What a year it’s been for the vaping industry. In the first half of the year it seemed nothing could stop vaping, with smokers switching from tobacco to electronic cigarettes in droves.

Then an outbreak of serious respiratory illness broke out in the USA. While the illness was caused by the use of Vitamin-E acetate in illicit cannabis products, early CDC reports conflated this with vaping. Sources tell me that this conflation was deliberate, and that many in the CDC were appalled at how the situation was handled.