Vaping-linked lung injury less common in states with legalized marijuana.

This seems like a long time ago, but do you remember last year when cases of vaping-associated pulmonary injury started showing up in media reports? The emerging crisis led to a split among public health advocates and policymakers — some said "this shows why vaping products should be banned" and others said "this shows why vaping products should be legal and regulated."

As it became increasingly clear that these illnesses were almost entirely occurring in individuals who admitted to vaping THC products rather than nicotine, I noticed three types of reactions: (1) "See, this is what we get for legalizing cannabis," (2) "See, this is what we get for NOT legalizing cannabis," and (3) "Never mind the details, let's just ban all vaping products."

A new study published in JAMA strongly suggests that those of us in the (2) camp were correct. States where consumers could walk into a store and buy cannabis products from a legal market experienced much lower incidence of lung injuries in 2019 than states that maintained their foolish prohibitions. The researchers also found that "case rates were not associated with state-level prevalence of e-cigarette use."

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2763966

In fact, the three states with the lowest incidence of lung injury cases were Alaska, Washington, and Colorado — yep, those were three of the first four states to legalize cannabis for adults' use. The only legalized state that was even in the middle of the pack was Massachusetts, where Gov. Charlie Baker imposed a controversial 4-month ban on vape sales at the peak of the crisis, ignoring concerns that his action would only push consumers to the illicit market.

Unfortunately, we can't go back in time and re-do 2019, but can we please try to learn a lesson from this and make better policies going forward? It's really not too much to ask that cannabis consumers should have access to products that have been independently lab tested for purity and potency; in fact, it saves lives.