Local Vape Store Owner Heather Hosick Helps Set the Record Straight on Hospitalizations Related to Vaping

Health officials have recently have been attempting to link a couple dozen hospitalizations with breathing problems to vaping.  There have been 12 cases in Wisconsin and at least 6 in Illinois.  In some cases, the patients needed intensive care and assistance with their breathing.  Because the doctors said all the patients vaped, they immediately linked it to that.

Not so fast.  To gain some perspective, WROY/WRUL News spoke with Carmi’s original vape store owner, Heather Hosick of Up in Vape and it seems this could’ve been a case of jumping to conclusions.

“They’re targeting vaping in general.  What a lot of these people have done, if you’ll read in depth in the article, it says that one of them bought their cartridge was not bought from a reputable vape shop.  That means they bought it off the street, with THC and when you buy stuff off the black market like that, you don’t know what it’s mixed with.  So e-liquid is mixed with vegetable glycerin.  There’s a chance they’re mixing the THC with vegetable oil and if you do that, that oil goes in and coats your lungs.  You can get a lung disease from that.  With younger kids that have never smoked, but they’ve picked up vaping to be cool, and they’re often using these little Juul pods and those contain a lot of nicotine.  What they don’t realize is they’re putting so much nicotine into their body, they’re running a risk of a nicotine overdose.  Nicotine raises your heart rate so that’s something that folks should be concerned with.”

Having a reputable store owner that you get your supplies from and not experimenting with making your own liquids and especially buying or even taking from others is really the key here.

“There are a lot of DYI (do it yourselfers) that make their own liquid and THC oils and many of them will buy stuff from pharmacies to mix with it and that’s not always safe.  You have to make sure you’re not cutting it with anything that’s oil based.  And again, they could be using too much nicotine.  People don’t realize the dangers there.  If a DIY’er accidentally got straight nicotine on their skin, it could kill them.”

Hosick got into the business because she wanted to help smokers kick the habit.  We’ll be talking more with Heather next week as well as school administrators to discuss not only the new age law to see how that’s affected business, but also to see what kind of stats we’re seeing locally with regards to our own Jr High and High School students that are vaping.