Allen County’s health board met for its quarterly meeting Monday night in downtown Fort Wayne to discuss the ongoing concerns around vaping and vape products.
While no action was taken, Dr. Brian Henricksen offered a 20-minute presentation to the board on what is known about the negative effects of vaping and e-cigarettes following more than one thousand poisonings nationally related to vaping, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Henricksen says yes, while the marketing of vape juice can be seen as predatory toward kids and age regulations for purchase are loosely followed nationally, nicotine itself isn’t the inherent problem; we know the longitudinal negatives of nicotine.
He says the problem is more likely modified devices that aim to provide larger hits to users.
“As the particle size changes, it will hit in different places in your lungs. So they can tune those third-generation mods to either have larger particles or smaller particles," he said.
"Well if they get it right, they can get even more of those deep into your lungs which will deliver more nicotine than you would otherwise be able to get.”
Health commissioner Dr. Deb McMahan noted that her biggest concern is the long-term effects of young kids vaping with regularity. Henricksen did little to calm those concerns: since vaping only came to the United States in 2007, there hasn’t been enough data to make any connections to long-term health problems.
