This week, the United States effectively banned Juul after the Food and Drug Administration ordered the e-cigarette maker to remove its popular products from the market.
Experts assessed this move as significant. But they are also concerned that such efforts are failing in the fast-growing vaping industry, one in which young people are moving rapidly from one product to another.
The FDA ban limits years of controversy over Juul, whose discreet vapes have been accused of helping attract a whole new generation to nicotine. In 2020, the FDA ordered peppermint-flavored e-cigarette pods and off-the-shelf juice, hitting many of Juul’s products. The escalation came this week because regulators said Juul had failed to provide enough evidence to assess their toxicity and the dangers of their tobacco and menthol-flavored e-cigarettes, leaving the FDA unable to “assess the potential toxicological risks of using tobacco and menthol.” Juul products’.
Juul, meanwhile, said his vapes helped regular smokers quit and said he would fight back. On Friday, an appeals court suspended the ban while Jules appealed.
The ban is still important, says Lauren Chaplitsky, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, because it was one of the first marketing failures for a brand with significant market share in the United States and a menthol-flavored product. It states that other brands such as Vuse, Logic and NJOY have been granted marketing authorization for various tobacco-flavored e-cigarette products and systems, but Juul has been refused.
Research shows that bans on flavored cigarettes really do matter – a 2020 study by George Mason University analyzed the 2009 FDA-flavored cigarette ban and found that it reduced underage youth smoking by 43% and young people by 27%. %.
“It’s probably the FDA’s marketing refusal to make an impact,” Chaplitsky said. “Juul is still a popular product among young people who use e-cigarettes, and Juul has a certain level of brand awareness and cultural cachet among young people who may be susceptible to nicotine use.
But while Juul still has a dominant share of the U.S. market, its popularity among young people has declined over the past few years, said Dr. Devika Rao, a pediatric pulmonologist at UT Southwestern. A recent federal study found that Juul is only the fourth most popular product among middle and high school students: Puff Bar e-cigarettes are number one, and Vuse and Smok are second and third in popularity.
“We know from the data that Juul is not the most commonly used,” Rao said. “Today, teens prefer disposable vapes, devices that you can buy online or in a store. They cost less than $ 10 each for a disposable device and do not fall under the 2020 taste ban, although they use the same technology as Juul.
Adolescents often switch from product to product, creating a Whac-a-Mole prevention strategy, says Monica M. Zorilla, a Stanford researcher. When the FDA prioritized enforcement against flavored e-cigarette devices such as Juul in 2020, it released disposable e-cigarettes and menthol e-cigarette products, Zorilla said. A study at Stanford found that adolescents then switch to those e-cigarettes that are released. “The youth passed from the base of the pods [like Juul] for single use as a Puff Bar, ”says Zorila. “As one young man told me, ‘everything with fruit’ is popular with their peers. This is partly due to the application and partly because disposable supplies continue to have many flavors. “
Rao points out that social media marketing is smart enough – and insidious – so that teens will switch to vaping products before adults are even aware of them. She points out that the latest trend is the so-called wellness vapes, which are not even sold as e-cigarettes. “You can evaporate things like melatonin or vitamins to feel better and fall asleep faster,” she says. These are really masked vaping devices and companies are not required to indicate the concentration or what is in these products. “Newer products represent a whole new level of risk.”
Disposable Flum Float disposable e-cigarette products on display at a store in El Segundo, California Photo: Patrick T Fallon / AFP / Getty Images
More action is needed, Chaplitsky says. She says the FDA must immediately issue an order to remove all vape products sold without permission on the market from retail and online shelves. This includes the Puff Bar. “Reducing the number and type of flavored e-cigarette devices sold in the United States is likely to have a significant impact on reducing young vaping,” she said. “At the same time, it is unlikely to reduce the usefulness of e-cigarettes with tobacco flavor to help older smokers quit smoking completely.
Vaping is exposing a new generation of nicotine addiction, Rao says – and researchers are still figuring out how to treat nicotine addiction in children, not adults.
These products are often perceived as less harmful than smoking, but they are still at risk because adolescents are prepared to become addicted to substances. Rao, who cares for patients at the Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, explains that Jules figured out how to make nicotine more powerful to give a more powerful blow to the brain – allowing a greater sense of pleasure from using vape.
“It may only take a few vape strokes before they become addictive, and that affects things like school performance, athletic performance, and can have serious consequences, such as lung injury,” Rao said. Studies also show that vaping leads to an increase in heart rate and blood pressure.
She says the vaping rate has dropped in two years during the pandemic, but doctors are now concerned that restoring social media and easing restrictions means those rates could rise again.
“When I talk to my patients, they either use it or all their friends use it and they may feel pressured to start using these products,” says Rao. “Parents and educators need to have these conversations about the harm they can do.
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