A new Los Angeles Times report details a painfully ironic contradiction: Vape users turning to cigarettes to cope with their nicotine addictions, challenging vapes' original purpose of helping cigarette users quit smoking altogether.
The big picture: As cigarette use has declined, e-cigarettes and vaping are seeing a sharp increase in popularity — but not without pushback. Just last week, Juul, a vaping technology, faced backlash from lawmakers for being advertised as less harmful than cigarettes without approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
No new cases of measles were reported the week of Sept. 6–12 to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the first time since January.
Why it matters: Despite the milestone, public health officials warn that this does not mean the outbreak is over, particularly as other countries and 2 New York counties continue efforts to stem their outbreaks. Measles is an extremely contagious disease with harmful side effects that range from possible lowered immunity to other diseases to death, though infection is largely preventable via vaccination.
Go deeper: Read Axios' full coverage of the measles outbreak here.
Crooks are cashing in on the CBD craze by substituting cheap and illegal synthetic marijuana for natural CBD in vapes and edibles such as gummy bears, an AP investigation found.
The big picture: AP commissioned lab tests of 30 vape products sold as CBD around the country, with a focus on brands that authorities or users flagged as suspect. 10 of the 30 contained types of synthetic marijuana — drugs commonly known as K2 or spice that have no known medical benefits — while others had no CBD at all.
Physician staffing groups that generate large amounts of surprise medical bills are behind Doctor Patient Unity, the dark-money group running $28 million in ads against Congress' effort to crack down on surprise bills, the New York Times reports.
The two staffing groups, TeamHealth and Envision Healthcare, supply emergency room doctors, radiologists and anesthesiologists to hospitals — specialties that are among the most likely to be out-of-network for patients. Both groups are backed by private equity.
Health care expenses forced 8 million Americans into poverty in 2018, according to the Census Bureau.
The big picture: That's actually an improvement from the past several years, when an annual average of 11 million people fell into poverty because of medical costs — a reflection of the country's expensive system.
Purdue Pharma, the maker of the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin, which faced thousands of lawsuits over the U.S. opioid epidemic, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the drug company said in a statement Sunday
The big picture: Per the Wall Street Journal, Purduefiled for bankruptcy with a more than $10 billion plan to settle claims in White Plains, New York — less than a week after reaching a tentative settlement with states and local governments suing the firm for its role in the opioid epidemic.
The state of New York is pushing for an emergency ban on flavored e-cigarettes, with Gov. Andrew Cuomo saying “vaping is dangerous."
“No one can say long-term use of vaping — where you’re inhaling steam and chemicals deep into your lungs — is healthy," Cuomo said Sunday, per NYT.
The big picture: A number of states — along with the federal government — are rushing to regulate e-cigarettes after a rise in vaping-related lung illnesses that are reported to have killed 6 people and sickened hundreds. Most of the illnesses are believed to be linked to vaping THC, the compound in marijuana that makes people high.
Police arrested 2 men in a drug bust in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for manufacturing and selling THC-laced vaping cartridges, an illegal practice that could be driving the lung-related illness linked to vaping, according to the New York Times.
Why it matters: State and federal health investigators have not determined the cause of the illness, but their ongoing hypothesis is noxious chemicals finding their way into vaping supplies through illegal manufacturing.
