Health officials are in alarm as the quickly rising death rates related to vaping cases keep coming in and at larger numbers each month.

There has been many warnings that vaping is bad, like the one the Surgeon General said in his anti-vaping infographic, “E-cigarettes are devices that heat a liquid into an aerosol that the user inhales. The liquid usually has nicotine and flavoring in it and other additives. The nicotine in e-cigarettes and regular cigarettes is addictive. E-cigarettes are considered tobacco products because most of them contain nicotine, which comes from tobacco.” 

As of Oct. 22, 2019, the death toll in the United States from vaping was at 33 and over 1,500 have been hospitalized due to electronic nicotine products.

People are dying from vaping, and there are hundreds of new cases each week of severe and fatal lung issues directly linked to vaping. Let it be known that in vaping solutions, there are oils like Vitamin E acetate-a key ingredient to make synthetically from petroleum-which is thought to be contributing to the increase in death and disease.

The patients have used a mix of products and devices. Some report only vaping nicotine, others used tetrahydrocannabinol, a cannabinoid product and some used cannabidiol and a combination of tetrahydrocannabinol and nicotine.

People who are getting sick from vaping typically have a dry cough, shortness of breath, nausea, chest pain, and some people vomit, have abdominal pain, and fever. The name that has been given to this series of elements is commonly known as nicotine poisoning 

Most of the patients who have fallen sick and for whom officials have demographic information for, are young and male. Almost 80 percent of the patients are under 35, and their median age is 23, according to the CDC. Until the report of a New York teen’s death, the deaths were older adults. The median age of patients who died is 44. 

At first, society believed that vaping was a way for people to wean off nicotine, similar to how, for a generation, people thought that drinking and smoking helped your body, but as we all know, all three of these things slowly kill people. Vaping is no better than smoking.

With young people vaping now, the rates of the disease have rocketed. Companies say that bubble gum, mango, apple pie flavored pods are for are for adults to have a better smell to their breath, but it is easy to tell that they are secretly marketing to teens and the youth.

If a company were trying to better the breath, they would only sell menthol and mint, along with the traditional classic and Virginia tobacco. 

The ingredients that are used to make vape juice are “Vegetable Glycol, Propylene Glycol, flavor, nicotine, and distilled water,” according to vapingdaily.com. What they did not mention, however, was the ultrafine particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs, flavorings such as diacetyl, a chemical linked to severe lung disease, and volatile organic compounds and heavy metals, such as nickel, tin, and lead.

There is nothing safe about all of those ingredients. People are risking their lives every time they take a hit.

Bottom line: stop vaping. Vaping has no benefits for anyone underage and puts those who vape at risk with all the chemicals and toxins inhaled. If you know of someone who is vaping tell them the risks, do the right thing. For more information on the risks go to www.hhs.gov or www.cdc.gov.