HJBR Mar/Apr 2020

32 MAR / APR 2020 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE COLUMN INSURANCE A DEADLY TREND: VAPING IN LOUISIANA In January, the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) documented the third death in our state caused by vaping, and increased the number of e-cigarette or vaping-associated lung injury, or EVALI, incidents to 35. Louisiana is not alone; EVALI incidents are being reported across the United States. As a result, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has classified EVALI as an outbreak, and begun encouraging physi- cians to remain vigilant for cases, and to report EVALI incidents to state health departments. Epidemic to Outbreak The vaping issue first captured the na- tional eye in December 2018, when U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, MD, is- sued an advisory deeming e-cigarette use – including vaping – as an epidemic. “I do not use that word lightly,” Adams said in a press conference after issuing the advisory. “Now is the time to take action.” At that time, more than 3.6 million ad- olescents reported using vaping prod- ucts. By 2019, that number had surged to 5.2 million, including 27.5 percent of high school students, and 10.5 percent of mid- dle school students, according to the CDC. Here in Louisiana, 12.2 percent of high school students report using e-cigarettes, and 1,700 youths under the age of 18 be- come new daily smokers each year, re- ports the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. “Use of these products among young people is driven by multiple factors, in- cluding advertising, attractive flavors, and the availability of easily concealable de- vices that deliver high levels of nicotine,” wrote CDC researcher, Brian A. King, PhD, in a New England Journal of Medicine ar- ticle in January. This surge in use has yielded a docu- mented increase in lung injuries associat- ed with these devices, beginning in August 2019, when Wisconsin became the first state to report a cluster of vaping-related lung injuries to the CDC.