The article said the teen using a nicotine based product, but that’s not enough information. We don’t where the nicotine juice he was using came from/whether he bought it off the street or from a reputable seller. We also don’t know if that was based on blood tests or self reports, although I think it’s likely the report is accurate/the issue just happens to affect THC users much more.

This spike in illness is very recent and seems to be fairly acute. Vaping has existed for a number of years without similar cases, and they all just happened to appear all at once.

It seems fairly obvious to me that it has something to do with a particular kind of juice that was recently introduced and is more common in illicit THC products. I suspect one or several shadier manufacturers started using something bad fairly recently, and that it has affected mostly THC products, but is not related to the THC itself.

The current reaction is like jumping to ban all toys because of that issue a few years back where some Chinese manufacturers were forced to recall toys with lead paint.