I think you may be somewhat confusing absence of evidence with evidence of absence:
how about “paint thinner” then
a whole new industry to automate the process of huffing paint, what a weird future
Water is also a paint thinner. Are you upset about “chemicals” in your food or “toxins” in your body too?
clearly I should try ingesting all the paint thinners
Like dihydrogen monoxide? Deadly stuff. Literally kills thousands - and sometimes hundreds of thousands - of people every year.
tell us about water again, it totally proves … something
Proves exactly the same thing as “solvent” or “it’s paint thinner”. Scare words mean nothing.
BTW, FWIW, neither PG or VG are used as “paint thinner”.
Get a room you two. Sheesh!
I can tell you what’s new, but it takes a bit o ‘splainin’, so bear with me. (Those who know this part can skip ahead).
Legitimate THC cartridge (“cart”) mfrs have always used some form of diluting agent or “diluent.” High-purity extraction (by whatever method) yields a very thick, sticky substance, too thick to wick up on a cart’s heating element.
The traditional diluents – Vegetable Glycerin (VG), Propylene Glycol (PG) and Medium-Chain Triglyceride Oil (MCT Oil) all have fairly decent track records as vaporized inhalants. PG and VG are also used in eCigs, PG/VG mixes are the “fog juice” that SPFX guys in film and theater use, and all these things are food-safe, GRAS-listed.
They’re also very cheap.
Legitimate cart mfrs use as little diluent as possible - their wares will be lab-tested, and consumers don’t want over-diluted (“cut”) product.
Besides, using too much of any those diluents will thin the oil to the point it won’t wick properly, and consumers can see that it’s thin and over-diluted just by turning the cart over and watching the bubble move.
Black-market carts are sold primarily where recreational sales aren’t legally permitted (also the location of almost ALL the “vaping deaths”.)
You can buy empty, unfilled carts with slick-looking packaging all over, and online. Some are forgeries of legit brands, some just fictional.
And they almost all have some high THC percentage pre-printed on the pkg. (This is frequently a tell, since legit carts do testing on a per-batch basis, and add the results (usually via an applied sticker) after packaging.)
So you fill your empty carts with whatever goo you’ve got, but you still can’t over-dilute, since the customers, lacking any real data, still use thickness - how fast does the bubble move? - as a proxy for purity.
But last year or so, along comes a kewl new product - “Honey Cut” and “Clear Cut” and assorted plain-wrap imitators, usually in unlabeled Mason Jars.
These are proprietary mixtures - no ingredients disclosed. So no one really knows what’s in them, although the terms “food-safe” and “GRAS-listed” are sometimes mentioned. (One correspondent said a mfr he contacted said it was “mostly vitamins.”)
And these “cuts” are almost stupidly expensive. Brand name or plain-wrap knockoff, they retail at around $1000/liter.
BUT…
Unlike the traditional diluents, you can massively cut your product - one mfr bragged “up to 75% diluent” without losing viscosity. “The bubble still doesn’t move!”, they proclaim.
The primary suspect seems to be Vit. A acetate, or “tocopheral acetate”. It’s been found in carts implicated in the deaths, and in damaged lungs. It fits all the clues – food-safe, GRAS-listed, a vitamin – and, when vaporized and inhaled, it can cause *lipoid pneumonia", in which the oil settling in the lungs disrupts the surfactant membrane of the alveoli and interferes with oxygen transport.
Lipoid pneumonia is a known hazard of a number of vaporized oils, including mineral oil, which was once used as stage fog with rather grim health consequences.
And lipoid pneumonia is what has lately started killing vapers.
There remain some uncertainties - Vit A acetate shouldn’t really vaporize at standard THC cart temps, so maybe there are some malfing carts involved. And given the range of possibilities, Vit.A may not be the ONLY troublesome ingredient, and the ingredients may vary by mfr…
VG and PG and MCT oil may not be absolutely safe, but they’ve never before caused this sort of damage, despite widespread use.
Proprietary black-market “cuts” seem a far more likely culprit.
(And fortunately, there’s no motive to use those in legitimate, lab-tested carts, so buyers at legitimate legal dispensaries are unlikely to have a problem. IMO.)
Thank you very much for taking the time to write that up :)!
In the 1950s, tobacco companies discovered how deadly their products were.
They set about minimising the risk that they would be legislated or litigated against by creating scientific uncertainty, using shills to publish research questioning or even denying the deadly effects of their products.
When claiming their products were health-giving was outlawed, they continued to pay for promotional materials linking their products with socially beneficial outcomes.
When they were finally the victims of class action lawsuits, two things were true.
Firstly, the lifetime profits from their products outweighed the fines by several orders of magnitude.
Lastly no company officials who took any of the decisions to continue promoting a deadly product over sixty years suffered any personal financial or legal discomfort at any time.
Juul is owned by Altria (Philip Morris.)
They do not give any fucks whether their product is harmful and will fight with everything they have to continue marketing it.
And every time I see someone smoking I think of the two months I spent watching my mom slowly suffocate to death from stage 4 lung cancer, caused by a lifetime of smoking.
How dare you suggest that length of life and method of death don’t matter. Watch your mom unable to breathe or sit back in bed for weeks and then tell me what a great medicine tobacco is.
Until you’ve held your mom’s hand at 3am praying she would die sooner so her pain would be over, keep your opinions on smoking to yourself.
Her last words were, “I thought I’d have more time”. So tell me again, maplebirch.
TELL ME AGAIN.
I didn’t suggest any of that. I’m sorry this is your experience but I will continue to live my life as I see fit.
My grandfather died of lung cancer last year. He lived his life authentically and honestly. Would he have lived a few years longer had he not smoked? Maybe. Maybe the stress of his life would have driven him to find other ways to relax that could have been worse. I can’t change the past, only my future, and tobacco is going to have a place in it until i die, and I’ll be fine with it when it comes.
Thank you for taking the time to put this all down for those who have not been following the story closely.
“There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward”
–John Mortimer
“I can’t change the past, only the future, which is why I’m not going to change anything in the future”
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