Juul’s Convenient Smoke Screen

for 3 days we have followed the high school basketball rankings in the Washington Post on the Internet: and for 3 days that high school focused section on the Internet has had continuing flashing JUUL ads as an alternative to cigarettes. Tell the Washington Post to do some self examination to ads popping up on its high school sports section. And any other entity having posting JUUL ads in youth directed publication. Go St. John's

Never mind that studies are showing that vaping isn't as harmful as smoking cigarettes. Never mind that long-term smokers are either reducing their consumption of cigarettes or switching entirely to vaping. Never mind that the packages containing health warnings. Never mind that these products are legal. Never mind that anyone who can read and has any common sense knows that nicotine is addictive, and that these products are clearly labeled. It's just like Joe Camel! These people without consciences are peddling poison!! Innocent children are being targeted!!! What a load. You don't have to go any further than bans on vaping anywhere close to a building, even though there's no secondhand smoke and no smell, to see that anti-smoking zealots have found a new crusade. Of course vaping isn't good for you. We all know that. But it's a heckuva lot safer than smoking cigarettes. Unlike other e-cigarette companies, Juul appears to be taking steps to ensure the fuel for its products isn't manufactured in mysterious Chinese labs. So, so, so tired of these kinds of stories. And I neither smoke nor vape.

BTW, their ads are also running on the radio, and they come across as even more disingenuous there, regardless of the "warning" they tack on at the end. The fact is, Juuls (I don't care about their trademark and using it incorrectly) are nicotine-delivery devices, period. They are targeting teens and children, period. They have investors in the form of a major tobacco company -- and we all know what Big Tobacco makes: cigarettes that kill people. You can't claim to be an "alternative" to cigarettes and be in bed with the people who MAKE cigarettes. Juul is the wolf in sheep's clothing that actually doesn't bother with the sheep's clothing. It wraps itself in Big Tobacco's money instead.

As a high school student, who watches my friends struggle with addiction to juul every day, I cannot agree more with the message of this article. Juul is an evil company, destroying the lives of unknowing teenagers under the guise of “healthcare.” My peers, who started juuling simply because it was new, yummy, and “doesn’t have a button!” are now left shaking and vomiting from nicotine poisoning in the school bathroom, or running to their cars in between classes for a few “chiefs.” And because parents and school administration don’t recognize their addictions, doling out detentions for being caught in school with one with no rehabilitation offered, quitting is not an option. Celebrity endorsement doesn’t help either (I’m calling out Bella Hadid, Justin Bieber, Kendall Jenner, to name a few.) And, when teenagers leave high school and don’t have access to pods anymore, they turn to cigarettes.

Juul's duplicity might indeed be reprehensible, but as someone who smoked for over 40 years who couldn't begin to conceive of quitting, their device has been a godsend. I started using Juul last June and haven't had a cigarette since. Now, I admit I'm hopelessly addicted to Juul, but that's another story...

I am so tired of this. Fruit flavors are designed to attract kids? Really? Is that why things like the Cosmopolitan or the Appletini exist? Are bars trying to get a bunch of children in? Or could it possibly be that adults like sweet, fruity things as well? Can we please stop prohibiting adults from doing things in order to prevent children from doing them?

Missing in all the righteous indignation over vaping is some kind of clear evidence that nicotine itself is actually all that dangerous. Smoking burning tobacco leaves yes, but nicotine on its own? Everything I've ever read suggests its no worse than caffeine, other than being more habit forming. I think much of the excitement about vaping and youth isn't about the risks of vaping or nicotine, but more generalized fears about our children being out of our control. They're dialed into smartphones, alternative genders and sexuality, tattoos and piercings, Netflix, Fortnite, and every other distraction and compulsion available to the American consumer. Vaping is just one more thing they do that parents and self-styled mature adults can't stand and think will be their ruination. What should happen with vaping is what should have happened all along. The FDA should make sure the products are minimally toxic, getting rid of the products with impure or dangerous ingredients and making sure that clean and pure ingredients are used, just like they do with toothpaste, shampoo and Tylenol.

