The Cinnamon Scare - Now It All Makes Sense

In case you missed it, Mt Baker pulled all of their cinnamon flavored e-juices off the shelf yesterday in response to a study that suggests that cinnamon may be toxic when vaped.

"One of the largest ejuice makers in the world has decided to pull all juices containing cinnamon.  Some recent studies and articles have stated that cinnamon can be toxic when vaped.  The mere mention of toxic in the vaping community can bring a slew of liability issues for juice makers and their insurers (if they have one).  Will this be a growing trend? Let the discussion and debate begin.. " - Vapor Joe

After reading many of the comments in a thread titled Mt Baker is Halting Sales of Cinnamon Flavors Until Further Notice  on Reddit, I started wondering "why cinnamon?"  Think about this for a minute, why would researchers target cinnamon as one of the preliminary studies in relation to determining if e-cigarettes are harmful or not?

Let's take a trip back in time.  In April 2013, Forbes magazine published an article titled 5 Reasons Not to Take the Cinnamon Challenge.  The author, David Kroll, explains,  "The Cinnamon Challenge is this millennium’s version of your mother admonishing you with, “If someone tells you to jump off a cliff, would you?,” for taking on a dare from your friends.  The challenge — attempting to swallow a tablespoon of cinnamon powder in 60 seconds without liquids — isn’t just painful. According to a paper published yesterday in the journal Pediatrics, cinnamon misuse was cited in almost 200 calls to U.S. poison control centers during the first half of 2012 with 30 of these cases requiring medical attention."

Aha!!!!  A case of (young) people doing really stupid things!  There you go.  In light of the fear being spread that e-cigarette manufacturers are "targeting children" by offering "yummy" flavored products, its not surprising that they would do a cinnamon study as there is probably an assumption that teenagers will want to vape the daylights out of cinnamon flavored products.

So much for "everything in moderation."

Kroll goes on to explain that, "The idea of the challenge has circulated for years but has intensified with the popularity of YouTube, especially in the last three years."  

The Atlantic published a similar piece in April 2013 titled How Deadly is a Spoonful of Cinnamon?  James Hamblin writes, "For the apparently 20 or so people who've not yet seen one of the 51,000 videos of this done on YouTube, the cinnamon challenge is complex and conceptually nuanced. If I were to really strip it down to its most rudimentary elements: A person tries to swallow a spoonful of dry cinnamon and then feels terrible physically and emotionally."  He goes on to point out that "After seeing a person try to eat a spoonful of cinnamon and then retch in agony, the apparently instinctual reaction is to want to try it yourself, as the 51,000 videos suggest."

With so many people taking the Cinnamon Challenge, researchers began to study what happens when large quantities of cinnamon are ingested. Pediatrics - the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics published the results of a study in a report titled Ingesting and Aspirating Dry Cinnamon by Children and Adolescents: The Cinnamon Challenge.  It was found that accidental inhalation of cinnamon can seriously damage the lungs by causing inflammation and leading to infection.

The Cinnamon Challenge and its Consequences.  

So. my guess in light of reading about the Cinnamon Challenge is that there is a fear that teenagers are going to start vaping and abusing cinnamon flavored e-juice. As for Mt baker pulling their cinnamon flavor products off the shelf, I think they would prefer to wait until more studies are done, but in light of the fact that companies are often sued because their customers misuse their products, I can't say that I blame them. 

It's also possible that cinnamon flavors are being targeted first as it has already been shown that inhaling cinnamon can be dangerous.  At this point I think the question should be "In what quantity?"

Cinnamon Study Update - From the Horses's Mouth