[beloch]

Ironically, this article is guilty of the same thing it rails against.

No evidence is provided for the safety of THC vaping products. An NYT article that was clearly biased against THC was picked apart instead. The clear implication is that THC vapes were unjustly targeted and readers should assume the contrary of the dishonest NYT article. i.e. That THC vapes are safe. Yet, no direct evidence of that is provided. A possibly fatal lie is told purely with true facts.

Here's why that matters: THC is a recreational product. It's relatively recent legalization in only some jurisdictions is why we're just starting to get good data on it. Vaping is even newer and less well studied.

Okay, so let's say there's no clear evidence that THC vapes are harmful. I'm being a dishonest fear-monger. Or am I?

What should be the default position on recreational drugs? Specifically, ones that are inhaled? Ask a respirologist. Lungs are delicate and, if you screw yours up, you're really fubar'd. They'll tell you that, if you do want to use a relatively unstudied recreational drug, eat it or shove it up your ass. (Seriously, THC enemas are a thing.) Don't put it in your lungs.

The default position for inhaling drugs should be, "Don't" until they're proven safe. This is my opinion/bias/dishonest-agenda.

[aoeusnth1]

The article explicitly and repeatedly affirms that illegal THC vapes are dangerous because of Vitamin E Acetate, which is used as a thickener agent. TFA points out how the NYT article carefully weasels its way around admitting that the THC vaping was the cause of the teenager's lung injury - the NYT is attempting to get the audience to associate the harm with legal nicotine vapes.

Does that make more sense to you now?

[bityard]

You read the gwern article very incorrectly. It was pointing out that Lizzie's injuries were caused by _adulterated_ illegal THC vapes. While the NYT article was using weasel writing techniques to mislead readers into the conclusion the that legal flavored nicotine vapes are dangerous.

[adjejmxbdjdn]

The OP may have read the article incorrectly but it engages in the same lying by saying the truth that the NYT article it claims engaged in because many people would read it that way.

Unlike the author I’m not claiming that they did it deliberately, but that’s what their article ends up doing.

[bch]

> No evidence is provided for the safety of THC vaping products.

That's not the point - gwerns article dismantled the NYT article. If one read (or heard about) the NYT article and used it as "proof" of "vaping is bad", gwern is saying: "not so fast". That's not to say "vaping is healthy", nor even "vaping is not unhealthy" - just that this article isn't the proof you're looking for. Vaping (legal flavoured nicotine (which is what's on trial)) could be horrible - simply citing instances of why this is so isn't actually done in the article.

If it matters, I'm not condoning vaping or smoking at all.

[cyanydeez]

no. the critique has nothing to do with vaping. It picks apart nicotine vapes vs the THC specific, vitamin E specific illegally marketed/unapproved incident.

The NYT article was suppose to be about nicotine vapes and in it, they used an example that only appears related because it's a vape. The harm caused by the illegally marketed/unapproved incidence doesn't prove the new york times summary: nicotine vapes are harmful.

The fact presented about the THC vape incidences arn't categorically related to the use and marketing of nicotine vapes.

The point of the article is to showcase how examples can be technically correct (vaping superset) but not actually provide relevance (THC vapes w/vitamin E acetate caused lung damage).

[nerdsniper]

In general for me, the default position for recreational activities should be “okay” until they’re proven dangerous to others.

Wanna jump out of an airplane with no parachute and see if one of your buddies can strap one on you before you hit the ground? Totally fine with me.

Wanna base-jump off a skyscraper in NYC with a wing-suit ? Fuck off. You’ll probably hurt someone else who didn’t sign up for that.

That said, I’d also like the CPSC to look into whether products like this are safe and hold manufacturers accountable for their consequences.

I’d also very much appreciate it if the FTC and FDA actually did thorough random testing of drugs and supplements (recreational or therapeutic) to ensure that the actual ingredients and doses match the label. The FDA requires drug manufacturers to be in compliance, but doesn’t actually test drugs themselves, they mostly just look over paperwork to see if the processes followed would probably produce the correct product and assume the paperwork isn’t manipulated.