I can only speak for myself...using ecigs or vaping has allowed me to end a 30 a day dependency on Marlboro. I don't and have never used Juel, but the vaping technology has allowed me to leave cigarettes behind. My doctors (including a team of cardiologists at the Mayo Clinic) now consider me to be a nonsmoker. Yes, vaping may hazardous to my health, but it seems (from personal experience) to be much less hazardous than me smoking a pack and half of cigarettes every day. I would be shocked to learn that any teen that gets addicted to nicotine via vaping would all of a sudden decide switching to cigarettes makes sense.

My mom, dad, brother, brother in law, family friends and quite a few other people I know including myself quit smoking cold turkey over the past ten years using 'auriculotherapy' which was done by a chiropractor in Staten Island, NY. Many of these friends and family members traveled from other states to have this procedure done. I had it done and it worked and though I had some moderate withdrawal symptoms for about two weeks, my mom and dad claimed that they had no withdrawal at all. I have now been nicotine free for a year. I do not use any nicotine replacement products, gum, patches, vape devices, lozenges, etc. You can do a google search for this procedure which is kind of like acupuncture on your outer ear along with hypnosis he does before the short ear procedure. I have no doubt that my parents would now both be dead from smoking now if they hadn't had this procedure done in the last ten years. The thought of inhaling smoke or vapor of any kind just isn't appealing to me since I had my last cigarette. I also no longer have any wheezing symptoms which I was starting to have before I quit smoking. I have probably saved at least $1K since I quit, I was a light smoker of only 3-5 cigarettes a day. I was always thinking of the next one though. Now I don't think about smoking at all. It is such a pleasure that when I go out that I don't have to worry about what time I'm going to be leaving so that I could go home to have a cigarette in my own yard away from nonsmokers.

Tons of negative comments against Juul on this thread but I wonder how many of you are against marijuana legalization. That, in my opinion has many more implications for causing cancer, accidents, impaired driving, etc., but no one seems to care about marijuana like they do about vaping.

Everything Juul says about not marketing to kids is a lie. They made their device look like a flash drive, they made flavors kids like. They marketed those flavors is such look a like packages to candy and juice, I was surprised the food companies did not sue for copyright infringement. They were on social media where kids could see their ads. They are now associated with Altria, which changed it's name from Philip Morris in hopes people wouldn't recognize what they make. Last but not least, Altria plans to stop making cigarettes sometime in the distant future. Since virtually all smokers start before age 18, it would be impossible to have a future business without addicting young teens. No matter what they claim, their business model has to be making sure kids choose their product. The FDA should step in now and make the product prescription only, for those adults who claim e-cigs help them quit smoking.

I saw the small video loops in gas station/convenience stores when they first appeared on the market. I think it was about ten years ago. The videos featured a diverse assortment of very cool looking young people. They'd mug for the camera and move a bit. They were the sort that even younger people would want to be like. I can't believe Joe Camel could have been very effective or appealed to kids or anyone else. It was stupid. But, this looked like it would be effective and it clearly wasn't aimed at older people, who after all would make up the bulk of existing smokers. Someone should see if they can find one of those old displays and see how Juul spins it.

As a physician I find Juul and its ilk to be public health menaces. As their ads now blare, Nicotine is addictive and Juul is a fast-delivery system for nicotine. And your point is what? As this article demonstrates, Juul is lying almost as much as Trump and that is hard to do.

While it may be true that "many adult smokers have in fact used Juul’s products to help them quit", it is not responsible to make that statement without supporting evidence. Research I have seen suggests that the data are mixed: it is also true that many people who use Juul's products to help them quit actually return to cigarettes or smoke a combination of both. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2681181

I'm 64. I smoked a pipe for over 40 years. Pipe smokers tend to be old, relatively healthy men (see: Walter Cronkite, Hugh Hefner, Albert Einstein, my dad, etc.) I didn't drop the pipe for my health, I quit because there is no acceptable place other than my parent's living room to indulge anymore. I'm addicted to nicotine, not smoking. I have consumed, over the course of my happy life, tobacco in every way known to exist. Cigarettes, pipes, cigars, snuff, chewing tobacco, et al. are all nicotine delivery systems. Vaping devices, along with nicotine gum, patches and lozenges are delivery systems that eliminate the tobacco and combustion. They can be successfully used for smoking cessation, but I just use them to deliver the damn nicotine without bothering anybody else. Juuls are one of the arrows in my quiver and I love them like John loves Yoko. I agree with the commentator above that the cool kids are going to get their hands on them just like they do with every other illicit lifestyle accessory that they're attracted to. So, sure, let's build the wall and we'll make Altria pay for it. Incidentally, being addicted to something that is convenient and legally available is quite satisfying. I highly recommend it.

