President Donald Trump has lauded the vaping industry, vowing to "save" the e-cigarette industry last year, presumably from rules his own administration implemented during his first term.
But experts have long warned that vaping could lead to a massive resurgence of nicotine addiction, despite once being hailed as a way of quitting the habit.
And with the advent of high-tech vaping gadgets that deliver staggering loads of the addictive substance, young people are getting hooked without ever touching a cigarette.
In a recent tweet that went viral, University of Vermont medical student Eryney Marrogi found that a "zoomer patient" of his, who was struggling with "fairly serious alcohol dependency/withdrawal and risk of seizures," had been going through an entire disposable vape cartridge from the brand, Geek Bar, every two days.
That's "roughly equivalent of 500-750mg of nicotine every single day," noted Marrogi, who's done research at Harvard and Caltech. "That's like nicotine equivalent of 30ish packs of cigs EVERY DAY."
"Vaping seems way more evil than cigarettes," he concluded.
The medical student warned that at those astronomical rates, quitting could become a massive hurdle.
"You'd probably have to taper over like... a year?" Marrogi suggested.
The lucrative gadgets on sale, in particular, could make things even worse, enticing tech-oriented young people with their latest offerings.
"Real people are being legitimately one shot by a machine with more compute than what it took to put us on the moon because it dispenses the most addictive substance in the world at quantities that would make the average SERIOUS smoker sick," Marrogi wrote.
Experts have long warned that vaping could have severe and unintended public health effects. Earlier this year, researchers from the University of California, Davis, found that vape mist contained such high levels of heavy metals like lead and nickel that they initially questioned the accuracy of their own testing equipment.
Health practitioners have also warned that vaping could have other health implications as well, such as placing undue stress on the cardiovascular system, leading to higher blood pressure.
Keeping flashy vaping gadgets out of the hands of teens has also turned into a major headache for regulators and border agents. Officials have tried to crack down on a new generation of vaping products, mostly imported from China, that were concealed as smartphone cases or handheld video game consoles.
Earlier this year, Futurism talked to the inventors of a vape-embedded Tamagotchi-style virtual pet that dies if the user fails to keep puffing, a dystopian gizmo that was borne out of a New York University event called the "Stupid Hackathon."
While scientists have yet to fully understand the long-term effects of vaping, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that vapes "should not be used by youth, young adults," and that they may "contain substances that can be harmful or potentially harmful to the body," including carcinogens and volatile organic compounds.
A Johns Hopkins-led analysis published earlier this year found a link between vaping and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a progressive lung disease that makes it hard to breathe, as well as high blood pressure.
While they were once advertised as a way to quit smoking, vapes have quickly turned into the habit's harmful successor, luring young people in with high-tech gadgets, more flavors, and even smartphone-like features, like text and social media notifications, as well as the ability to take calls.
To Marrogi, it's a disaster waiting to happen.
"My guess is as the trends shift to favor disposables basically exclusively, we’ll see an epidemic of something we can’t yet anticipate," he tweeted.
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