Vaping deaths, which was caused by a healthier alternative to smoking, are now a cause of concern. Since the last year, parents and school health department heads across the country have been worrying for their kids and students for their newfound love for vaping.
Vaping started back at the beginning of the decade as one of the greatest discoveries to help quit smoking, but now the user base has just gotten five-fold. Where there were only 7 million users in 2011, now there are more than 35 million users, according to 2018 reports. Major authorities in the US have announced that almost 20% of deaths are now due to e-cigarettes or other vaping devices which basically substitute actual smoking of tobacco by heating a particular liquid with nicotine, or in some cases, marijuana too.
Till April, since the beginning of the year, more than 50 patients were admitted with lung-related diseases. More than 40% of them are on special respiratory equipment at the hospital. These diseases range from simple coughing, chest pain, nausea to acute respiratory distress syndrome, a critical condition, in which the fluid of the e-cigarettes get collected and precipitated in the lungs and further prevents the air circulation in body parts.
Elderly at the risk of vaping deaths
Here’s a story of Utah’s Alexander Mitchell,20, a young hiker, going on long hikes went on to be supported by multiple machines that oxygenize his blood outside the body and then sending it back in. From sick to death’s door in a span of two days, as told by the father, Daniel, he had already planned for the funeral of his son. However, after a long and hard 6 weeks, Alexander is back on hiking but he can’t go as far as used to back in the days. Now the lungs are working at 75% capacity only and he still has short term memory problems. Another case of vape death in the offing.
In Illinois, the first vaping related death was reported in August, and now there are more than 400 cases of such diseases all across the US. Generally, the ones falling in these traps are still young but this problem has targeted the elderly population as well.
USFDA and the health departments are still looking into this sudden rise of diseases and deaths related to vaping. There are multiple reasons cited for the outbreak but nothing is definitive. Nicotine vaping and marijuana vaping is still on the rise, especially in 12th graders and seniors. Finally, Michigan became the first state to lobbied a complete ban on the flavored vaping. San Francisco had already banned the sales of e-cigarettes in June.
While vaping is still considered as an alternative to traditional smoking, which caused millions of deaths in a year, the long term consequences of vaping are still a question for the USFDA and accordingly, they’ll be able to do something about this baffling issue.
There have been concerns about vaping as one means by which some students while away their recreation time and some are not fully aware of fatal consequences of vaping. In some rural communities, budgets are being spent on health education to ensure the optimum condition for learning. Shouldn’t prime universities take the lead in health education?
