Across the country, there’s been a total of more than 215 mysterious cases of vape related illnesses. It’s been reported that the patients ages range from as young as teenagers to as old as late twenties. The symptoms of this illness vary from several days of shortness of breathe, vomiting, fever, fatigue, and in some cases, death.

When one vapes an e-cigarette or cannabis product, it heats the liquid and turns it into a steam to be inhaled. Then, the nicotine or THC  are mixed with a solvent, or rather, oil to dissolve  and deliver the drugs. The health risk comes from the oil droplets left as the oil cools back down. If these droplets are inhaled, they could cause breathing problems, lung inflammation, and eventually even lipoid pneumonia – when lungs treat oil as foreign objects and mount an immune response. 

The regulation of THC and nicotine based vapes have been very messy over the years. Though nicotine vapes are considered healthier than the traditional cigarette, in the long rung, it causes just as bad, if not worse effects to the body. Additionally, when it came to these cases of said mysterious illness, companies like “Juul” and others remain out of the controversy, saying there was no proof confirming their products were the causes. When it comes to THC products, though 33 states legally have recreational and medicinal use, cannabis isn’t regulated by the federal government. Because of this, there’s no one checking what actually goes into these vape cartridges. 

With every case, there’s been countless tests to determine the main factor of these illnesses. Unfortunately, there’s been no positive signs of these causes, leaving this vaping illness unsolved.