Danger Days
A little bit of fear and tub-thumping helps journalists in the USA while away the quite times.
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by Dave Cross
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POTV reported on the tragic death of the Maryland toddler who was left unattended with a bottle of nicotine base. The Times Union has leapt upon the release of the police report of the event to recount the events and interview the bereaved mother again.
“No amount of money will bring my son back,” the woman is reported as saying before going on to announce that she intends to sue Heartland Vapes for providing 100mg nicotine in a container that wasn’t childproofed. The lid from her mother’s reported “opaque brown bottle” was never found but, and here’s the problem, Heartland Vapes do not sell nicotine in brown bottles. Products sold by the company come with full warnings including the express instruction to “Keep out of the reach of children”. It is a shame that the news outlet could not draw more attention to the absolute need for owners of liquids to follow the instructions and warnings.
Meanwhile, a subsidiary of Fox News (the channel paying for Greg Gutfeld’s pro-ecig rants) want everyone to worry about batteries that “can explode like firecrackers”. The nation, apparently, is awash with “E-cigarettes erupting in flames, burning mattresses… even skyrocketing into the ceiling.” It all sounds like a daily re-enactment of the culmination of Independence Day combined with the destruction of the Death Star. With delight they latch onto Mitch Zeller from the FDA stating that “The popularity of e-cigarettes is exploding!”
Zeller and assorted other fear-mongers advocate stringent legislation to protect people unable or too lazy to follow simple instructions. Vape New York’s Spike Babian points out that almost all problems result from customers not charging correctly. “Phone chargers now come with very high output amperage. This battery’s much smaller than what’s in a phone,” he says. “Education of the customers is probably the most important thing that we can have, to make sure the customer understands what they could do wrong.”
If the major outlets wanted to warn American vapers about real dangers then they might be best put to commenting on the actions of the Department for Homeland Security (DHS). As reported by both The Batavian and The Daily News: DHS agents raided a vape shop in Batavia.
There are five homeland security core missions:
- Prevent terrorism and enhancing security
- Secure and manage our borders
- Enforce and administer our immigration laws
- Safeguard and secure cyberspace
- Ensure resilience to disasters
Quite how an alleged counterfeit ecig falls into any of those mission statements is more than a little bit blurry. Possibly an officer saw a skyrocketing eGo battery and feared it was a terrorist plot? Maybe this was to strengthen resilience to a potential charging disaster? Go Team America!
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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