As of late, we’ve watched as many of the major associations and officials have retracted their prior statements from six months ago that utterly smeared our industry and the people in it. This, along with other things, caused widespread panic and confusion. Pushing a lot of people away from vaping, and back to traditional combustible cigarettes. This was easily one of the hardest battles we’ve ever fought.

Now we could sit here and name off all the culprits who had something to say about vaping (with no right or education to do so at all), but we wanted to focus on what we believe to be the two major ones. The Centers for Disease Control, and the American Heart Association. These two organizations had to most to say about vaping, and seemed to be the most concerning to the general public. Especially the CDC. When people like the CDC call something an “epidemic”, well it isn’t exactly taken lightly.

When an illness broke out last September from illicit THC cartridges, the world went in to a mass panic. There were many people who wanted to be the first to point the finger at an illness caused by vaping. When things simply were not adding up it was very quickly proven by industry professionals to be a problem for the American Cannabis Industry. The CDC simply would not accept this, and proceeded to put out a statement via their website advising the public to “refrain from using any and all types of e-cigarettes”. This has since be removed from their website, with no follow up statement or explanation. To make a statement as bold as that, and to take it away with nothing to say is completely wrong and a let down on their part. Did they think no one would notice? Like, hey, we’ll just quietly take this down and pretend we never said anything because we’ve been proven wrong and give no insight into how incorrect we were.

The next, and more recent retraction, was from the American Heart Association. This organization, in no relation to the illnesses experienced six months ago, made an extremely bold statement that vaping caused heart attacks. Wow. That’s not rushing to a conclusion at all. They backed the reasoning with “data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH)” and said it was an ” independent risk factor for having had a myocardial infarction”. Soon after, it was proven by University of Louisville tobacco researcher Brad Rodu that the analysis used by the American Heart Association included former smokers who had heart attacks before they even started vaping. Once those subjects were excluded from the data, that statement and end result was no longer valid. This was entirely, and probably purposly, a biased endeavor meant to hurt and cripple those in the vaping industry. It seems Big Tobacco isnt going down without a fight, and they fight dirty.

At the end of the day, adults should be allowed to make their own decsions. If they want to vape, they should be given the freedom. If they want flavours, they should be given the options. The real monster here isnt vape companies, or even Big Tobacco for that matter, its false information. False information meant to scare the public into coming to their own conclusion. Or so they think. If you ever read something like this, or hear of something like this. Ask questions. Ask industry professionals, non-profit vape organizations who have nothing to gain other than conveying the proper information that people are entitled to. They’re everywhere, and they’re here to help you.