While our political class worries about "Russia" and "Impeachment," we have a major health crisis amidst our youth. What meets it? SILENCE. Whether you are Left or Right, you should worry that the real breakdown in America is a political class that gives us bread & circus 24/7 and ignores the real, terrible issues affecting our citizens.
5
This is a total failure of our regulatory agencies. I understand personal choice, even the ability to choose an action which will kill you. But, that assumes that the person making that choice is old enough to do so. Juul and the other merchants of death are purposely targeting young people with their advertising and flavored packs. This is exposing children to risks that do not have the capacity to understand. The products must be pulled from the market and the makers jailed.
Secondly, there has been a complete surrendering of the agencies charge to monitor products for safety. It is now obvious that Vaping can be lethal, yet the products continue to be sold. Why? Shut the entire industry down, it is killing people.
9
FDA has been muzzled twice now by OMB, the Office of Management and Business at the White House, directed by Nick Mulvaney, and OIRA, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, directed by Paul Ray, formerly litigating for the major oil, energy and transportation companies. In 2016 FDA proposed a far reaching ban of menthol cigarettes and other flavored products. The Obama administration thwarted this effort, enabling the current your e-cigarette epidemic.
FDA's current proposal, again aiming to limit flavored tobacco products and e-cigarettes, is weighed against potential business and job losses in the tobacco and vaping industries. Of course, the costs for American families to pay for the life-long nicotine addiction of their children, the lost opportunity costs for investments, education, health are not factored in. Our children's health is in good hands with the current administration.
5
The headline is misleading; I thought it was referring to an astounding increase in combustible cigarette use. It's silly to call e-cigarettes a tobacco product, though they are indeed a nicotine product.
There are concerning issues and dangers about vaping, such as its potential to lead people to smoke cigarettes (and teenage combustible tobacco use has been increasing), or dangerous/unstudied chemicals used for flavoring. But acting as if e-cigarettes are tobacco products, with identical dangers to tobacco products, draws away from the point, and makes it seem like news reporters don't know what they're talking about and are alarmist for the sake of being alarmist.
I realize the study itself called them tobacco products, so this isn't just the New York Times. But to enact real change and persuade people to change their habits and companies to change their business practices, we should think about how we talk about this.
3
The information here is far too vague to help formulate a solution. The users were asked if they used at all. The problem is not the kids who use once a month. Kids experiment. And they do stuff to belong. And that's how they learn. Those who want to rid the world of temptations are overreacting. However you try, your kids will fly from the nest sooner or later. And a few ventures to places they should not have gone prepare them for what's ahead. As for the ones who are addicted, they need quick intervention. And it is likely that, if it hadn't been tobacco, it would have been something worse.
2
Of course they do... when you change the statistic you use to measure "use" to fit your desired goal. We used to count daily users, but now that there's a new devil in town, we conveniently switch to using any use in the last 30 days because that's what fits the story we want to tell. And why not conflate cigarettes, something 2 full orders of magnitude more harmful, with vaping, something that could literally save hundreds of thousands of American lives a year? Sounds like great public policy that totally doesn't ultimately benefit tobacco and pharmaceutical companies... totally.
13
@George - If you wanted to know how many teenagers were sexually active, would you use the number who had sex in the last 30 days, or only those who had sex daily?
3
Before we eliminate one of life's controversial pleasure for adults...why do local law enforcement...ALE officers etc enforce underage tobacco laws? Use stings targeting mostly youth attended C stores and impose stiff fines. If the purchase is online require photo ID name to match credit card...no blind internet sales. But enforce the law. Adults also enjoy vape flavors...there is zero need to eliminate these flavors or items from the market.
5
@wills11111 Banning flavors, especially menthol, should be a priority. New data from a NIH lab show that most African Americans are genetically predisposed to develop co-dependence on menthol and nicotine. The tobacco and vaping industries are preying on this to lock in customers for life (and death).
2
Has any report been issued about HOW the kids get the products? What stores are selling to kids? What adults are making these purchases for kids? What has the industry done to prevent kids from obtaining the products?
5
@Eric
From older kids, or off Ebay, or from stores that ignore the law, or from parents, or an adult who buys for them, etc. Kids can easily get cigarettes, they can easily get vapes.
