Sorry moms but that oversized USB drive that your kid just lost doesn’t just contain their history paper that was due the next day. It was a vape pen; in fact, it was most likely a Juul.
Vaping (or Juuling as anyone under the age of thirty would call it) is basically a “slightly” safer way to inhale nicotine. Initially the Juul was created to help smokers quit smoking. From what it looks like, every generation had their own destructive habits, for some it was smoking, alcohol, weed, or that spongy thing that they got from Earl on 5th. By all means, seeing a picture of James Dean with a cigarette drooping from his mouth still sends a surge of teenage rebellion through me. But compared to generations before us, smoking just wasn’t our thing, especially considering the fact that throughout our childhood we were shown pictures of black lungs and being told that smelling like an ashtray didn’t up your street cred.
Yet that changed in recent years, where instead of going to the bathroom with a pack of Camels and a lighter, we took fat mango-flavored rips from a slick silver stick and exhaled it into our hoodies. For the most part, people use a Juul instead of smoking because even scientists kind of shrug and go with the idea of “better than cancer”. Despite the fact that each Juul cartridge has an equivalent amount of nicotine to a pack of cigarettes, the long term effects of nicotine vapor is still majorly unknown.
So is Juuling a teenage addiction crisis or adult smoker life saver?
As of late, Juul has been at the mercy of the F.D.A (Food and Drug Administration) mostly due to their audience being largely underage. But recently, Juul has moved to advertising less among teenagers. The company has decided to delete their social media accounts, and to stop selling their pod flavors that are on the sweeter side in stores. This means only selling flavors like mango, cucumber, creme, and fruit on their website.
Apparently, JUUL.com utilizes a leading industry age verification process; this process entails pictures of government issued IDs to social security numbers, and often times, actual adults are sometimes rejected in this process.
On that note, let’s bring it back to what the Juul pen was intended for: a safer, cleaner, alternative for adult smokers to quit smoking.
In short, has this caused a lot of people to stop smoking? Yes. Has vaping caused people to start smoking cigarettes? Now that’s still up in the air.
Vaping (or Juuling as anyone under the age of thirty would call it) is basically a “slightly” safer way to inhale nicotine. Initially the Juul was created to help smokers quit smoking. From what it looks like, every generation had their own destructive habits, for some it was smoking, alcohol, weed, or that spongy thing that they got from Earl on 5th. By all means, seeing a picture of James Dean with a cigarette drooping from his mouth still sends a surge of teenage rebellion through me. But compared to generations before us, smoking just wasn’t our thing, especially considering the fact that throughout our childhood we were shown pictures of black lungs and being told that smelling like an ashtray didn’t up your street cred.
Yet that changed in recent years, where instead of going to the bathroom with a pack of Camels and a lighter, we took fat mango-flavored rips from a slick silver stick and exhaled it into our hoodies. For the most part, people use a Juul instead of smoking because even scientists kind of shrug and go with the idea of “better than cancer”. Despite the fact that each Juul cartridge has an equivalent amount of nicotine to a pack of cigarettes, the long term effects of nicotine vapor is still majorly unknown.
So is Juuling a teenage addiction crisis or adult smoker life saver?
As of late, Juul has been at the mercy of the F.D.A (Food and Drug Administration) mostly due to their audience being largely underage. But recently, Juul has moved to advertising less among teenagers. The company has decided to delete their social media accounts, and to stop selling their pod flavors that are on the sweeter side in stores. This means only selling flavors like mango, cucumber, creme, and fruit on their website.
Apparently, JUUL.com utilizes a leading industry age verification process; this process entails pictures of government issued IDs to social security numbers, and often times, actual adults are sometimes rejected in this process.
On that note, let’s bring it back to what the Juul pen was intended for: a safer, cleaner, alternative for adult smokers to quit smoking.
In short, has this caused a lot of people to stop smoking? Yes. Has vaping caused people to start smoking cigarettes? Now that’s still up in the air.