Government agencies working to take the shine off JUUL and other e-cigarettes

With vaping and e-cigarettes reaching what the Surgeon General calls ‘epidemic’ levels, parents and schools are trying to cope. User and sellers debate whether it actually helps people get off traditional cigarettes.

Crème Brulee, Cool Cucumber, and Mango flavored Pods. Sound good? Well, the Food and Drug Administration is seeking to ban them, due to an increase in underage kids getting hooked on such sweet-shop flavors to fill up their JUUL, the nation’s most popular electronic cigarette.

This week the U.S. Surgeon General’s office also chimed in, calling teenage use an epidemic.

“I am officially declaring e-cigarette use among youth an epidemic in the United States,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said at a news conference on Tuesday. “Now is the time to take action. We need to protect our young people from all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes.”

That is largely a reiteration of what FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in November. “We didn’t predict what I now believe is an epidemic of e-cigarette use among teenagers,” Gottlieb said. Today we can see that this epidemic of addiction was emerging.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is pushback from users and sellers, who maintain that vaping is far less harmful than smoking. That may be true, but vaping is so new that the health effects have yet to be determined. And, critics say devices like the popular JUUL hook kids on nicotine young, and are a gateway to regular cigarettes and other forms of smoking.

“There are always ways around it,” said Mark Marcusky, the owner of Clouded Culture Smoke Shop in Oakland Park. It is hard to ban something that is “out there already,” he noted, and when there are other pod companies making them and selling them as well.

JUUL is trying to comply with FDA’s new guidelines, it seems, before it gets bad for the San Francisco-based company. They have been putting a note on the bottom of the pod boxes recently that reads, “WARNING: This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.” Moreover, they have been increasing the prices on the pods. Before they were around $17, and now they are $25. As for the JUUL e-cigarette and the battery, the price recently rose to $35, where previously it was $25.

“With prices increasing, people will just go back to smoking cigarettes and who even gets that,” Marcusky asked. “If somebody wants to put something in their body, let them.”

JUUL is an electronic cigarette that does not affect others nearby with second-hand smoke and stink, and only has an impact on the consumer who is using it. Therefore, Marcusky argued, JUUL is “safer than cigarettes… it has no second-hand smoke and is a healthier alternative.” The improvement to air quality, he said, is radical. “I worked in bars for over 20 years and smelling smoke means second-hand smoke, which causes cancer,” said Marcusky. “If there’s a better and healthier alternative, why not use it and let the people decide?”

Marcusky said he has tried JUUL before, since he likes to sample things with friends before selling them in order to get feedback and to see how the product works. He was immediately impressed, in no small part because it’s helped many smokers of traditional cigarettes quit. “It is an amazing item and gets people off of cigarettes, which is already a good thing,” he added.

“It is discreet, simple, small, gives off small puffs, which appeals to kids since it is easy to hide and many people will just think that it’s a USB compared to other electronic cigarettes,” said Marcusky. “But that should not be the reason why the FDA bans the flavors, I don’t agree with it at all.”

He is aware that his friends have kids in high school and have been caught with a JUUL and some have been expelled as a result, a fact he says is “ridiculous.” Marcusky does not think it justifies kids being expelled or JUUL being taken off shelves.

“It is weird how the FDA is only pressuring JUUL.” Marcusky said. “It is almost like a vendetta to me.”

In fact, JUUL tends to get the most attention — it’s the only brand name that teens use as a verb — but it’s not the only e-cigarette producer the FDA is targeting. JUUL made up 29 percent of total e-cigarette sales by December 2017, making it the company with the largest market share, according to a research letter published in the Oct. 2 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Timothy Wrains, the proud owner of a JUUL electronic cigarette, says that he has been using it ever since he quit smoking a couple months ago. Wrains, a car mechanic in his late 30s, believes that the FDA is trying to ban certain flavors just in an attempt to control things and allay public fears.

“JUUL is a good option to wean you off from smoking actual cigarettes,” said Wrains. “If there was one bad thing, it would be that it is still a form of smoking, so you are still taking in nicotine.” Wrains thinks that JUUL should also not be banned from stores, though the online market is another story. “Only ages 18 and older are allowed to purchase this in the stores, so banning them makes no sense.”

Mayra Crespo, a former smoker now in her early 30s, agrees with banning the most egregious candy shop flavors. Mango and Cool Cucumber? A smoke is not a smoothie, after all. Crespo, now a bartender, smoked for about eight years but says that she quit the traditional way, with no alternatives.

“It is all about psychology. Kids see the commercials on JUUL electronic cigarettes and think it is cool,” Crespo said. “You see your friends doing it and you also want to try it, especially with the flavors being so tempting to try.”

She sees no reason to hold back.

“The FDA needs to put more pressure on restrictions and make the alternatives less appealing to kids,” Crespo added. If JUUL had existed when she was trying to quit smoking, she hopes she wouldn’t have tried it because, she said, it would likely have led to failure. Cold turkey is it, she said. “Nothing ever works but cutting off the habit completely!”

Campaigns against smoking have largely been successful, and traditional smoking among has decreased significantly in the last two decades. But instead of lighting up, teenagers are heading out of class — or even sitting in the back row — and hitting the JUUL.

“We have never seen use of any substance by America’s young people rise this rapidly,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said at Tuesday’s briefing. “This is an unprecedented challenge.”