Vaping is not safe.

If you look back at the years when everyone smoked and wonder why anyone would do that to themselves, you’re seeing history repeat itself with e-cigarettes and vaping. As your favorite injury attorney, I’m here to tell you that you can’t get your lungs back, and that litigating against these companies will be as difficult as litigating against big tobacco was in previous decades.

Profiling JUUL, the Industry Leader

The November/December issue of Florida Justice Association included an article about the Youth Vaping Epidemic, focusing on JUUL as an industry leader, that was absolutely aggravating to read. Consider that Altria is the parent company of Phillip Morris, and has a 35% stake in JUUL (which controls about 75% of the non-traditional smoking market) and it won’t surprise you that there were more than a few similarities between JUUL’s marketing and the direct marketing of big tobacco to children before they were legally prohibited from advertising to those under 18.

Before JUUL changed its marketing tactics to position itself as a safer alternative for smokers, it sponsored trendy concerts and used influencers on social media to appeal to teens. Some have said that its social media campaigns existed not only to effectively target youth, but to fly under the radar as long as possible to avoid advertising prohibitions that apply to other tobacco products.

JUUL even went to school campuses to “educate” teens about the safety of their product.

Vaping Inhalation Injuries

And that’s the thing. It’s not safe. Vapor may not contain the exact same chemicals as traditional cigarettes, but it contains at least four we can link to lung damage, asthma and cancer. Doctors discovered vaping, not on social media, but as a strange inhalation injury phenomenon. vaping is not safe

How did we get here? How did no one see that this would be a problem? As a mother, this is what upsets me most. There was enough research out there at the federal level, and thanks to lobbying, “the decision to kill the flavored vaping ban valued the cost of economic loss from vape shops over the prodigious public health benefits.”

When You’re Too Busy to Swallow Your Supplements

Last, one of the most ridiculous vaping trends is that of vitamin vaping.

First, the intestinal tract absorbs vitamins, while lungs deliver oxygen. I’m not a doctor, but you’d have a hard time convincing me that our organs are happy to do each other’s jobs – it’s not like the stomach is capable of separating waste gasses.

Second, even if you could argue it did work, that still brings us back to a basic choice: would you like your supplements with or without inhaling heated chemicals? Seems easy enough.

Got Kids?

Educate your kids, teenagers, and young adults and help them quit if they already started. Statistics show that almost 20% of those in the 15-17 age range have tried JUUL or vaping compared with about 7% of those in the 22-24 age range.

Vaping may not be as dangerous as smoking, or it may be worse. There’s not been enough time to collect years of research, but we do know for a fact that vaping is dangerous.