The FDA and CDC received a clear warning five years ago: e-cigarette TV and mass-media advertising would attract and engage today's teens, just as cigarette advertising attracted and addicted teens in the 1960's and 1970's. Google the following article headline: "The Future of Nicotine Addiction: When Smokers Become Vapers." I published this article April 1, 2014. Here's why the e-cigarette industry is delighted that federal oversight has looked the other way for five years. According to CDC's own research, nine out of ten cigarette smokers first tried smoking by age 18. Big Nicotine has an unacknowledged primary marketing goal for e-cigarettes: attract and addict legions of new customers who are under age 21 today. That's a mission-critical goal for the profitable and long-term survival of nicotine products of any kind.

After reading everyone's rationalization for switching to the juul, I've come to the conclusion that Big Tobacco has never given up their fight to kill as many humans as possible with their lies, and the rights of people to smoke this poison is their choice. They will pay the price for it, eventually.

Smoking is bad for your health and makes you look stupid. Saw this on a bumper sticker way back in the day. It helped me to quit smoking with nicotine replacement therapy.

Makes you wonder: Don't the Juul's shareholders have grandchildren? If they do, are they encouraging their grandchildren to take up vaping, or are they hoping only others' grandchildren will become addicts?

The positive comments regarding this product sound suspiciously like marketing / PR statements. It would not surprise me if the company's paid PR is commenting in this thread. "Adult smokers matter too." - sounds suspiciously like something a team of MBAs would come up with.

Smoking in high schools was done. It was no longer a problem. Now it’s back in epidemic proportions, and Silicon Valley greed is directly responsible. This article’s “haziness” is a joke. Big Tobacco lost the teen market and found a way to get it back. At the expense of a new generation of addicts.

For the love of.... Could we please, please, please have some level of real balance in these anti-vaping articles? I'm 53 years old and smoked everyday for almost 40 years. As of next month I will not have had a cigarette (or even a craving for a cigarette) in a year. We get it. Juul is making a fortune addicting kids to nicotine. Got it. Yes. Just like any tobacco company, they are merchants of death. It's clear. Good. Is anyone (besides perhaps Juul) arguing this is not the case? But if my kid started smoking cigarettes I'd hand her a Juul tomorrow. The health benefits of vaping compared to smoking are incontrovertible. It's saving lives. It's saving my life. Could that message ("vaping saves lives") be something more than a footnote to any one of the vaping-scare screeds the NYT regularly publishes? How many years of my life did a lose because I was convinced that vaping was just as deadly as smoking?

I started smoking at 18 in college and smoked for 30 years. One weekend five years ago I had yet another terrible cold and bought these new fangled e-cigarettes at my local deli for the first time. I needed the nicotine but had previously tried patches and gum which NEVER worked for me. I used the ecigs exclusively that weekend and never smoked a cigarette again. Five years smoke free and most definitely because of e-cigarettes. I get nicotine via the same physical action as smoking. I would love to be nicotine free too, as well as to be caffeine free and sugar free and all the other addictions I have. Baby steps.

First of all, e-cigarette ads should be banned on tv & radio. Secondly, all products with nicotine should be taxed equivalently to the cigarette brand with the lowest nicotine level. And all sales to minors should be effectively prohibited.

