Too School for Juul

Too School to Juul Too School to Juul By Swati Madankumar I f you’ve been on campus for more than a few hours, you’ve probably noticed people with USB-looking devices in their mouths– on the street, at parties, or in class. Maybe you’ve been offered a ‘hit’, or even decided to purchase one yourself. E-cigarettes, commonly known as vapes or vape-pens, are insanely popular among students, mainly Juul.

How are e-cigarettes different from traditional ones that burn tobacco? E-cigarettes heat a liquid that contains nicotine– or other drugs like marijuana– and other chemicals to produce an aerosol, liquid droplets suspended in air, that can be inhaled into the lungs. One Juul pod contains the same amount of nicotine as a twenty-pack of traditional cigarettes, making them cheaper. Juul pods are also more attractive to users because their nicotine salts cause less irritation to the throat than freebase nicotine, they have less odor, and are known to reduce users’ exposure to chemicals compared to cigarettes.

While the advantages of electronic cigarettes over traditional ones are certainly attractive, e-cigarettes are not completely harmless. Over the past few months, outbreaks of illnesses and deaths linked to e-cigarettes have dominated the news. Across the country, people– including teenagers– suffering from symptoms like coughing and vomiting found themselves hospitalized for pneumonia and acute respiratory illnesses that shunt oxygen from vital organs. According to the CDC, there have been at least 39 vape-related deaths across 24 states since October. Juul released the vaporizer, an e-cigarette with a tank rather than a cartridge, as early as 2007, so what explains the recent epidemic? The Food & Drug Administration tested the lung fluids of many of the recent victims and reviewed patient histories. The federal agency has implicated THC, the primary psychoactive component in marijuana, as well as vitamin E acetate, a chemical that street sellers have used to thicken THC and dilute its concentration.

The demographics of the e-cig victims is surprising, considering that the product was originally intended for people who wanted their nicotine fix without the damaging effects of tobacco smoke– long-established smokers. Thus, the extent to which e-cigarettes are being designed and advertised towards the youth has been investigated, especially by Juul. Juul is overrepresented among the vaping products used by younger demographics.

Children and young adults are more vulnerable to the intrigue of e-cigarettes because their decision-making and impulse-control regions of the brain are still developing. Not only that, they are also more susceptible to their harms because the synaptic connections between neurons that are formed to promote learning, memory-formation, and addiction, form faster at this stage in development than later on. Vaping is increasingly being viewed as a ‘gateway’ or ‘habit-forming’ drug because the addiction it fosters can cause users to turn to additional methods of acquiring nicotine, such as traditional cigarettes. This is appalling, considering that e-cigarettes were designed to wean people off of traditional cigarettes.

Juul has been under fire for claiming that its products are safer than traditional cigarettes without sufficient scientific evidence and approval from the FDA. The company has been asked to provide justification for the composition of its product (i.e. nicotine salts, 5% nicotine content) as well as prove that its products pose less risk than traditional cigarettes. Opponents of e-cigarettes argue that they should be available only by prescription to those who are unable to quit traditional smoking by other means. Defenders argue that banning them would create a black market for them, which would increase the risk of the suspected causes of the recent epidemic. Nevertheless, Juul has since stopped its selling of flavored varieties, which largely increased their appeal to our generation.

As for the general public, health officials currently recommend abstaining from e-cigarette usage while deeper investigation into its health effects continues. It’s critical to not underestimate the effects of Juul.