This whole thing has nothing to do with keeping kids off nicotine and everything to do with keeping people of all ages on cigarettes.
Vaping is safer than smoking.
Let's say I'm Phillip Morris. I sell Marlboro and a slew of other cigarette brands. E-cigs come along, offering a safer alternative that is importantly much more cost effective. They're eating my lunch.
How do I kill this industry? I buy Juul. I remove the fruity flavors (which people of all ages enjoy more than tobacco flavors) and I claim that I'm doing it to protect the children.
Juul is now much worse off; big tobacco gets to claim that it's looking out for the kids; last step is to manufacture a public crisis to have cover for over-reaching legislation that bans what would otherwise be the least harmful of all age-restricted products.
Why should the FDA use up government resources to regulate vaping?
Put another way, why do we think the solution for people with no integrity or no clue or both trying to make money out of vaping (Juul included) is to spend taxpayers money helping them behave themselves?
I find this attitude pretty crazy to be frank. Consider that whatever happens from here, however much joy everybody gets from vaping and blowing smoke in the future, it isn’t ever going to be worth 50 dead people.
There is that, and then Juul pretending to be a benefit to society while getting children addicted to nicotine and then selling themselves to big tobacco... what exactly is the benefit of vaping? The argument it minimises the harm from smoking is nonsense and unproven. There are well established methods of reducing smoking on a societal level (put up the taxes), which return money to the government to pay for all the negative externalities of smoking which big tobacco isn’t held accountable for.
Anyway, the USA has a funny attitude about these things. Personal choice and optionality are considered paramount. Someone else can pick up the pieces. Applying it everywhere is obviously flawed if you ask me.
Mid 30s adult here who used an e-cigarette for a year or two when alone in the car for funsies (flavors smell nice).
What, exactly, is the problem with kids vaping/using e-cigarettes if they don't contain a controlled substance (THC or nicotine, in these cases). We don't ban kids from consuming caffeine, so what's the problem with inert vapors? I agree that the liquid to be vaporized needs to be regulated to prevent health issues, but that's no different than the FDA regulating food safety.
guess all those juulers will just start smoking cigarettes and dying. i dont understand the logic of allowing one and not the other. in what way has juul marketed to childen?
its popular with teenagers because you can smoke it in a school bathroom without getting caught; its easy to conceal. is that grounds for banning something now? are they just going to ban vaporizers all together then?
seems like an completely illogical reaction to the issue.
As a former smoker who was only able to quit using Juul, this is disappointing to me. As a father of a one year old, I understand the reasoning behind this.
I think perhaps the answer is to make the Juul and similar products less appealing to youth. How? Of course this is a complex topic but less flashy hardware and marketing could be a small start.
Banning vaping outright seems ridiculous but there need to be more aggressive policies and enforcement on the sale to children. The FDA did a study and I remember the numbers being staggering (2/3 teens I think) have vaped before. A high number of people using addictive substance before 19 is a recipe for disaster regardless of the compound since lifetime addiction rates soar at that age.
Changing the flavor sounds needlessly draconian, as adults like apple and bubblegum, too.
You can flood your system with caffeine using over the counter caffeine pills, or ultra-high caffeine drinks.
You can flood your system with alcohol with everclear or unconventional ingestion methods.
Neither of these behaviors are as common as this article is trying to push about nicotine, probably mostly due to education and possibly due to the relative addictive nature of caffeine and alcohol.
This whole article, though, talks about teens, presumably underage ones, vaping. Isn’t that already illegal? Shouldn’t we get better at that part before we add more things?
The reason they go after nicotine is because kids use these vapes and become addicted to the nicotine in them, much of the time without wanting to do so. It is pernicious. It’s why cigarettes were demonized, but not banned. Cigarettes were doing everything that Juul and Co. are doing now, hooking kids, spreading because it’s cool and marketed to children. It’s kind of like rape. Hooking you without your consent, and taking advantage of the most vulnerable market, kids.
As a former smoker and vaper I find Juul and the whole e-cig business wicked. I stopped smoking and started vaping in 2012 and years later I realized I replaced a nasty habit with what was basically a hobby. I was never enthusiastic about smoking but I became increasingly enthusiastic about flavors and coils and all that crap. I was consuming way more nicotine than when I was smoking cigarettes. I noticed that when I chained 2 cigarettes after not smoking for 3 years and right after, I continued vaping with my mod for another 5 minutes.
The moment I realized that I started vaping unflavored juice and stopped completely shortly after. It was never supposed to be cool and pleasant, it was supposed to stop me from being a smoker.
In my opinion it's a good cessation device but the way it's marketed and how the whole industry is behaving just doesn't sit well with me.
I totally get why teenagers are into it. It doesn't smell, it's pretty cool. I remember when I started smoking as a teenager, I had to chew mint gum and do all sorts of crazy things with perfumes to hide my habit from my parents. If I had Juul it would have been awesome.
