This is not as big of news as the SCOTUS banning Roe v. Wade, but it’s a pretty big happening.

I’ve always told people Juul melts plastic when you fire it. I took one of them apart and examined the inside. You are inhaling melted plastic.

Fox Business:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration ordered Juul Labs Inc. to stop selling its vape devices and cartridges on Thursday, saying that there is “insufficient evidence to assess the potential toxicological risks” of using the products.

“Today’s action is further progress on the FDA’s commitment to ensuring that all e-cigarette and electronic nicotine delivery system products currently being marketed to consumers meet our public health standards,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said in a statement announcing the move.

“The agency has dedicated significant resources to review products from the companies that account for most of the U.S. market,” he continued. “We recognize these make up a significant part of the available products and many have played a disproportionate role in the rise in youth vaping.”

Robert Califf

The FDA acknowledged that it “has not received clinical information to suggest an immediate hazard associated” with the use of Juul’s devices or pods, but said the agency issued its marketing denial orders (MDOs) against the company because “there is insufficient evidence to assess the potential toxicological risks” of using the products.

Juul disputed the FDA’s claims in a statement, and said the company plans to appeal the agency’s decision.

“We respectfully disagree with the FDA’s findings and decision and continue to believe we have provided sufficient information and data based on high-quality research to address all issues raised by the agency,” Joe Murillo, Juul’s chief regulatory officer, said in a statement.

“We intend to seek a stay and are exploring all of our options under the FDA’s regulations and the law, including appealing the decision and engaging with our regulator,” Murillo said. “We remain committed to doing all in our power to continue serving the millions of American adult smokers who have successfully used our products to transition away from combustible cigarettes, which remain available on market shelves nationwide.”

…

Critics have blamed Juul for allegedly targeting teens in its marketing with concerns about the rise of youth vaping in recent years.

The FDA, in its press release, directed smokers who want to quit to consider using other e-cigarette products the agency has authorized for use, such as R.J. Reynolds’ Vuse projects.

According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report from last year, Vuse e-cigarettes were found to be nearly twice as popular among high schoolers who vape as Juul products.

R.J. Reynolds is owned by British American Tobacco. Vuse is not better than Juul in terms of the plastic content.

Injecting yourself with heroin is legal in San Francisco, but buying strawberry-flavored vape juice isn’t

Really, it’s just kind of a weird move. If they’re banning Juul because it has too much plastic, they should ban all of the disposable pens made of plastic, and create standards for vape construction.

In general, the government appears to be against nicotine. Even the war on cigarettes was insane. Smoking is not nearly as dangerous as they claim, and “second hand smoke” is actually voodoo nonsense.

We seem to be narrowing down the whole vape panic thing.

The disease that is killing people appears to be entirely due to marijuana-oriented vaping products.

NBC News:

The soaring popularity of vaping products — both legal and knock-offs — is fueling a public health crisis that has vexed the medical community.

Some 12 people have died from mysterious lung illnesses linked to vape pens, and 805 others have been hospitalized in 46 states, according to federal health officials.

“We are dealing with a new epidemic,” said Dr. Melodi Pirzada, a pediatric pulmonologist at NYU Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, New York, on Long Island.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says most of the patients reported using vapes containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. Some state health officials have indicated that Vitamin E acetate, a solvent used to “cut” cannabis for use in vape pens, may be responsible for the outbreak.

But no single substance or product has yet been linked to all of the cases of vaping-related lung disease, the CDC says, leaving the medical community grappling with an exploding health crisis with an unknown cause.

At the same time, the FDA is struggling to police what has rapidly grown into a billion dollar industry with a booming black market, experts say.

The result: Americans have access to an astonishing assortment of THC vape pens without having any way of knowing what’s actually in them.

Seeking answers, NBC News commissioned one of the nation’s leading cannabis testing facilities to test a sampling of THC cartridges — 18 in all — obtained from legal dispensaries and unlicensed dealers.

The findings were deeply troubling.

Of the three purchased from legal dispensaries in California, the CannaSafe testing company found no heavy metals, pesticides or residual solvents like Vitamin E.

But 13 out of the other 15 samples from black market THC cartridges were found to contain Vitamin E.

CannaSafe also tested 10 of the unregulated cartridges for pesticides. All 10 tested positive.

The products all contained myclobutanil, a fungicide that can transform into hydrogen cyanide when burned.

“You certainly don’t want to be smoking cyanide,” said Antonio Frazier, the vice president of operations at CannaSafe. “I don’t think anyone would buy a cart that was labeled hydrogen cyanide on it.”

Pirzada described the existence of myclobutanil as “very disturbing,” adding that “it’s going to cause a very toxic effect on the lungs.”

Hilariously related: someone just sent me an old article saying I was responsible for the “conspiracy theory” that Jews were pushing for the legalization of marijuana.

(All I ever did was point out that the people lobbying for legalizing it were mostly all Jews, as were the people running the dispensaries – you can I guess call that a conspiracy, I haven’t personally used that word, but it isn’t a theory).

Canadian Jewish News:

It’s hard to trace this conspiracy back to its roots, but it made a big splash in January 2018 when Andrew Anglin, editor of the white supremacist Daily Stormer website, wrote a screed against the Trump administration after the idea of legalization in the United States came up.

“It is personally disgusting to me that we are condemning a generation of children to grow up baked in this noxious substance,” Anglin wrote. “Most of the marijuana industry, I can assure you, is run by Jews.”

With regards to marijuana vape being the cause of the sickness: I called this one.

However, I am still not necessarily pro-nicotine vape.

However, I do believe it is better than cigarettes. However, there is some question as to whether it is useful for quitting cigarettes, since you end up getting so much larger of a dose, which leads to a more extreme nicotine addiction.

I quit vaping three weeks ago, and it was much more difficult than any of the times I have ever quit smoking cigarettes. Although admittedly, I was using a very extreme amount of nicotine (50mg salt juice in a sub-ohm tank).

It was possible to quit, but I have an extreme level of willpower. I’ve also gained 20 pounds almost, which will be easy for me to lose, because of my extreme willpower and understanding of diet customs. But for most people, this is all complicated.

Anyway, if you’re an adult and a smoker – you’ll have to figure out the math yourself.

But if you’re a young person, I highly advise you to not get involved with vaping, or smoking – marijuana OR nicotine.

If you want to have a little bit of fun on the weekends, consider a safer option, such as cocaine.

(I’m joking tho. But probably cocaine is safer than marijuana. Apparently it is.)