Regrettably, this article misses the fundamental reason for the shift. The private investors (VCs) in the private company we're about to take a big investment hit so they sold to another company willing to pay a premium. (Remember private investors put up $700mm and hyped/marketed the company to a fake $15bn valuation. It's all about unicorns... JUUL was originally launched and marketed to a young demographic, the private company's so-called "market value" soared until the public realized unicorns don't exist but kids are hugely enthralled with them. The value plummets, activating Private Company Biz Plan B: sell itself to another company -- the golden parachute for private company founders and investors. The difference in quality between privately marketed companies and publicly marketed companies is tremendous. (The later has to make its financials public.) It didn't take long for private Startups and their VCs to start marketing the myth of the unicorn...

I recently gave a eulogy for a friend who could never give up smoking and died of lung cancer. His brother has also been unable to quit, despite the death of his brother and his own throat cancer. The living brother just switched to Juul. I firmly believe that if Juul had been around thirty years ago his brother, my friend, would have switched to Juul and would be alive today. Talk to any smoker who has switched to Juul and the first thing they talk about is how they no longer cough all day, and how they are now able to exercise without shortness of breaths. So that is my reality. Now we have to make sure that teens can’t get their hands on it.

Nicotine, isolated from the toxic gallimaufry of tobacco smoke, is likely no more harmful an addiction than caffeine. And if you don't agree with that claim, at the very least anyone should reasonably be able to agree that it is many orders of magnitude more healthy than cigarette smoking. What's with all these NYtimes articles recently on some crusade against vaping? Vaping should be being promoted for the life saving technology that it is. Global tobacco consumption is on the rise, and vaping seems to be to be the most effective way to counter that growing public health crisis. If you think vaping is the growing public health crisis you have it totally backwards. Also, the Pax is a tobacco vaporizer? That's a weird fact to get wrong. As far as I know its used for cannabis. Never heard of anyone vaping loose leaf tobacco in a Pax.

As I understand it, there are legal reasons Juul (and other manufacturers of e-cigs) cannot market their products as smoking cessation devices, even though that's exactly how many adults, like me, are using them. I was one of those "health conscious" smokers and, with vaping devices, was able to finally break the habit. When I made the switch I did so without illusions--I knew that I was replacing one habit with another one (albeit one that's less destructive) and that the manufacturers were motivated by profit, rather than a sense of social responsibility. If these companies have been marketing their products to young people, they should be penalized accordingly, but I've seen no solid evidence of the grand conspiracy so many scolds are on about.

I accidentally quit cigarettes by getting an e-cig some years ago. Now it's my issue and not that of everyone around me smelling it, breathing it or chipping in to pay my health care. Fortunately I'd quit television, processed food, city living and a greed based lifestyle and never become addicted to social media, so e-cigs eliminated the last impediment to a healthy life. If some or all of that 15 - 20% of the population who continue to smoke since it has been accepted as 100% cancerous vape instead it is nothing but good, good, good. E-cigs ought simply to be regulated from minors like tobacco and alcohol. But to outlaw or hinder availability would be cutting off an arm to save a finger.

The gloves are off now. The campaign against smoking may have started with the Surgeon General's Report on the health effects of smoking tobacco, but it was driven by puritans who want people to avoid all mood altering substances altogether. Now to their horror, there is an end run around their killjoy bans. The author of the article makes no bones about which camp he belongs in.

Nicotine is addictive no matter what the age is. We know that cigarette smoking causes horrible diseases and health problems. Vaping has dropped cigarette smoking to all time lows, and will all but eliminate it in coming years. We know also that this is caused by the products of the smoke, not the nicotine. A large portion of the population has a caffeine addiction but again no significant health problem has arisen from that. Teens who vape know they shouldn't be just as teens that smoked did. Teens also know that there is no proven health risk with vaping. So to ban/heavily regulate a product that is saving 100s of thousands from premature smoking related death because teens might access it and become addicted to something that we don't have any evidence of harm for is wrong. Also telling teens that vaping is horrible and dangerous destroys the credibility of health officials and thus dulls warnings about truly dangerous drugs. Reminds me of adults trying to ban video games as they would poison our minds in the past.

