Amid continued moral panic over vaping, another study has confirmed that there is no link between any vaping-related death or pulmonary problem and even a single legal e-cigarette pod.

A study published by over a dozen physicians from the Mayo Clinic in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the inhalation of "one or more ... toxic substances" was responsible for the lung injuries observed in the biopsies in 17 patients. Seventy-one percent of the patients self-reported vaping marijuana or cannabis oils, but the researchers did not appear to do any urine or hair testing to see if the other 29% had done the same.

The pathology of the patients studied seemingly indicates that the injuries were cause by mysterious "medications (especially amiodarone) or noxious chemical fumes." Seeing as the sparse contents of legal vaping pods are regulated by the FDA, it's unlikely that legal pods could possible have this effect.

"Foamy macrophages and foamy pneumocytes" were found by the researchers to be "universally" present in vaping injuries, and the study specifically notes that illicit drugs "have been associated with foamy macrophage accumulation." Combined with the prevalence of marijuana use in the patients, the likelihood that marijuana use in these cases are severely underreported, and that patients fessing up to vaping high concentrations of THC had more urgent injuries, it's looking increasingly likely that black market, laced vape pods are in fact the culprit behind the recent outbreak.

The Mayo Clinic study replicates the trend across the country of lung-injured patients overwhelmingly reporting the use of black market vape pods. As of yet, there hasn't been a single vape-related death or illness definitively proven to stem from the use of legal, FDA-approved vaping products.

Surely that won't stop paternalistic politicians on both sides of the aisle from fearmongering and sending more vapers to the black market, but the science is gradually elucidating a fairly commonsense finding: Illegal vaping products, not FDA-regulated products, are likely to blame.