This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, October 7th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The current public discussion over what are commonly referred to as vaping-related illnesses and deaths, as far as we know today,

are really referring to products that are overwhelmingly prohibited.

That is, the stuff you buy at the convenience store is very likely not implicated in the dramatic stories of serious injury and death.

Cato's Jeff Singer comments.

In the public discussions about vaping, nicotine products, and the these deaths that are being called vaping related deaths and at first blush that seems pretty reasonable. But once you dig into

the facts of these cases it seems like these vaping deaths are being caused by

knockoff illegal THC-based vaping products. Is that fair?

That is absolutely fair.

In fact, the first thing that came to my mind when I heard about what was causing this cluster of what they call

vaping associated pulmonary illnesses and some of these

vaping deaths. First thing I came to my mind when I learned about it was well that's

what prohibition does but and I expected to hear something about that when I turned on the news but instead I just heard

rants against vaping and I was I felt like I was you know in an Alice in Wonderland because it kind of there was no connection between the two.

It made no sense to me at all.

Here you have a situation where for about 10 years now, actually since 2007,

vaping has been around in this country.

The last estimate in 2018 was that there 11 million vapors since 2016 has been illegal to sell any vaping materials to anybody under 18.

So we hear about 800 people let's say, out of 11 million who suddenly, just within recent weeks present

with these illnesses, they tend to be on the young end of the spectrum, and we find that virtually

every case involves vaping materials obtained on the black market because either an under 18 person wanted to obtain vaping material and couldn't

...