and 55 have died. That\’s one more death and over 50 more hospitalizations from two weeks earlier.

CDC says 80% of hospitalized patients who had complete information about their products reported vaping THC; 13% said they vaped just nicotine.

Most everyone I talk to – even some doctors – say nicotine vaping and Juul, especially, is what\’s clogging kids\’ lungs. If it is, it hasn\’t been identified by any of the many state or federal scientists who have reported on their findings. They have only been able to find vitamin E acetate from THC oil in patients\’ lungs.

There has been an outcry to ban flavored electronic cigarettes – or all of them, as in San Francisco – and Congress voted to raise the age for all e-cigarette tobacco products to 21 last month. The Trump administration announced plans Thursday to restrict most flavors of the one-time-use pods in e-cigarettes. 

But what about when the industry isn\’t an easily identified and demonized monolith like Big Tobacco or … Juul? What if the purported problem is something advocates have been trying to get mandated or legalized for years?

That sounds a lot like air bags to me – and the kind of resistance my former colleague Jim Healey and I faced in 1996 when we wrote that air bags had killed about two dozen kids and that regulators weren\’t telling the public. Our stories led to the warning labels and smart air bags now in every new car.

Press lets pot\’s bad news slip by

Former New York Times business reporter Alex Berenson says that the human cost of cannabis is too high – and that the press is too pro-pot. When his latest book, \”Tell Your Children: The Truth about Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence,\” came out early last year, Berenson knew marijuana proponents wouldn\’t like it. He just didn\’t think there would be what he calls a \”media brownout.\” No major publications reviewed it.

Reporters from major U.S. newspaper companies never contacted him for stories, although those in eight other countries – including Japan, Italy and Australia – did. (USA TODAY interviewed him for a March article.) Public radio and a suburban New York school system canceled appearances.

Berenson, a registered independent who didn\’t have strong feelings about marijuana legalization until he researched his book, has become an unlikely favorite of the conservative media and think tanks. He blames what he says is \”a genuine misunderstanding of the strength of the science supporting the cannabis-psychosis link,\” which is worsened by \”the endless industry/advocacy yelling about \’Reefer Madness.\’ \”

\”Reefer Madness\” was a 1936 movie that used crazed marijuana users to show the purported risks of the drug.

\”The cannabis lobby … will personally attack anyone who tries to raise the issue,\” Berenson says.

His \”not so secret weapon,\” however, is that \”I no longer care what anyone says about me,\” he says. \”I know what the facts are, and I\’m going to repeat them until someone pays attention.\”

Last month, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported new data showing marijuana use by students from eighth to 12th grade was way up – with 1 in 5 high school seniors vaping it in the past year.

The recent story I wrote with colleagues on marijuana\’s link to mental health ran on the front page and was one of the top stories on our website for days. More than 250 people with children or personal experience with mental illness linked to marijuana joined our Facebook support group – I Survived It.

I don\’t know about you, but that makes me pay attention.

Jayne O\’Donnell covers health policy for USA TODAY. 

For complete article  https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2020/01/03/marijuana-pot-thc-vaping-psychosis-mental-illness-media-column/4299001002/

Boy born with brain damage after addict mum\’s heroin abuse in pregnancy

Aaron’s grandmother Rita, or ‘nanmum’ as she calls herself, cares for him full-time

By George Morgan 22 DEC 2019

A Wirral boy born with a brain disease is one of over 2,000 children in the borough at risk from their parents’ drug and alcohol abuse.

Aaron was born with cerebral atrophy, a disease which causes brain cells to waste away, thought to be caused by his mother’s drug use during pregnancy.

Now nine-years-old, Aaron still needs to be peg fed due to the condition.

Both Aaron’s parents still have drug issues and are largely absent from his life, something which has a huge affect on his emotional well-being.

Both his parents were addicted to heroin, with his dad taking methadone and other recreational drugs as well.

Given this absence, Aaron’s grandmother Rita, or ‘nanmum’ as she calls herself, cares for him full-time.

As Aaron is peg fed, Rita needs to make sure the apparatus for feeding him is clean and hygienic before he is fed. This process happens three times a day.

Rita also has to work with Aaron’s school to get educational support for him.

He has sight problems which means he needs help accessing materials, his homework books need to be made bigger for instance.

Rita also takes Aaron to children’s groups, allowing him to make new friends who he can talk to about his feelings.

Aaron is one of many whose life has been severely affected by his parents’ drug abuse.

In 2014/15, 1,391 children in Wirral were at risk from their parents drug or alcohol abuse. In the most recent figures, that number had increased to 2,138, a rise of more than 50%.

Indeed this figure is higher than Liverpool’s 2,108, despite the difference in population, though the figure for Liverpool has grown at a faster rate over the last four years.

A spokesperson for children’s charity the NSPCC , said: “These rising numbers are gravely worrying because we know parental substance misuse can have long lasting impacts on a young person.

