Today, Explained - Too Juul for school

Episode Date: May 3, 2018

On Tuesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sent warning letters to 13 companies that appear to market their vaping products directly to kids. E-cigarettes are a gangbuster business but one device, the sleekly-designed Juul, has really captured the attention of underage teens. Vox’s Julia Belluz explains the hype, and what most teens don’t know about the Juul. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello. Hello, is this Ellen Mayer in Chicago, Illinois? Yeah, you've got Ellen Mayer in Chicago. Hey, this is Sean Robinson from Today Explained. I hear you have a mattress problem. Yeah, well, I had a mattress problem once. Oh, you did? Yeah, I did.

Do you want me to tell you about it? I'd love to. Yeah, give me a second, though. Okay. When I was a kid, I thought smoking looked pretty cool. How long have you been a smoker? 22 years. But these days, the kids, they're more into vaping.

They're more into Juul. Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. I'm going to attempt to hit the Juul for 30 seconds straight without exhaling. And we're going to go out in our bathing suits and roll around in the snow and then rip our Juul for like two minutes. It tastes like a blueberry muffin, man. Another one hit, bro? One more. Guys, I pimped my jewel and turned it gold.

I like the mango. It's just like one of the best flavors I've ever tried, really, in my vaping career. And now, Uncle Sam's coming to crash the party. Federal health officials announce a nationwide crackdown on underage use of a popular e-cigarette brand following months of complaints from parents, politicians, and school administrators. It's a vaping device called Juul, but it looks like a regular computer flash drive. FDA regulators asked manufacturer Juul Labs to turn over documents about the design, marketing, and ingredients of his product. The kids love the Juul so much, they're bringing them to school, and to class.

The Juul would be my favorite thing to take. Just get you something like that, like a small vape that you can hide, slip it into your underwear or something, or like put it around your waistline. And when you're going to the bathroom to get your fucking nicotine fix, you just reach in there and grab it and teach, hey teacher, can I go to the bathroom? This is my 20th year working in a high school and we've never seen anything like this.

Meg Kenney's an assistant principal at Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester, Vermont. We started to catch on that students were using them in classes or on the school bus. And because the device, you know, really looks like this USB drive and is small and compact and easily concealable, and there is no really distinct odor, and there's no smoke left behind, that's one of the challenges

for schools is that when you glimpse it, you're not thinking, oh, that's a Juul. They're smoking nicotine oil with that. You know, I think for teachers, a lot of teachers, that's just not obvious. This seemed to be popular with our younger students, our ninth and tenth graders, more than our students in 11th and 12th grade. We've also seen the combination of using the Juul on campus combined with social media. Like there was a little bit of who could use a Juul in different places and take a picture and snap it around. Like here I am firing up the Juul on my school bus and here here I am in my Spanish class, and I'm going to Snapchat a picture around. And that kind of became a little bit of a thing, I think, for students to be like, oh, I'm going to one-up you.

I'm going to fire up my Juul, and nobody's going to know, and I'm going to snap a picture wherever around the campus. And that's often how we found out about it. Like somebody would say, hey, so-and-so is sending pictures around of them Juuling in the bathroom or in their class. There was actually a little bit of a distribution ring happening where students would order the Juul product over the internet or they would know somebody who was 18 who could legally buy the product, and then they were selling them on campus. And I would have to say that even parents, I think, when we've intervened and had meetings with parents, they're even confused as to

what's the product? Is there really nicotine in it? My kid just told me it's flavored oil. So that's just something that we're up against. I'm Julia Beluz, the senior health correspondent at Vox.com. So I've never felt older reporting on a story than I did reporting on The Jewel. Why does reporting on The Jewel make you feel so old? Because it's like this whole language and culture that's emerged among high schoolers. And I don't know, do you have friends who are like avid jewelers or vapors? Because I don't. Unfortunately,

I do and I make fun of them. Okay, there we go. When I think about my time in high school, there was like the smoking section outside the school. It's a different scene out there that you see on social media. And it's cooler than bell bottoms apparently or something, right? The Juul is not cool, but it does have this really catchy name. And its pods come in eight flavors, mango, Virginia tobacco, cool mint, cool cucumber, classic menthol, fruit medley, creme brulee, and classic tobacco. Some of these flavors sound a lot more like things you'd find in a kid's snack box than a vape device. How do you use the Juul? So you stick the pod into a cartridge on one end of the device and then you inhale through a mouthpiece at the other end of the Juul and then

the device vaporizes this e-liquid in the pod and then you're vaping. And when the device runs out of power, you just stick the Juul into your computer's USB port and you recharge it. You mentioned that it's kind of exploding right now, just in terms of sales. How popular is the Juul? It seems like Juul's the top selling cigarette by a long shot. And it's only been on the market for three years, which is just staggering when you think about the fact that there are hundreds of other e-cigarettes on the market. Wow. To put that into perspective, in March this year, Juul had more than half of the market share for retail e-cigarettes in the US. And that's just bonkers for a single device. So who's buying this Juul? Who's using it? So we don't know how many users are adult smokers and how many are teens, but there's a lot of anecdotal reports about this just spreading like wildfire on campuses.

