Answer Addiction

Tag: JUUL

  • Could Vaping Lead To Heart Attacks, Depression?

    Could Vaping Lead To Heart Attacks, Depression?

    The jury is still out on whether e-cigs are safer than cigarettes—but mounting evidence shows that vaping comes with its own health concerns.

    People who use e-cigarettes may be uninformed about the potential risks of vaping—though it is often portrayed as being a “safer” alternative to smoking traditional cigarettes.

    Health officials worry that young people are using e-cigarettes at rising rates. As a result, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has established tough regulations on vaping.

    Now, a hard-hitting new study on e-cigarettes—the “largest-ever study conducted” on the effects of vaping—claims that people who vape are more likely to suffer heart attacks, coronary artery disease and depression.

    Researcher Mohinder Vindhyal, an assistant professor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine Wichita, told Science Daily, “Until now, little has been known about cardiovascular events relative to e-cigarette use. These data are a real wake-up call and should prompt more action and awareness about the dangers of e-cigarettes.”

    According to Vindhyal’s findings, adults that indulge in vaping can be 56% more likely to have a heart attack, and 30% of them are more likely to have a stroke than people who don’t use tobacco products. Similarly, people who vape are also 55% more likely to have depression and/or anxiety than people who don’t use e-cigarettes.

    Vindhyal added, “When the risk of heart attack increases by as much as 55% among e-cigarette users compared to nonsmokers, I wouldn’t want any of my patients nor my family members to vape. When we dug deeper, we found that regardless of how frequently someone uses e-cigarettes, daily or just on some days, they are still more likely to have a heart attack or coronary artery disease.”

    Some look to vaping as a way to wean off of cigarettes—but while e-cigarettes are considered less dangerous than smoking tobacco, “that doesn’t mean that vaping is safe,” Vindhyal says.

    This study gathered information from over 96,000 respondents from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Interview Survey over a period of several years.

    Vindhyal will present his research findings at the American College of Cardiology’s 68th Annual Scientific Session, which will be held in New Orleans on March 16.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Did Juul Use Young People To Create E-Cig Buzz On Social Media?

    Did Juul Use Young People To Create E-Cig Buzz On Social Media?

    Stanford University researchers suggest that Juul used young social media influencers to market its products to teens.

    These days there is great concern about young people Juuling, which is the most popular form of vaping. At first, some young people were under the mistaken impression that vaping wasn’t as dangerous as smoking, but many would soon become hooked, suffering from similar health problems to cigarette smoking, and suffering terrible withdrawal symptoms when they tried to quit.

    These days, there is a backlash against the company Juul, which insists that their vaping products are for adults who want to wean off cigarettes, but as Business Insider discovered, Juul has a large following on Twitter and Instagram with younger users and the report suggests that this may be by design.

    Stanford University researched how Juul marketed their product on social media and they discovered that many of the company’s images, videos and social media posts featured young people.

    Currently valued at $15 billion, Juul is now a giant in the e-cigarette world. They went to the top by utilizing launch parties, free samples and flooding social media with content.

    The Juul launch ads featured a snazzy, colorful campaign where customers were e-mailed, and were asked to become “Juul influencers,” a position that allowed everyday people to help drive sales on social media.

    Robert Jackler, a physician at Stanford explained, “Juul’s launch campaign was patently youth-oriented….You started seeing viral peer-to-peer communication among teens who basically became brand ambassadors for Juul.”

    At each event organized by Juul, over 1,500 samples were given out, and as Jackler continues, “Their business model was to get the devices in your hands either for free or cheaply.”

    Juul countered that their initial advertising “was intended for adults, was short-lived, and had very little impact on our growth.” Juul also started charging $1 for their samples because of a US regulation that banned giving away tobacco products for free that has since been amended to include e-cigarettes.

    In researching Juul’s advertising strategy, Stanford noted similarities with the big tobacco companies’ ad campaigns, and how Juul put emphasis on their sweeter flavors, like Crème Brulee, which the company called “dessert without the spoon.”

    In anticipation of an FDA crackdown, where stronger regulations will be placed on e-cigarettes, Juul has stopped selling their flavored vapes in retail stores, renaming certain flavors to be less youth-friendly. Juul has also shutdown its US-based social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram, according to Time. 

    In September, the FDA sent out 1,300 warning letters to e-cigarette manufacturers, telling them they needed to come up with a plan to “immediate and substantially reverse [the] trend” of young people taking up vaping.

    The FDA warned that if these companies, including Juul, did not comply with their demands, it “may require the companies to revise their sales and marketing practices, to stop distributing products to retailers who sell to kids and to stop selling some or all of their flavored e-cigarette products until they clear the application process.”

    Do you think Juul purposefully marketed its products to teens using social media? Sound off in the comments below.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Juul Faces Criticism, Concerns Amid Rising Success

    Juul Faces Criticism, Concerns Amid Rising Success

    The company is accused of marketing its product to teens. 

    Arguably the most well-known e-cigarette on the market, Juul has seen skyrocketing sales in the past year, increasing 800%. But the success of the company isn’t without concern.

    According to CNBC, Juul founders James Monsees and Adam Bowen, both former smokers, initially started a company called Ploom, which later became known as Pax Labs. In 2015, they introduced Juul, a type of e-cigarette. Two years later, it broke off into its own company called Juul Labs.