I smoked a pack a day for 10 years. I tried other vaping devices, but none kept me off cigarettes. I started with Juul and never looked back. I prefer it to cigarettes. It is better for me socially and probably health-wise. I know that many people have a religious crusade against any smoking-type device (unless it's weed) but let's consider the people that have been helped by such a device. Think about things rationally, not emotionally. Teens will also find ways to get alcohol- should we ban alcohol?

Allegedly the reason for the existence of there pernicious juul devices is to wean people off cigarettes. As such, they should be available only by doctor's prescription and only to people over 25 years of age.

Juul is the only thing that got me to quit smoking after 20+ years of it. You really need to consider this in your moral crusade against anything that resembles cigarettes. Know that if Juul magically goes away, as is probably the intent of articles like this, teens will just go back to smoking. Like all humans, they like a buzz. The difference between cigarettes and Juul is that cigarettes will certainly take years off of your life.

I am a family doc who worked in an area with many colleges and universities. When the first smoke free shop open, and the first of these devices showed up at the convenient store I thought, we are in trouble. I immediately began to see chain "vappers" outside of every dorm. Where was the FDA . . . . I wrote letters - no response; I cautioned my young patients - they laughed in my face. The way things are, the group with the most money wins. The consequences of these devices will give the next generation of family docs something to do.

Although vaping is less harmful per dose, my observation is that due to the misperception of it actually being benign, and convenience, people tend to vape more frequently than they would have smoked. On net, they may be reducing their inhalation of harmful material, but I'm skeptical that it's in any way a "safe" amount. Both cigs and vapes need to be regulated out of existence. My building has a campaign to change the bylaws to do just that. The air is a public good we all share, and NOBODY has the right to pollute it for their own amusement.

e-cigarettes sounded like a great idea for helping smokers quit tobacco, but as we have seen, the risks outweigh the benefits. The risk of teen addiction to nicotine appears to be inordinately high, and I can count on one finger the number of people I know who have successfully stopped smoking with e-cigarettes. As there are other nicotine replacement alternatives available, from gum to lozenges to patches, I think it is time for the FDA to ban e-cigarettes completely. The long term effects are unknown, nicotine is highly addictive, and there is no evidence that e-cigarettes are better than the alternatives. Therefore there is no rational reason to permit these drug delivery devices to be sold.

Getting adult smokers to switch has been Juul's mission since day 1. I smoked for 20 years and never thought I'd quit. Thanks to Juul I no longer smoke combustible cigarettes. I believe in Juul's mission. Adult smokers matter too.

The teen brainsets itself from ages 12 to 15. So if it learns on nicotine it begins a lifetime of addiction

The dangers of Juuling to kids may be underestimated. It is precisely because there is a veneer of healthfulness surrounding it that, along with its undeniable aesthetic attributes, teens begin using Juul products in the first place. I'm not usually an alarmist when it comes to teen behavior, but there are two problems with this particular experimentation. First, there are zero long term studies confirming any effects of this highly heated small particle vapor on lung and other tissue, teen or otherwise. We simply can't say what is happening, and Juul should not get a pass just because people are not showing morbidity at this early stage of the product's life. Second, Juul seems to be highly addictive--even more so than tobacco products--by dint of its variable, user-controlled (or uncontrolled, depending how you look at it) dosing of nicotine. Because of this, kids are showing physical dependence to nicotine very early, sometimes at the outset of use. Getting off of Juul--because, as is stated by Juul's owners, there is no titration possible--is exceedingly difficult. We need to look closely at what Juul addiction is doing to teens' mental health: many users report periods of anxiety that may or may not be quelled by their use of Juul, but it's unclear whether the anxiety is linked to the product. What's certain is that teens trying to stop Juuling have a very very hard time, with little support and a tough physical and mental battle. Why are we letting this happen to them?

What is with all of this tsuris being healed on Juul? Aside from using e-cigs for (now) over a decade, one I have used is JJuul, and from the simple fact that they have saved me from a lifetime cigarette habit, my host, my clothes don't ask, and as a (native) NYC'er, I've saved a lot of money. Juul may be doing financier wille, but honestly, I can go to any site selling e-cigs products, and I can fund all the flavours you mention - not from this specific label. As for kids using it, that's their parents responsibility -to actually 'parent', and not a nanny-state.