“Children whose parents have a substance problem might suffer from emotional or physical neglect, have difficulties in forming relationships later on in life, blame themselves, or feel they have to take on the role of a carer for their mum or dad.”

One service helping children in this terrible situation is Person Shaped Support (PSS).

PSS, a national charity based in Merseyside, which offers social support services and help to asylum seekers, is supporting Rita and Aaron through its family impact service.

The service is honed to support families who are affected by drugs and alcohol addiction.

It offers grandparents’ groups and children’s groups, which help people like Rita and Aaron talk to others who have to deal with a similar situation.

One-to-one support is also offered.

For complete story https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/boy-born-brain-damage-after-17455818

For Immediate Release:
January 14th, 2020

CDC DATA: Over 130 Cases of Vaping Illness Victims Purchased Products Exclusively From \”Commercial Sources\”

(Alexandria, VA) – Today, in a massive release of data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), it has been confirmed that out of 809 patients reporting data on the source of the marijuana products use prior to becoming sick, 131 reported purchasing products exclusively from commercial sources.

What’s more, 627 reported products from “informal sources” such as friends, family, in-person, or online dealers. Given that it is a common issue for “legal” products to be purchased at dispensaries and redirected to the illicit market, the number of illnesses linked to \’legal\’ products could be much higher.

“The data are clear on two fronts: \’legal,\’ licensed products cannot be conclusively stated as safe — as Big Marijuana’s lobbyists have so desperately tried to do — and legalization has only served to make the underground market more dangerous,” said Dr. Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) and a former senior drug policy advisor to the Obama Administration. “The significance of this data release cannot be understated.”

###

About SAM – Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) is the nation\’s leading nonpartisan, non-profit public health alliance of concerned citizens and professionals who oppose marijuana legalization and support science-backed marijuana policies. SAM and its 30+ state affiliates have successfully prevented marijuana legalization in dozens of state legislatures and at the ballot box.

Guided by a Scientific Advisory Board of scientists from Harvard, Princeton, and University of Colorado, SAM educates the public on cutting edge science: marijuana is harmful, addictive, and legalization creates social injustice and expands illicit market activity.
For more information about marijuana use and its effects, visit www.learnaboutsam.org.
Media Contact:
Colton Grace
(864) 492-6719
[email protected]

Denefield school pupils fall ill after eating cannabis cakes

December 2019

The pupils ate cakes, not the one pictured, which contained \”cannabis or a cannabis-related product\”

Six children were taken to hospital and others had to be treated by paramedics after eating cakes laced with cannabis at a school.

The pupils, all aged 14, were taken ill at Denefield School in Tilehurst, near Reading, on Friday.

A student had taken the cakes onto the school premises and handed them to a \”small number of friends\”, West Berkshire Council said.

It added a pupil had been permanently excluded as a result of the incident.

The local authority said the students were treated at the school\’s first aid facility and then by paramedics before six of them were \”admitted to hospital as a precaution\”.

It said the \”adulterated\” baked goods had contained \”cannabis or a cannabis-related product\” and the incident had left the secondary school\’s staff \”deeply concerned by this isolated and unprecedented incident\”.

\’Committed to student welfare\’

For more go to https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-berkshire-50814056

We are grateful for your continued support in the fight against Big Marijuana. Today, and every day, we are thankful for the dozens of states where families sleep at ease knowing their state rejected commercialized marijuana and its consequences thanks in large part to your support!

My Son Was Addicted to Pot Vaping. Now, Congress Wants to Aid the Industry.

please click here to read

this timely op-ed by Tiffany Davidson, founder of Moms Against Marijuana Addiction, on how the \”VAPE\” Banking Act will drastically impact marijuana addiction.

This needs to be shared far and wide.

Following up on her testimony about the consequences of marijuana addiction in her own family, Davidson blasts the industry for its attempts to push marijuana commercialization through Congress.

Be sure to share to your social media pages to spread the word about marijuana addiction.

S.A.M – Team

Pharmacists warning over safety of cannabis oil products, amid concern some contain illegal high inducing chemical

DECEMBER 2019

Pharmacists have been told to check the safety of their cannabis oil products, amid concerns that some may contain illegal high-inducing chemicals.
As the market for cannabis derived products has grown rapidly in recent years, fears have been raised that some are being mislabelled and that users may unknowingly be ingesting illegal drugs.
Non-medicinal legal CBD products are available at many high street retailers but are classed as food supplements, rather than medicinal products because they should not contain the illegal psychoactive cannabinoid THC.
Despite current restrictions on marketing, the range of medicinal benefits claimed for CBD includes pain relief, overcoming insomnia and managing anxiety and stress.
Research carried out earlier this year analysed 30 products on sale in the UK in an attempt to verify their contents, and almost two thirds contained less than 90 per cent of the declared CBD ingredient. Some products contained more.
Worryingly, some 45 per cent had measurable levels of THC, making them technically illegal in the UK.
For more go to  UK Telegraph

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