And if you look on Twitter or on YouTube, under hashtags like do it for Juul, you find kids showing off, kind of doing tricks with the devices. Yeah. Yo, what's good? We got the jewel here gonna teach you some tricks how many tricks four right top four tricks top four tricks with a jewel get that buzz jewel army all right so to start we're gonna start with a ghost and it's basically where like the smoke comes out of your mouth.

Like, it comes out of your mouth that way. And you just inhale it back in. So it's kind of something like this. So this was enough evidence for the FDA to announce this crackdown last week and single out this company. And, yeah, when you start to talk to teenagers who are using it, I think there are a lot of reasons why it might be particularly appealing for youth so you know the fact that you can easily hide it

you know your parents might not know what it is the fact that there are all these flavors that are really appealing it's very discreet it's lightweight it's easier to use than other devices how much does it cost the jewel what's it run so there a starter kit, and you get the e-cigarette, the USB charger, four pods, and it sells for about $50. And then the device itself alone, $35. Where are these kids getting all that money? Back in my day, a pack of cigarettes was like $4. And a pack of four Juul pods is about $16.

So how did this become the biggest e-cigarette in the country? Part of it is the design. So it was designed by these two Stanford design graduates. One had a background working at Apple and you can see that in the device. It looks like this, high-tech, sleek little thing. It looks different from other cigarettes. It's also easier to use. It doesn't require users to replace coils or atomizers, which other e-cigarettes require. Oh, but what really sets it apart, I think, is that it just delivers this mega dose of nicotine. So these two Stanford grads who designed the Juul, were they targeting kids? Adolescents? Was it their idea?

No. Like, hey, let's make a cool thing for the kids? No, that's the interesting thing. So when you look at the official marketing online, they talk about how they're targeting adult smokers who want to quit and how they want to end the smoking epidemic and how that's their official position and mission. How much nicotine does the Juul have in comparison to a cigarette?

So Juul claims that one of their little e-liquid pods, those things that you stick in the end of the device and vaporize, they claim that it has the same levels of nicotine as a pack of cigarettes. But the tobacco experts I spoke to said they think it's more like two packs of cigarettes. Oh, shit. And so users will go through a pod, like some are using a pod a day, some are using a pod every, you know, four to five days a week. Yeah. But you're ripping through nicotine really quickly

and the way Juul hits your body it delivers a very similar nicotine peak as cigarettes and part of that is because the nicotine in Juul comes from nicotine salts and that's a type of processed nicotine that's easily and quickly absorbed into the body. And it doesn't create the kind of irritation, the nicotine in cigarettes, which is free base nicotine. And so it goes down much more smoothly. And that was something that really worried the public health people I spoke to. Do these kids know how much nicotine is in the Juul? Researchers actually just conveniently did a study on this question. They surveyed young people aged 15 to 24,

asking them about what they knew about Juul and what they thought about it. And only a quarter of the people who knew about Juul knew that it always contains nicotine. And these aren't Juul users. These are just people aware. Who recognize Juul, yeah. And then 37% of people who had used Juul in the last 30 days knew that Juul always contains nicotine. So most did not. You know, every once in a while,

a Juul video will pop into my Twitter feed. And there's one I'll never forget of this kid walking around a party and he has a screwdriver in his hand, but he's holding it so you can only see the silver tip of the screwdriver. And he'll just like walk up to random people with the tip of his screwdriver and they all try to hit it thinking it's the jewel or some other vape pen. It's a screwdriver! Look it up, mommy! It's a screwdriver! Everyone just up, mommy. It's a screwdriver. Everyone just seems to think this is, like, funny.

It's a joke. I mean, the video is definitely funny. It's less funny when you think that a lot of people who are using it don't realize that it contains nicotine. I think the way public health people are thinking about it, groups like Tobacco Free Kids and the American Academy of Pediatrics, they're really worried that this might be the biggest public health people are thinking about it, groups like Tobacco Free Kids and the American Academy of Pediatrics. They're really worried that this might be the biggest public health crisis facing a new generation of American youth. After the break, I apologize to the youth of America for thinking their vaping is funny.

Kids, it's not funny, it's dangerous. And we've written a song about it. It's coming at the end of the show. This is Today Explained. Ellen, tell me about your mattress problem that you had once. Okay, well, the problem I think is a problem that a lot of people have, which is that I graduated from college and moved to the big city of Chicago and needed something to sleep on. And so I wanted to buy a mattress. Your problem was you didn't have a mattress.

That's right. That's interesting. We haven't come across that problem yet. Okay, so what were you initially sleeping on, or did you go get a mattress on, like, day one? Oh, that's a good question. Well, I was initially sleeping on my friend's mom's guest bed. Okay. But then I moved to my own grown-up apartment and then I didn't have a mattress. So my problem was really like the floor or go to the mattress store. Oh, which mattress store did you go to? I actually went to Mattress Firm.