In fact, the FDA actively works to prevent people, even the Pentagon, from doing independent 3rd party drug testing of common pharmaceuticals [0]

0: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-12-05/pentagon-... / https://archive.is/eyWSn

[marysol5]

>Wanna jump out of an airplane with no parachute and see if one of your buddies can strap one on you before you hit the ground? Totally fine with me.

>Wanna base-jump off a skyscraper in NYC with a wing-suit ? Fuck off. You’ll probably hurt someone else who didn’t sign up for that.

Are they not the same?

Also the aeroplane itself is a highly regulated piece of this system

[nerdsniper]

Not the same. One is generally over very sparsely populated land. The other is in between manhattan skyscrapers.

Also the first example (jumping out of plane with no parachute at all) is perfectly legal.

[c22]

So who decides the threshold of public risk that is appropriate?

[card_zero]

?

> An NYT article that was clearly biased against THC

This was an NYT article clearly biased against nicotine. One of us is confused here. Maybe I can't follow your particular idiom.

[pandaman]

Neither of two articles is about THC. The blog article is analyzing a NYC article that attacks nicotine vapes (and using the case of THC vapes related deaths in 2019 as one of the arguments against nicotine vapes).

[unethical_ban]

Respectfully, I don't agree at all. I didn't read the OP article and think they were defending the safety of any kind of vaping. What they credibly point out is the deliberate conflation of nicotine and THC vaping. The NYT article repeatedly suggests that the hospitalization of people vaping was from "nicotine and THC" when the specific lung damage reported was from illicit THC products specifically.

[The_President]

In the economy pen market, it's anyone's guess to what part of the plant (shake/trim/flower) was used for the process and if it was flushed correctly. Those labels that show the growth additives and nutrients get pretty lengthy.

[cyanydeez]

you missed the critique entirely. The critique isn't "THC vaping is safe to the contrary" or "Nicotine vaping is fine".

The critique is: "This article uses a rhetorical device (THC vapes with vitamin E acetate are harmful) to suggest that nicotine vapes are harmful, when there's nothing in common other than being a vape product"

It's goal isn't to refute the evidence, but to suggest the editors and writers of the articles did not provide a sufficient connection between the THC-vape incidents and the harm caused by nicotine vapes, yet spent the entire article convolution any distinctions between the two, to implicate nicotine vaping as equally harmful as the THC infused vitamin-e lung damage incidents.

Had the writers & editors at the NYT had any nicotine vape related direct harm, that would have connected the THC-vape incidences. But just writing this sentence, you can see how continually repeating THC-vape incidences biases you to understanding that there's a difference.

And that's the point, NYT article went out of it's way to convolute direct harm incidences to a broader vaping category when there's no evidence to suggest nicotine vaping is susceptable to the same direct harm. It's like saying bob drove his car drunk & crashed, therefore, driving cars is dangerous. We know it's dangerous but the "driving drunk" doesn't prove they're dangerous. You can do lots of dangerous things while drunk.

Similarly, THC-infused vitamin E acetate in vapes caused lung damage. Is the operable cause the Vape or the THC-infused vitamin E acetate; no evidence is presented that it's anything other than the vape liquid by all other sources. That is to say, no evidence by NYT is presented that some other substance in a vape is equally harmful.

If you want to get into the science, go ahead, a vape is vaporizing things. So it matters what those things it's vaporizing is. And if it's incomplete vaporization, then it's possible harmful chemicals are being generated. So perhaps the article needed to present the basic facts about vapes.

[bonsai_spool]

> That is to say, no evidence by NYT is presented that some other substance in a vape is equally harmful.

> So perhaps the article needed to present the basic facts about vapes.

The whole last third of the NYT article is about how we don't (or did not at the time) know what substances may be at play, with several specific agents called out.

[jjk166]

You don't need to prove the opposite of someone's claim to argue their evidence fails to demonstrate their claim is true.

[ErroneousBosh]

> The default position for inhaling drugs should be, "Don't" until they're proven safe. This is my opinion/bias/dishonest-agenda.

Ideally don't inhale anything that's not fairly clean air.

[pseudohadamard]

My response was slightly different: Take any article, any writeup, on any topic, and go through it in fine enough detail and you can nitpick it to pieces. This was just someone engaging in their hobby. I stopped reading after a paragraph or two.