Even if vaping were 100% risk free (which I doubt) I think it's certainly better that we don't get kids addicted to nicotine (or any substance). The misinformation doesn't help things though, if kids are going to vape/smoke I'd much rather see them take up nicotine free varieties, I'm not sure why a non-smoker would take up the nicotine ones at all, maybe because companies like juul don't sell them. As someone silly enough to take up smoking as a teenager I think a non-nicotine variety would have had a huge change on my life.
I've seen some strange reactions from family about my vaping (which I've used to cut down smoking significantly). The hypocrisy award goes to my sister claiming it was dangerous and targeted at kids (due to the flavors), she said this while downing an alcopop drink and running one of those essential oil vapour machines in the house.
Pretty much anyone can quit caffeine in a week, easily. Nicotine is not in even in the same ballpark in terms of addictiveness based on my anecdotal experience. There's absolutely no way I am OK with something as addicting as nicotine being marketed to children. Teenagers are children and I'm happy the government is pursuing vaping such as it is.
Aside from vaping being less harmful than cigarettes, kids were vaping long before Juul was popular. They are not responsible for this trend; they're just an inevitable improvement upon semi-disposable e-cigarettes.
This argument also completely ignores the beneficial aspects of Juul. It is far more effective at helping smokers quit than most other products. To focus in on "save the children!" fear mongering while ignoring the primary benefit of vaping is dishonest and helps no one.
But aren't there dozens of other companies that sell the same product? Nicotine vape pens? Why is this calling out Juul specifically, and not all nicotine vape pens?
I think it would be a net win for society if the whole concept were killed, or regulated/marketed to help long-time smokers kick their habit. Nobody needs this stuff, even if you enjoy it.
I understand that we don't want our kids vaping or smoking, but banning flavored juices is the wrong way to go about it. All it's going to accomplish is deregulation of the flavored juice market. People will buy unflavored juices and add their own (possibly dangerous)flavoring agents at home.
Also, it is in Big Tobacco's best interest to make vaping as difficult as possible. Think about it, all these cities with vape bans haven't banned cigarettes yet, right? Make it extremely difficult to vape and people will resort to smoking.
On a more philosophical note, are we really OK with the government reaching this far into our personal lives?
The issue isn't really about the juices themselves though, is it? It's more about the advertising allegedly targeting young kids. I think regulating the advertisement of these products is probably the most sane course of action here.
Some of the criticism against Juul were that they marketed directly to kids because their ads used colors. That's it. Colors.
I abhor the tobacco industry. I wish their execs had been thrown behind bars decades ago. They've proven that they'll put profit over human life and that they're willing to lie to our faces while they do it. They've earned all the skepticism and scrutiny they get, but I can't get over how baseless and absurd that argument against them was. Ads with colors and young adults in them aren't targeting children. There is plenty of evil to point at without getting ridiculous.
Vaping plus flavored nicotine is marketed at kids. If vaping were strictly an alternative to cigarettes, marketed at existing smokers, as a harm reduction alternative then it would be fine. But it's not, it's marketed as a hip new thing, getting kids hooked on nicotine that would have otherwise never touched a cigarette.
Also, that flavored nicotine smoke smells nasty. Most smokers tend to be aware that people don't like their smoke and they make some effort to keep it out of people's faces, but vaping isn't smoking, it's vaping, and cool and less harmful than cigarettes, so who could possibly object to vape smoke filling the air? /s
It really isn't killing kids, and I would challenge that they are 'targeting them'. As an adult vape user, I love the fruit flavors. They are for my (adult) use only. I would never let someone under 21 get access to this. Why should I be penalized because lots of kids are breaking the law?
The recent (adult) deaths from Vaping are due to black market THC cartridges filled with vitamin e acetate. It is very likely the kids are obtaining (safe) retail product, which is a failure in retail process, not the manufacturer. While it is a bad thing that school aged children are illegal acquiring Juul -- how is this different (or even worse) than Alcohol? We should investigate alcohol vendors for making tasty beverages too. Can't have flavors that adults might like...
There is a combination of events occurring simultaneously that is making it hard for folks to objectively understand the problem, and if there is actually a problem at all.
Vaping is safer than smoking.
Let's say I'm Phillip Morris. I sell Marlboro and a slew of other cigarette brands. E-cigs come along, offering a safer alternative that is importantly much more cost effective. They're eating my lunch.
How do I kill this industry? I buy Juul. I remove the fruity flavors (which people of all ages enjoy more than tobacco flavors) and I claim that I'm doing it to protect the children.
Juul is now much worse off; big tobacco gets to claim that it's looking out for the kids; last step is to manufacture a public crisis to have cover for over-reaching legislation that bans what would otherwise be the least harmful of all age-restricted products.
Keep smoking.
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