Vaping dried pot better than potent oil: Researcher

Is the modern e-cigarette or vape bad for you?

The short answer: It’s not totally harmless and so far, there’s no long-term research available.

“The most accurate thing we can say is if people frequently vape, it’s almost certainly harmful, but much less harmful than smoking cigarettes,” said David Hammond, a professor at the University of Waterloo’s school of public health.

“Most of the carcinogens from cigarettes are from lighting something on fire. So, the way to think about vaping is it’s got far fewer chemicals. And of the chemicals it has, most of them are at a lower level. You might have a dozen or two dozen chemicals in vapes but you have like 7,000 in tobacco. Unfortunately, it takes 10 or 20 years before chronic disease becomes apparent. ”

We spoke further to Hammond:

When did vaping become legal in Canada?

In March 2018, we had a brand new act that make it legal to sell nicotine-containing e-cigarettes without prior approval (from the Federal Government’s Health Canada) and it also allows things like advertising and marketing.

Is vaping healthier than smoking cigarettes or recreational cannabis?
Vaping is a mode of delivery so it depends on what you vape. Now if you’re talking about smoking regular cigarettes versus vaping nicotine, vaping is less harmful. With respect to cannabis that also holds true: You take away the smoke, you take away a huge amount of the chemicals.

How healthy is vaping weed?
There’s two ways of vaporizing cannabis. One is from the dried herb. You take the weed and you put it in a little chamber and it heats it up. So there’d still be some harm but a lot less harm than smoking. But the other thing that people do is they vape cannabis oil. And cannabis oil typically has far greater concentrations of THC. So it’s a much more potent product. So the good news is that you’re not getting the dirty chemicals of smoke. The bad news is that is most cases it goes against the other harm reduction message which is try to avoid really high THC products.

Do some vapes not have nicotine?
It is possible to have some of them that have no nicotine. But most of them do and most of the ones that kids are using do and have a lot.

WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR KIDS ABOUT VAPING:
University of Waterloo professor David Hammond, a leading e-cigarette researcher in Canada, has just one piece of advice for parents to give to children when it comes to vaping.

“Don’t vape,” he said. “Especially the modern e-cigarettes like Juul. They are much more addictive than they used to be. And they are likely to be harmful if kids use them regularly.”

And in the case of cannabis, young people should avoid vaping potent oils.

“I would tell them to vape dried herb and not use oil,” said Hammond. “We just did some research on this. Of the kids canvassed, about half go for dried herb and about half go for cannabis oil. I would tell my kid to vape some dried herb because cannabis oil is seriously potent.”

There is also research that shows more kids are vaping.

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“(There is) some research that will be coming out in a week in the British Medical Journal which is showing that the number of kids that have been vaping it’s almost doubled over the past year,” said Hammond. “And that’s because of Juul (which) is the biggest brand of e-cigarettes. Why Juul matters, and it only came on the Canadian market after March 2018, is because, for the first time, it’s one of the e-cigarettes that delivers nicotine just like cigarettes. So it delivers very high concentrations and gets them into your blood stream quickly so that’s why Health Canada has announced they’re looking on more restrictions on advertising.”