All the news reports on the deaths and illnesses seem to be pretty clear — bootleg THC Cartridges, often labelled as a type of legal cartridge you could buy in a state where it’s legal, are the common thread with these illnesses. The issue with the Vitamin E Acetate is that it will aerosol when heated, but rapidly reforms into liquid when cooled by a few degrees. The molecules are too large to be absorbed and so you get an oil build up in the lungs.
The folks getting sick seem to vape both nicotine and THC, but the folks that seem to be just smoking nicotine or legal THC vapes, they are not getting sick or dying. My 23 yo son and I vape nicotine and have for a while and we’re fine. I have friends in Kali that vape legal THC there, they’re fine. No public health department in the nation would permit Vitamin E or any other fluid with similar properties be allowed for legal sale. Some basic biology and chemistry education (hell, 10 minutes on Google for god’s sake) is enough to know the consequences of inhaling Vitamin E in aerosol form. Draw your own conclusions.
No specific reason for the switch was offered, but the article I read indicated that bootleg cartridge makers ‘discovered’ a ‘new’ odorless and tasteless stabilizer. The article also mentioned that Vitamin E Acetate was a thick, oily liquid and that the cartridge buyers often judged potency of the product by the thickness of the liquid in the cartridge.
My theory, FWIW, is that somebody saw what the Vitamin E capsules looked like, had a brilliant idea and then ordered a bunch of the crap from somewhere and started cranking out cartridges. Thing is, somebody with the knowledge and equipment to extract THC from a pot plant should have known enough to grasp the fact that using an oil and not a solvent to hold your goodies in liquid form without separating was a really bad idea... this sounds like either one of the stupidest things in human history or a really sadistic way to poison and kill dope vapers. But who would deliberately kill off their own clients?
Thank you for the additional info