EUGENE, Ore. — Very little has changed since Gov. Kate Brown almost three months ago issued an executive order to address the vaping crisis in Oregon.
Two court injunctions since Brown ordered a sales ban on flavored vaping products killed the most aggressive part of her October executive order, but some other instructions in that order concerning education and legislation have yet to have an effect on the problem.
In Lane County, the executive order has had no effect on how the local health department is addressing concerns raised by vaping.
“Right now we are just in a holding pattern. That’s by design. The direction we’ve received is don’t do any education, don’t do any other components of the executive order. OHA will do everything at this point. They’re doing a statewide campaign,” said Lane County Health and Human Services spokesperson Jason Davis. “As far as local health authorities doing anything in reference to that executive order, they essentially directed us not to.”
Brown’s executive order banning the sale of flavored nicotine and THC vaping products came as the nation struggled with mysterious and unexplained vaping-related lung injuries and deaths, numbers last reported at 2,506 and 54, respectively. That included 20 lung injuries and two deaths in Oregon.
The CDC says the lung injury crisis is slowing down, having peaked in September. No new cases have recently been reported in Oregon.
Sales bans on those products were put on hold by two separate court rulings, one for nicotine and one for THC, shortly after each went into effect.
Though those products still are available for purchase, at least one Eugene retailer thinks the governor’s ban had at least some effect.
“That ban didn’t help. It scared people so bad,” said Juiced Up Vapors owner David Nettles. “They put the fear of God in people.”
Nettles said a good week of sales nets him between $2,000 and $2,500, but last week he made about only $500.
“Even though the flavors are still available, people have moved on,” Nettles said. “I use to do pretty good business here.”
Beyond the sales ban, Brown’s executive order called for a ban on identified causes of the injuries; a plan for consumer warnings within 90 days; mandatory reporting of vape injury cases to OHA; local access to federally-approved quit-smoking resources; a statewide education campaign; vape regulation legislative proposals; and recommendations to the governor’s office from the Vaping Public Health Workgroup established by the order.
The Vaping Public Health Workgroup won’t have its first meeting until mid-January, according to governor’s office spokesperson Charles Boyd. The executive order calls for that workgroup to present policy recommendations for legislators, state agencies and local authorities no later than June 1.
Neither OHA nor the Oregon Liquor Control Commission have developed legislative proposals concerning permanent bans on flavored vaping products, the disclosure of vaping ingredients, increased oversight or OHA’s authority in a public health incident, as called for in the executive order.
OHA announced Thursday it has revamped some existing advertising campaigns to include a greater emphasis on vaping and has been talking to retailers about limiting their flavored product sales because they are attractive to children, according to OHA spokesperson Jonathan Modie. But State Health Officer Dr. Dean Sidelinger said a more explicitly vape-focused statewide prevention and education campaign is expected to be released in April.
Neither OHA nor OLCC have developed plans for consumer warnings, such as health risks displays in stores. The deadline for that portion of the executive order was set for early January, and Modie said OHA is on track to meet that deadline.
On the OLCC side of the consumer warning question, spokesman Mark Pettinger said it’s unclear what such warnings should look like.
“The OLCC would benefit from more definitive and specific evidence about ingredients found as a result of the public health investigations that are in marijuana that we could then address in a consumer and licensee information campaign,” he said. “We don’t know what we would warn them about.”
One thing OLCC has done since the order was issued is label vitamin E acetate as an adulterant, forbidding it as an ingredient in marijuana products.
Though it was suspected as a cause of harm since the early days of the vape crisis, vitamin E acetate, sometimes used by black market sellers to make THC vape oil thicker so it appears to be of higher quality, recently has been more closely linked to the outbreak of lung damage than before.
A recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine analyzed samples from 51 lung damage cases in 16 states, and vitamin E acetate was found in 48 cases. None of those samples were from Oregon, and Sidelinger said state health officials are awaiting results from testing of local cases.
But that new data has complemented previous U.S. Centers for Disease Control and U.S. Food and Drug Administration research linking the cases.
“Laboratory data show that vitamin E acetate, an additive in some THC-containing e-cigarette, or vaping, products, is closely associated with (vape-related lung damage),” the CDC reported. “The latest national and state findings suggest THC-containing e-cigarette, or vaping, products, particularly from informal sources like friends, family, or in-person or online dealers, are linked to most of the cases and play a major role in the outbreak.”
Though vitamin E acetate is mostly closely associated with black market THC vapes, there have been in Oregon and other states where patients only reported using nicotine vaping products, Sidelinger said. He said identifying the substance was important, but the answer may never be fully clear.
“Vitamin E acetate may be the cause or one of the causes, but we still have the issue of not knowing for sure,” Sidelinger said.
