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For years at Buffalo High School here outside Minneapolis, many students were defiant about vaping. Now, some of them are starting to get scared. Mounting deaths and mystery illnesses are beginning to raise new fears among kids. “I think it was supposed to be a healthier alternative to smoking cigarettes. That’s like not the case anymore,” said Nicole Odeen, a 17-year-old senior at Buffalo High in this town of nearly 16,000 located about 40 miles northwest of Minneapolis. “Hundreds are in the hospital. With anything you’re putting into your lungs, you’ve gotta know there’s got to be some downsides to it,” said junior Elle Kaiser, 16. (Petersen, 10/7)

Vape pens are easy to conceal, they're easy to confuse with other electronic gadgets like USB flash drives, and they generally don't leave lingering smells on clothes. All these things make them appealing to underage users, and confounding to parents. Gone are the days when sniffing a teenager's jacket or gym bag counted as passive drug screening. Now if parents want to know if their teens are vaping nicotine or cannabis, their best bet is a good old fashioned conversation. (Vaughn, 10/6)

U.S. health officials are confronting a sprawling black market for vaping products as they seek to combat two health crises, a mysterious lung illness and a surge in teen vaping. While the market-leading startup Juul Labs Inc. has become synonymous with vaping, it sells only nicotine liquids. There are hundreds of other vaping brands—containing nicotine, compounds derived from cannabis or other substances—sold online, in vape shops, convenience stores and marijuana dispensaries. Many of them are compatible with Juul vaporizers, though they haven’t been authorized by Juul. (Maloney and Hernandez, 10/6)

The Trump administration is under fire from conservative groups and some GOP lawmakers, who are pushing back over its planned crackdown on e-cigarette flavors. They say the administration is overreaching, and the flavor ban will harm small businesses, a violation of core Republican free market principles. (Weixel, 10/6)

As vaping-related illnesses and deaths mount, adults who vape are asking: What should I do now? The question is especially difficult for people who switched to vaping as a way to quit smoking. Once widely seen as safer than regular cigarettes, vaping is now spurring new worries. The number of confirmed and probable cases of vaping-associated illness has risen to 1,080 across 48 states and one U.S. territory, according to the CDC. Nineteen people have died. (Chaker, 10/5)

Only two years ago, electronic cigarettes were viewed as a small industry with big potential to improve public health by offering a path to steer millions of smokers away from deadly cigarettes. That promise led U.S. regulators to take a hands-off approach to e-cigarette makers, including a Silicon Valley startup named Juul Labs, which was being praised for creating "the iPhone of e-cigarettes." (Perrone, 10/5)

As states and cities race to impose new sales restrictions on e-cigarettes — now linked to more than 1,000 lung-related illnesses and close to two dozen deaths nationwide — almost none is taking action against traditional tobacco cigarettes, which have killed far more people. Why? (Ho, 10/6)

A federal judge upheld Massachusetts' four-month ban on the sale of vaping products on Friday, at least for now. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani denied the vaping industry's request for a temporary reprieve from the ban while their legal challenge plays out in Boston federal court, saying the plaintiffs did not show they would likely succeed on the merits of the case or that the "balance of hardships" weighs in their favor. (Marcelo, 10/4)

But a broader legal challenge to the ban won't be decided until later this month. The judge set a hearing for Oct. 15 to take up the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction to stop the ban, which Republican Gov. Charlie Baker announced Sept. 24. The judge's decision followed a morning hearing on the lawsuit brought by vape shops and vaping companies against Baker and the commonwealth of Massachusetts. (Garrison, 10/4)

New York and Massachusetts officials are grappling with the economic effects of the vaping ban this week, facing lawsuits from local vape shop owners who say the ban will close their stores. Vape store owners in both states filed lawsuits requesting preliminary injunctions to put a pause on the statewide bans that halted sales of vaping products. (Del Valle, 10/5)

Gov. Kate Brown on Friday ordered a six-month ban on sales of all flavored vaping products with nicotine or THC amid an escalating vaping-related lung illness epidemic. It’s unclear exactly when the ban will start. The governor told state agencies to “immediately” pass emergency rules to ban the products. ...Sales of unflavored vaping products would continue. But if in the coming weeks or months investigators connect ingredients in those products to lung injuries, the state will have to immediately ban them, too, the governor’s order says. (Zarkhin, 10/4)

"The safest option for Oregonians right now is to not use vaping products of any kind. Until we know more about what is causing this illness, please, do not vape," Brown said. The Oregon Health Authority had asked Brown for a six-month ban on sale and display of all vaping products, including tobacco, nicotine and cannabis. The agency also urged Oregonians to stop using all vaping products until federal and state officials have determined the cause of the illnesses. (Selsky, 10/4)

The Ace Smoke Shop on a gentrifying strip of Lake Avenue in Altadena is a small business in every sense of the word — a tiny shack crammed with a variety of tobacco products that attracts a steady stream of customers in need of their nicotine fix. Local residents and workers stop in and grab a pack of Marlboros or a cigarillo, but what largely draws them these days is the bewildering array of e-liquids in flavors such as butterscotch, kiwi-strawberry, vanilla bean and variety of tropical fruits, as well as no-muss, no-fuss disposable e-cigarettes in mango and other varieties. (Darmiento, 10/6)

More than a quarter of high school juniors in San Diego County have tried vaping, and experts warn that teen vaping is erasing the gains from decades of smoking prevention. “We’ve come so far in reducing the use of traditional cigarettes, this is a battle we feel we’re re-fighting after all the years of getting cigarettes to declie so much,” said Jim Crittenden, a program specialist with the County Office of Education, who works on tobacco prevention. (Brennan, 10/6)