Rhode Island Monthly April 2020 | Page 34

CityState:  Reporter What if you could give in a way that never stopped giving? One of life’s great achievements is the ability to leave a lasting legacy. We can help. rifoundation.org/legacy or call 401-274-4564 32    RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l APRIL 2020 pain and diarrhea — that were linked to liquid solutions containing tetrahydrocan- nabinol (THC) and the additive Vitamin E acetate. The outbreak, affecting mainly young adults, led to 2,711 hospitalizations and sixty deaths as of late January. Rhode Island had six cases. Since a peak in Sep- tember, the injuries and deaths have declined. The CDC regards the EVALI epidemic as distinct from the upward trend of youth vaping. But public health officials worry because vaping is so new, no one knows what the long-term health effects might be. “E-cigarette aerosol generally contains fewer toxic chemicals than the deadly mix of 7,000 chemicals in the smoke from regular cigarettes. However, safer is not the same as safe,” Dr. Brian King, deputy director for research translation in CDC’s office on smoking and health, writes in an email. “E-cigarette aerosol can contain harmful and potentially harmful substances, including nicotine, heavy metals like lead, volatile organic compounds and cancer-causing agents. There is no safe tobacco product.” Nonetheless, lifelong adult smokers consider vaping a lifeline. E-cigarettes not only helped Lou Del Sesto quit tradi- tional cigarettes after a bout of smoking- related pneumonia, they freed him from his dependence on disability payments. In 2013, Del Sesto opened the Ecig Shed in Barrington, Rhode Island’s first brick- and-mortar vape shop. “In six months, all of a sudden, it ex- ploded and the business did very, very well,” he says. After the temporary flavored e-cigarette ban went into effect “my sales went down 70 percent. I just couldn’t sustain it. I closed at the end of October and, after around two months, I went back to disability. I lost everything.” So far, the biggest quitters the ban has produced are people who sell vape prod- ucts. Convenience stores are likely to survive it; tobacco products represent a third of inside sales — mostly traditional cigarettes. But vape shops have been dev- astated, and several have already closed. Mike Runshe, CEO of Giant Vapes, has seen proliferating state bans cut into sales at his online shop, but revenue loss is almost beside the point. Like Del Sesto, Runshe entered the business seven years ago as a convert. A smoker for thirteen years, Runshe began trying to quit in his late twenties but nothing worked. On June 4, 2012, he tried his first e-cigarette and never lit up another American Spirit again. The fla- vors were key: “That wet ashtray, musty, moldy, nasty burnt cigarette smell — that’s what tobacco vapes taste like,” he says. “That’s why nobody uses them, and that’s why they don’t help people to quit, because they are disgusting.” You can take away the products, but the nicotine addicts remain, he says. “We have a marketing problem,” Runshe, a member of the state’s Vaping Advisory Group says. “We need better programming and education. There’s a middle ground.” Thoracic radiologist Terrance Healey, who stares at lung X-rays for a living, agrees that the conversation about how to respond is just beginning. To be clear, Healey doesn’t like cigarettes of any kind. The human lung was designed to absorb nothing but air. And science has not yet validated the claims that flavored vape products help people to quit, or that vap- ing is safe. The odds are that vaping will eventually produce serious lung injuries such as emphysema and cancer, because the aerosol allows more fine particles to enter the lungs more deeply, and the vap- ing oil stays in the tissues. “There are two groups: chronic smok- ers looking to a potentially safer product to ease off traditional cigarettes with the goal of quitting everything and young ado- lescents who were never tobacco smokers, and directly marketed to by big industry to be addicted to nicotine through fla- vored vaping products,” he says. “We have to tailor our response, and I don’t think there can be one message for everybody.” South Kingstown State Representative Teresa Tanzi, a former smoker, blames the high stakes of today’s debate on yes- terday’s political apathy. Seven years ago, she began working on legislation to raise the legal smoking age from eighteen to twenty-one years old. Her bills never made it past a hearing. “Not only were we allowing the next generation to become addicted to nicotine, we were also allowing this industry to take hold, only to be shut down abruptly,” she says. “The leadership allowed this happen. It was irresponsible on both ends.” 