Vaporizers Under Fire in Mainstream Media

It’s happening everywhere. Maybe in your very own neighborhood. People enjoying themselves with marijuana…but not suffering all the agony of smoking it! They’re using these mysterious new gadgets which appear to be designed to appeal to your own sons and daughters and get them hooked on marijuana…the scourge of youth!

This is the scare tactic approach taken by a number of recent articles and video news reports. Needless to say, some of these news outlets use more “reefer madness” hysteria than others, though virtually every headline is written to alarm the average person, and especially to cause fear in parents:

• Growing Use of Vaporizers Alarms Health Officials
• Pocket hookahs proliferate with young marijuana users, sources say
• Booming demand among teens for tiny easy-to-hide hookah pipes in states where marijuana is legal
• Vaporizer marijuana use popular with teens
• Hookah Pens, Vaporizers and Your Teens

It’s an axiom in the journalism business that most readers never go beyond the headline, so it’s considered perfectly normal practice to have an eye-catching, “grabby” headline, even if the content of the actual article disagrees with the headline’s lurid language. And so it is with these. For instance, the first article — despite its headline — manages to admit that electronic vaporizers are actually safer than smoking. Yet they still couldn’t resist quoting one “expert” who claimed that they’re more addictive because they “release dopamine”, the way iPhones do. WTF?

Weedists who find themselves involved in a discussion about vaporizers with uninformed friends or family should keep in mind some talking points:

• Vaporizers are generally healthier than smoking, because smoking releases benzene, a known carcinogen.
• Vaporizers let you use less material, so it’s not only more economical, it’s healthier in general.
• Vaporizers are family friendly! Vapor does not have the smell of cannabis smoke that some people find offensive. Exhaled cannabis vapor cannot cause others to get high.
• Most people who use vaporizers for cannabis are legal medical marijuana patients like myself whose health prevents them from smoking.
• Despite these scare articles, vaporizers cost much more than pipes, so teenagers are far less likely to be using them at all (most of the ones I encounter online can barely afford weed).