vaping tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the high-inducing chemical in marijuana, according to statements
from federal and state health agencies. But officials don’t know whether the ailments have been caused by
marijuana-type products, e-cigarettes, by vaping some type of street concoction, or whether a contaminant
or defective device may have been involved.
The Illinois patient’s death was disclosed during a news conference held by officials at the US Centres for
Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the state of Illinois. They
did not provide details about the patient’s identity, saying only that the person was an adult who had vaped
recently and then succumbed to a severe respiratory illness. Health officials did not say what product the
patient had used, whether an e-cigarette or other vaping device; nor did they specify what substance had
been vaped.
Amid the lack of information, investigators are scrambling to find shared links to the respiratory problems.
Officials said this week that many patients, most of whom were adolescents or young adults, had described
difficulty breathing, chest pain, vomiting and fatigue. The most seriously ill patients have had extensive
lung damage that has required treatment with oxygen and days on a ventilator. Some are expected to have
permanent lung damage.
“We’re at a relatively early stage of understanding,” Mitchell Zeller, director for the Centre for Tobacco
Products at the FDA, said.
The collective agencies were throwing “a lot of resources at this”, he added, but part of the problem was
that state investigations are not always complete, making it difficult to form a clear picture.
© New York Times