Juul quits San Francisco: great time for teens to quit Juul

With Juul packing its bags and taking a smaller team to its new home in Washington, D.C., there is an opportunity for parents to talk vaping with their teens.

As I read the recent headlines announcing Juul’s plan to conduct massive layoffs and move its headquarters out of state, I can’t say a big smile didn’t appear on my face. San Francisco has consistently said no to vaping, leading the country in legislation that has forced the industry out of our city.

On behalf of parents across the country, I can only hope that Juul’s future in Washington, D.C., is short-lived. As a researcher in teen substance use, one of the top questions I’m asked is how parents can talk to their kids about vaping — and my first tip is to talk openly about it, approaching the topic with a frame of curiosity rather than accusation or anger, even if you suspect your teen may be vaping. I always recommend using news in the world of vaping to provide a good opener for conversation.

So, if you haven’t started the conversation already, Juul has just provided you with a great opener.

Teens are vaping nicotine at alarming levels. In 2019, 28% of high school students reported vaping in the past month, up 7% from the year prior. That’s more than a million teens vaping daily, and 5 million in the past month. Industry marketing targeting teens, flavors that are appealing to teens, and the discreet nature of vaping devices called mod pods (like Juul and other brands) have led to what the Surgeon General is calling an epidemic. Vaping nicotine is highly addictive and causes more teens to try smoking, which is likely to lead to more deaths from tobacco-related disease. Further, vaping poses its own health risks, including connections to serious lung illness and death through e-cigarette/vaping-related lung injury, or EVALI. Some experts even suggest a link between vaping and worsening of COVID-19 symptoms.

We need to give meaningful and engaging support to teens who are now addicted to nicotine from vaping, many of whom actually would like to stop. Now that teens are home, parents are in a prime position to support by having open conversations about this public health issue, address vaping when they find out their kid is doing it, or helping their teen to quit.

Parents might find it helpful to start by asking their kids what they know about vaping. Once the conversation gets going, the frame can change from “curiosity” to knowledge-sharing. Many people, teens included, still don’t know about the dangers of vaping. It’s OK to share something you’ve read or heard about how vaping is implicated in life-threatening illnesses or how vaping is making teens more susceptible to complications related to COVID-19.

Then talk about industry ties to Big Tobacco. You should mention that Altria, one of the largest tobacco companies, bought a third stake in Juul in 2018 for more than $12 billion. Ask your teens what the motivation might be for a tobacco company to buy a vaping-device company. How do they interpret the news that Juul is downsizing and moving to the nation’s capital?

Once you get the ball rolling on what should be the first of several conversations, there are research-backed tips that can help you along the way. These include setting a good tone by asking open-ended questions and allowing your teen to speak more than you do; setting a good example (even drinking during Zoom calls influences how teens view substances); setting clear boundaries about what is allowed in your home; and communicating and consistently reinforcing consequences. Once those consequences are communicated, parents also need to recognize that teens will make their own decisions about their behavior — we can’t control everything — so don’t give up after one try.

All of these tips are built into the new resource, Talk Vaping With Your Teen. Hopelab, in partnership with the American Heart Association and All Mental Health, recently released this resource that speaks to what parents told us they want most: the latest and most trusted information about vaping; practical tips for having effective conversations with their teens; and techniques to remain grounded when discussing and coping with such a high-stress topic. The tool comes in an email course that offers parents guidance over the course of a month, and an app for those who want to access all of the information at once.

And for the teens who are ready to ditch vaping now, the way Juul ditched the Bay Area, free resources include the Truth Campaign’s text-message program (text “ditchjuul” to 88709), the National Cancer Institute’s Smokefree Teen and National Jewish Health’s MyLifeMyQuit.

At Hopelab, we are happy to have Juul out of our hometown — and we hope it motivates Bay Area parents to help their teens get vaping out of their lives. And now, while kids are at home, parents may have more opportunities to connect. Let’s reduce some of the stress of talking about vaping and move the conversation about quitting forward. Let’s help teens come out of the quarantine with fewer addiction problems, not more.

Danielle Ramo, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and senior director of research at Hopelab, a nonprofit social-innovation lab that builds tech to support the health and well-being of teens and young adults. She has done more than two decades of research examining adolescent substance use and mental health, and is on faculty at UC San Francisco. She lives in San Francisco with her partner and three children. Follow her on Twitter at @danielleramo.

Originally published at https://www.sfchronicle.com on May 14, 2020.