The fad is pushing the regulator into action on e-cigarettes
IT IS an entrepreneur’s dream: make a gadget so appealing that fans turn its name into a verb. “Juuling”, after a device known as a Juul that now accounts for 60% of e-cigarette sales in America, has become a youth fad. “I’ve been doing this work for 30 years and haven’t seen anything like this,” says Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Some schools have even removed toilet doors that were sheltering juuling gatherings.
Until recently teenage vaping appeared to be waning. Use of e-cigarettes by middle- and high-school pupils increased until 2015 but fell sharply the next year, according to the Centres for Disease Control. Teenagers have also become less likely to smoke or use most illicit drugs.
Consistent, up-to-date data on e-cigarette use are lacking. But it is possible that the Juul craze has rekindled enthusiasm. A survey conducted in 2017 by the University of Michigan found that 12% of 13- to 17-year-olds had vaped in the past 30 days. The most common substance they mentioned was “just flavouring”, even though almost all vaping products contain nicotine. Juul uses nicotine salts, which are more potent than the freebase nicotine in standard e-cigarettes. It is advertised as packing cigarette-like levels of nicotine.
A Juul e-cigarette is small enough to hide in one hand. It looks like a flash drive and is charged by plugging it into a laptop. Its pods come in flavours like cool cucumber and crème brûlée. Teenagers pose with their Juuls on social media. Researchers from the University of Kentucky found that mentions of the devices in tweets jumped around Christmas and Valentine’s Day, suggesting it is a popular gift.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates tobacco products, must perform a tricky balancing act. It wants to promote vaping among the 40m Americans who already smoke. E-cigarettes, which contain a small fraction of the harmful chemicals in regular ones, can save their lives. But the FDA must also consider the danger that e-cigarettes will create lots of new nicotine addicts.
The agency is trying to set limits on the level of nicotine in cigarettes, which would make them less addictive to new smokers. At the same time it has pushed back the approval of vaping products from 2018 to 2022 because it needs time to develop standards. Looser regulation was expected to foster innovation in e-cigarettes and other nicotine products.
Now the FDA is under fire for getting the balance wrong. The American Academy of Paediatrics and several other organisations are suing it for delaying regulation. They point to the proliferation of e-cigarette flavours like unicorn milk and cookie crunch. On top of that, says Mr Myers, smokers do not know which of the thousands of vaping products on the market are best to help them quit. “People don’t look for cures for diseases by word of mouth,” he points out.
The rising popularity of Juul e-cigarettes seems to be pushing the FDA into a tougher stance. In April it asked Juul Labs to turn over documents on its marketing and any research on why the device appeals to the young. On May 17th the agency sent similar requests to the manufacturers of four similar devices. Scott Gottlieb, the head of the FDA, says he is “extremely concerned” about the popularity of juuling among young people. The FDA will continue to track the fad, and the next one too. “Today it’s Juul, tomorrow it will be something else,” he says.