We can't even keep kids from getting heroin if they want, so I'm not sure why people insist that the problem can be controlled through prohibition. If you don't want someone to use something, you have to convince them that it's a bad idea.
5
I don't blame kids for wanting a nicotine buzz. It sharpens the mind while relaxing it at the same time. Some of the best conversations of my life have happened over coffee and cigars.
The danger of addiction is still pretty high. I've known recovering addicts who have told me giving up alcohol or even cocaine was easier for them than giving up tobacco. It's important that kids know this even if they think they've discovered a "safer" way to ingest nicotine.
7
@T. Warren I completely agree that smoking is extremely addicting. Interestingly, however, multiple data indicate that nicotine alone is only mildly addicting. These data are: (1) animal studies; (2) smokers undergoing withdrawal greatly prefer a cigarette containing denicotinized tobacco rather than nicotine; (3) nicotine alone is only slightly effective at helping cigarette smokers quit. For smokers trying to quit cold turkey, the failure rate is around 90%. With nicotine aids (patch, gum, vaping), the failure rate only drops to around 83%. If nicotine alone was why smoking were so highly addicting, the nicotine aids should have worked extremely well. (4) It is much easier to give up smokeless tobacco than it is to give up smoking cigarettes. There seem to be special features of cigarettes that make smoked tobacco so addicting, which may include flavor, psychosocial aspects and any of the 5000 or so other compounds in tobacco smoke.
5
@Rob-Chemist Actually, even in clinical settings, quitting rates with e-cigarettes are only slightly more successful, and 80% of quitters still use e-cigarettes after 1 year. E-cigarettes are perfect devices to keep quitters addicted to nicotine. For the industry, it is all about monetizing nicotine addiction and creating new customers. They of course welcome the kids to their stores once they turn 18 (or 21), no questions asked.
2
Does this survey account for how flavored cigars are used? For what it’s worth, using flavored cigar wrappings as blunt wraps is a time-honored tradition. As such, it should not necessarily be cause for alarm without sufficient evidence that such cigars are being smoked in the form in which they are sold.
12
Interesting question: Nicotine certainly changes brain function, but what evidence is there that the changes are bad? I could be wrong, but it seems to me that based on teenage behavior (both from experiencing it and from watching my kids), that the teenaged brain is not quite optimal.
As an interesting historical note, Albert Einstein was an inveterate pipe and cigar smoker, and he seems to have done alright intellectually! Consistent with the properties of nicotine, Einstein stated "I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.”
14
This is a public health issue directly related to the well documented public health threat of cigarettes. A strong regulatory response to limit access and aggressively tax these products is essential. This approach worked to limit cigarette smoking. It can do the same with these products. They should be available, if at all, to adults only. No flavor enhancements should be allowed.
9
@Clayton Medeiros
A fine demonstration of the attitude prevalent in at least 50% of humanity: utter contempt for freedom of choice in any form whatsoever.
2
@Daedalus There is no freedom of choice once you are addicted. Nicotine is almost as addictive as heroin.
3
"Students reported struggling to stop vaping or smoking: 57. 8 percent reported having given serious thought to quitting, while nearly as many said that managed to do so for at least a day," sounds like a line from a comedy club. Many quit hundreds of times.
8
Bad news for teens and parents....ORGASMIC news for purveyors of nicotine products!! Market guaranteed for the next 5 decades until they eventually die of cancer. Hopefully, the trend of getting new customers to replace the dying ones will continue for the foreseeable future?
19
@wills11111 Not true. Recent studies showed that vaping causes lung cancer in mice. This is very concerning since mice only rarely develop lung cancer when exposed to traditional cigarettes. E-cigarettes have a very different toxicology compared to traditional cigarettes, a fact the UK public health organization has neglected. The European Respiratory Society, including most UK lung doctors, yesterday stated that nobody should vape. Becoming nicotine- and inhalation free is the goal. Of course, the industry will fight tooth and nail against this since they need more addicts.
4
No surprise to anyone working in a school.
Trump's failure to respond to this is sickening. No amount of vape shop jobs are worth hooking millions of kids on nicotine.
26
There is only one job he’s worried about.
3