A young girl in Fredericton, New Brunswick found herself in the hospital after she found a bottle of e-juice on the playground and drank it. The bottle of e-juice was called Unicorn Milk from a company called New Beginnings Vape Studio, also out of Fredericton.

The girl and her friends saw that the bottle had a cartoon unicorn on the label and smelled it, so they thought it might be something good. Shortly afterward, the 9-year old girl started suffering from nausea, dizziness, and chest cramps.

The girl’s mother, Lea L’Hoir learned that her daughter had drunken e-liquid, looked up the effects of nicotine poisoning online, and decided to take her daughter to the hospital where medical staff confirmed that she had nicotine poisoning.

She was released later that night.

No other news about the other girls has been released, or whether or not they also got sick.

In light of the situation, the owner of New Beginnings has said that he is considering changing the label. If you go to their website now, all pictures of Unicorn Milk have been taken down.

There’s no word of how the bottle of e-juice ended up on the playground. It could be that someone accidentally dropped as they were walking through.

Re-Igniting The Labeling and Flavoring Controversy

But this brings up the controversy of e-liquid labels, candy flavors, and their appeal to children. Obviously, this is a freak accident and not at all common, but it definitely brings up the question whether or not it’s okay to have cartoony labels.

I’ve argued in the past that cartoons on labels should be allowed because e-juices can only be purchased by adults, but I’ve changed my mind on this since then. Not just because of this story, but because I’ve come to realize that these labels are not necessary and only harm the reputation of the industry.

I know people will argue that it’s up to the parents to lock up e-juice so that kids can’t get into it, but kids are resourceful. They will find a way. And if kids see a cartoon label and smell something that smells like candy, they’re going to want to taste it. It’s why manufacturers of toxic cleaning products don’t put labels on their bottles that look appealing to kids.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I think an e-juice company can make an appealing label that doesn’t have cartoons and other child-friendly characters on it. But that still might not stop a kid from drinking it. Child safety caps work for little kids, but not for 9-year olds. So is the answer to put a large toxic warning on the label? I don’t know. What do you think?

According to a post on VapingUnderground.com, someone sent an email to customer support at 528 Customs asking them for some advice on the Goon 1.5 RDA they just bought the day before. This person mentioned to 528 that they had just purchased the Goon and even after installing several builds, the ohms constantly jump around.

He confirmed to 528 that the posts screws are tight and the coils don’t wiggle around at all. The RDA was also tightened all the way down on the device and it was tested on multiple devices. So basically, so there should be no reason for the ohms to move around once they’ve been fired.

Brittani Starkey of 528 Customs responded with this…

She said “Have you tried it on a mech mod?”

She then followed up an hour later saying that her husband is the owner of 528 and the designer of the Goon. She said that the advice she gave was his suggestion and she said that it’s impossible for ohms to jump around on a mech mod. She said using it on a mech first will usually fix the issue.

I don’t even know what to say about this. I guess it goes to show that even vape product manufacturers have no clue about vaping sometimes.

First, to say that firing an atomizer on a mech mod will produce different results than a regulated mod makes no sense at all. Either device will fire the coils. The only difference is that on a mech you’re limited by the batteries. There’s nothing physically different from how the atomizer receives power from the battery.

Then to say that it’s impossible for ohms to jump around on a mech mod is totally clueless. It’s impossible to know that ohms are jumping around because mech mods don’t have screens that show you the resistance changing, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. That’s equivalent to putting black tape over your check engine light in your car.

And to top it all off, someone posted the same issue on 528’s Instagram page. They were having issues with ohms jumping around. The owner responded condescendingly to this person saying that he already gave this person advice over email.

The owner thought it was the person from earlier but it wasn’t. He goes on to say that he’s been vaping for more than 4 years and that using an atomizer on a mech mod tends to fix voltage issues. He also states that the Goon 1.5 is the one of the safest RDAs on the market due to the materials and insulators they use.

I honestly can’t believe this is the advice the owner of an RDA manufacturing company gave to a customer. And he throws out the fact that he’s been vaping for more than 4 years, implying that he knows what he’s talking about.

I’m not trying to crap on the Goon, because it’s an amazing RDA, although I’ve seen lots of bad reviews of the new 1.5 version. But I wanted to cover this story just because this advice is not only terrible, but also dangerous.

I’ve experienced this issue with an atomizer in the past. If after making sure that everything is built correctly, tested with various builds and on various devices, and the issue still persists, it’s because there’s something wrong with the atomizer. It’s most likely that that there’s something wrong with the positive post or the 510 pin.

If the Goon 1.5 has some sort of shorting issue that’s causing the ohms to jump around, that could be extremely dangerous, especially on a mech mod. If the ohms jumped to below safe levels of the battery in a mech, that could hard short the battery and cause an explosion.

Seriously terrible advice. This might be an isolated issue, and not typical with the Goon 1.5 in general, but the advice they gave is so dangerous that I just had to talk about it.

528 Customs has since removed the Instagram thread and supposedly blocked everyone who commented on it, but the screenshots are on the Internet forever. And people are still commenting on other recent Instagram posts.