    The team that initially created Juul was made up of about 20 people on a $2 million budget, CNBC states. Since then, the product has seen exponential growth. Today, the company is valued at $15 billion and makes up about 75% of the e-cigarette market.

    “What we realized is people don’t want a safer cigarette, they want to move past cigarettes,” Monsees told CNBC. “It’s hard to imagine an area that can be more powerful to public health in particular than to eliminate cigarettes from the face of the earth. It is one of the most successful consumer products of all time, if not the most successful, and yet it kills more than half of all people that use them long term. We always intended to build this company around the idea of making cigarettes obsolete. We knew Juul would be the way to do that.” 

    Juul contains about 40 milligrams of nicotine per cartridge. It works by vaporizing a liquid containing nicotine salts which is then inhaled by the user.

    “There’s a lot of misunderstanding about this category and about nicotine,” Bowen told CNBC. “Many people think that it’s deadly, a serious disease agent—when really alone, nicotine is quite benign. It’s a mild stimulant, and is habit-forming and can lead to dependence, and for that reason alone, no non-smoker should ever touch this product.”

    While Juul’s growth has been widely successful, it hasn’t been without obstacles. The company has faced various lawsuits, as well as new FDA regulations. 

    “If you’d have interviewed me two years ago, I’d have said they’re maybe 25% as dangerous as a cigarette,” Stanton Glantz, UCSF Center for Tobacco Control and Education Director, told CNBC. “Now, I think they’re somewhere between three-quarters as dangerous as a cigarette and as dangerous.” 

    A main criticism of the product is that it appeals to youth. One reason for this is that Juul comes in a variety of flavors. Additionally, it appears as compact as a flash drive, making it possible for kids to bring into schools without raising suspicions.

    “Kids who use them have more asthma, more days off school,” Glantz told CNBC. “There is evidence linking them with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other diseases. Addiction is not a phase, it’s not something kids grow out of.”

    Juul’s early marketing was also accused of being problematic due to making the product appealing to youth with its social media-based campaigns. Now, the company has shifted to marketing by using testimonials from adult users of the product.

    Both founders Monsees and Bowen say it’s important to focus on tobacco use prevention among youth, and have invested $30 million into that cause.

    Juul must submit its product to the FDA for review by August 2022.

    “We estimate we switched over a million smokers to Juul in just three years, but there are about 38 million left in the U.S. so there’s still a lot of room to grow,” Bowen told CNBC.

    Juul Labs released the following statement to The Fix: 

    JUUL Labs’ mission is to eliminate cigarette smoking by offering existing adult smokers with a better alternative to combustible cigarettes. JUUL is not intended for anyone else. We strongly condemn the use of our product by minors, and it is in fact illegal to sell our product to minors. No minor should be in possession of a JUUL product.

    Our goal is to further reduce the number of minors who possess or use tobacco products, including vapor products, and to find ways to keep young people from ever trying these products. We approach this with a combination of education, enforcement, technology and partnership with others who are focused on this issue, including lawmakers, educators and our business partners.

    Nicotine is addictive. An individual who has not previously used nicotine products should not start, particularly youth. Recent science raises serious concerns about the adverse effect of nicotine on adolescent neurodevelopment.

    We encourage parents to talk with their children about the dangers of nicotine. As a company we also continuously seek ways to contribute to this dialogue and knowledge base.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • FDA Cracks Down On Top E-Cig Brands To Curb Teen Vaping Epidemic

    FDA Cracks Down On Top E-Cig Brands To Curb Teen Vaping Epidemic

    Around 1,300 warning letters have been sent to retailers of e-cigarettes found to be illegally selling e-cigarette products to minors.

    The Food and Drug Administration, concerned about the rising numbers of teenagers who “vape,” is cracking down on major e-cigarette brands to try and stop this trend.

    In a press release issued on Wednesday (Sept. 12), the FDA announced that it is requesting major brands—JUUL, Vuse, MarkTen, Blu, and Logic—to submit plans to “immediately and substantially reverse these trends” of young people vaping.

    If they do not comply within 60 days, the agency “may require the companies to revise their sales and marketing practices, to stop distributing products to retailers who sell to kids and to stop selling some or all of their flavored e-cigarette products until they clear the application process,” according to CNBC.

    The latest crackdown is the result of a nationwide undercover sweep over the summer. Since then, 1,300 warning letters have been sent to retailers of e-cigarettes found to be illegally selling e-cigarette products to minors.

    The vast majority of the violations were for the illegal sale of JUUL, Vuse, MarkTen, Blu and Logic—which account for over 97% of the U.S. e-cigarette market.

    Initially, e-cigarettes were touted as a less harmful alternative to traditional cigarettes for people who want to quit. But growing use among young people is now a concern for the FDA.

    “In enabling a path for e-cigarettes to offer a potentially lower-risk alternative for adult smokers, we won’t allow the current trends in youth access and use to continue, even if it means putting limits in place that reduce adult uptake of these products,” said FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb in the press release.

    “We see clear signs that youth use of electronic cigarettes has reached an epidemic proportion, and we must adjust certain aspects of our comprehensive strategy to stem this clear and present danger,” Gottlieb declared, going on to say that promoting smoking cessation can’t come “at the expense of kids.”

    “We cannot allow a whole new generation to become addicted to nicotine,” he added.

    In the coming weeks, the FDA said it will take additional action under its Youth Tobacco Prevention Plan, and ramp up enforcement of the illegal sale of these products to kids.

    View the original article at thefix.com