The JUULs Are Here To Stay
We already know that JUULs are the latest teen problem. Health organizations and concerned parents despise them for making smoking “fun” for kids.
Between the vape trick videos on Youtube and the fruity flavors the nicotine pods come in, it makes total sense that we’re seeing a massive increase in underage JUUL usage.
The FDA and CDC found that from 2017 to 2018 there was a 78% increase in students that reported using a JUUL within the past 30 days.
This data prompted Scott Gottlieb, FDA Commissioner, to label the teen JUUL issue an “epidemic” and threaten a ban on flavored e-cigarettes if the industry didn’t change it’s current distribution methods.
Amongst bureaucratic constraints, the chief concern is the flavored JUUL pods. The commonly held belief is that flavors like creme brulee and cucumber (gross) are what drives teenagers to smoke the pods in the first place.
Rather than banning flavored JUUL pods and prompting a lawsuit, Gottlieb instead chose to give e-cigarette companies 60 days (as of September 12th, 2018) to address the issue.
JUUL responded by deleting all social media and pulling flavored pods (all of them except tobacco, mint, and menthol) from stores. People must now buy them online through a two-factor authentication process.
Critics say this isn’t enough and Gottlieb has continued to push, now advocating for a “see no evil, speak no evil” approach; moving e-cigarettes out of convenience stores and exclusively into tobacco and vape shops.
New issue, same story. We know that prohibition doesn’t work.
According to a study published in the American Economic Review, prohibition-era alcohol consumption saw a sharp initial decrease of 30% but over the next few years saw a 60–70% increase from its pre-prohibition level.
As for the “War on Drugs,” we all know it’s been a failure. Over-policing victimless crime has made us the nation with the highest rate of incarcerated citizens, illegal drugs remain abundant and more affordable than ever before, and we’ve created an opioid crisis.
There are thousands of articles on kids JUULing, but no one really tries to dig into why they do it, to begin with. The consensus seems to be “they have fun flavors and it’s small so they can hide it.” This mixed in with peer pressure could be the explanation, but is it really that simple?
Would we then agree that the thing standing in the way of an uptick in smoking meth/marijuana/crack is a cute little device and mango flavoring?
There has to be a reason why kids would willingly ingest nicotine. Some also suggest that it’s an issue of ignorance and young peoples inability to understand consequences. I think this is a better argument. It is a fact that adolescent brains have trouble analyzing consequences.
Regardless of these two arguments, allow me to hypothesize for a minute.
I’m not negating the reasons above. I actually believe they factor into the teenage JUUL issue, but I think there’s another variable to consider.
Hypothesis: Teenagers JUUL as a baby step into escapism. We’ve talked about the opioid epidemic, the nicotine epidemic, and now the mental health epidemic.
“They’re kids. What could they possibly want to escape from?”
In June 2018, the CDC released a report on suicide outlining a 30% increase in suicide rates among half of the states in the US. Every state saw an increase of at least 6% except Nevada, which decreased by 1%.
Last year Colombia’s School of Public Health found that depression is on the rise for all Americans over the age of 12. Young people, those aged 12–17, experienced the sharpest increase from 8.7% in 2005 to 12.7% in 2015.
Young people are the social media generation, which has been shown to tie directly into increased rates of depression and anxiety.
You could say that my hypothesis is silly, maybe even a little hyperbolic, and just making excuses for the e-cigarette industry, but there is a haunting parallel between this issue and the Regan-era war on drugs policy of favoring law-and-order over building the infrastructure for treatment.
At the end of the day, if kids want to JUUL they will find a way around the proposed FDA regulations. I won’t pretend to know all of the answers, but a simple glance at past examples of prohibition and government overregulation demonstrate that we need to do more for young people.
The JUULs Are Here To Stay
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