Public health experts have said the cause is not entirely clear but appears to stem from the way the lungs struggle to process certain oils used in black-market marijuana vaping devices; they have identified vitamin E acetate, an ingredient in some products, as a possible cause. Though vaping of marijuana is on the rise, the overall rates of using the drug in all forms — smoking, vaping, edibles — were mixed. The rate of overall marijuana use held steady for high school students who reported using it once or more over the past year, but there was an uptick in daily use. Roughly 52 percent of high school seniors said they had used alcohol in the last year, along with 37.7 percent of 10th graders. The portion of seniors who reported smoking in the last month fell to 5.7 percent, down from 13.6 percent five years ago.

Source: New York Times December 18, 2019 04:52 UTC