Perfect. Did you use like the coupon code podcast10 to get 10% off at mattressfirm.com slash podcast? Or did you enter a physical mattress firm in your neighborhood? Yeah, I entered a physical mattress firm. Unfortunately, it was a few years too soon for PODCAST10. Oh. Here's a piece of news. Summer is basically here in D.C., and Today Explained is looking for its first ever summer intern.

It's a paid position here at the Vox offices in the district, and anyone can apply. So apply. Tell your friends to apply. You can find the posting on the careers page at voxmedia.com. We can't wait to hear from you. Today. Today Explained. careers page at voxmedia.com. We can't wait to hear from you. I'm Elijah Stewart, and I'm 19 years old, and I attend Providence College. I first heard about the jewel my sophomore year in high school.

I think it started to become a habit maybe after even a week of using it. I mean, I cycle through a pod between every four to five days, which means like $16.32 of my own money, which over time you're paying $1,200 in Juul pods for a year. So it really does do some damage to your wallet once you become hooked. When I was a senior in high school, there was these group of girls that thought tobacco was so disgusting and despised it and was like, how could you do that to yourself? And then a couple of weeks later, every single one of them owned a Juul. And by a week in, they were hooked. I think the flavors were really appealing to the public because when you hit like a mango pod per se, it kind of tastes in a way like candy almost.

And you also get the head rush. I was talking with some students who I helped tutor in math and science, and they were telling me how they even drooled. And they were in me how they even drooled and they were at they're in middle school still they're in seventh grade eighth grade who despise cigarettes and everything like think it's the cool thing to do to drool i feel like a lot of the concerns with smoking are alleviated by vaping because there's obviously so much less damage to your lungs, you're not smoking tobacco, it's vapor, but how harmful are e-cigarettes? How harmful is like Juul? Yeah, so there's no question that e-cigarettes are safer than cigarettes and

most public health groups I think would agree with that assessment, but safer doesn't mean safe. And I think that's what people forget here, what the comparator is. Cigarettes are one of the deadliest products available to consumers. They still kill something like one in five Americans. And that's the message I think that gets lost here. And the reality is we don't know about the long-term effects of e-cigarettes. Will they cause cancers? Are they going to harm the lungs or circulatory system in ways we can't even imagine right now? We just have no idea,

and they haven't been used for long enough to know. What about nicotine? We know it's addictive, but is it dangerous? Here's the thing. Nicotine is not as deadly as many of the toxins and chemicals in conventional cigarettes, but it is extremely addictive. It targets the reward circuitry of our brain, and there's some concern that exposing young people to nicotine may affect how their brains are developing and in ways that may sensitize them to substance use disorders later. And quitting nicotine, it's serious. People go through really intense withdrawal symptoms. So we're talking about nervousness, restlessness, moodiness, anxiety, sleep disturbances, you know, changes in appetite, headache, constipation, weight gain, fatigue. It's hard enough for adults to handle this, and I think these are symptoms we probably don't want our teenagers experiencing.

On the other hand, if you're a smoker, maybe a product like Juul can help you quit. And it's this potentially powerful harm reduction tool. And that's also why regulators are a little hamstrung. And there's been this conundrum around these devices. Products like Juul, they might hook a generation on nicotine with all these nasty effects that we've described. But they also might help smokers quit. Is that happening? So that's another thing we don't know. So the National Academies of Science came out with a big report this year.

And they looked at questions around the health impact of e-cigarettes. And they found there was insufficient evidence that e-cigarettes and they found there was insufficient evidence that e-cigarettes can help people quit smoking. But there is a lot of evidence that most of the adult e-cigarette users are dual users. So they smoke and vape. So they might be people who are using vape devices to try to quit smoking. Maybe they're smokers who are vaping in places where they can't smoke just to get the nicotine they need. How has that changed the way tobacco companies sell cigarettes or market cigarettes? Are they all getting onto the vape bandwagon now or what?

So yeah, a lot of these big tobacco companies have their own e-cigarette products and the market is pretty mixed. There are these small companies and startups with vape products, and then there are many products coming from big tobacco companies. Vaping sounds kind of like the Wild West, but the FDA is policing this on some level. It is sort of the Wild West out there. So there are some things that the FDA is already doing. The FDA does have strong regulations not allowing e-cigarette sales to minors, and it's trying to enforce these, but some retailers and manufacturers are doing it anyway. The other thing that's happening now is that manufacturers are supposed to be registering their ingredients with FDA, and they're also supposed to be including warning labels about nicotine on their packaging.

But most of the products that are on the market now, including Juul, have probably not been vetted by FDA. So why do we think the FDA commissioner cracked down on Juul and asked the company to share all this information about how it markets its Juul? I think they're doing that for a couple reasons. So they've been under a lot of pressure by public health groups like Tobacco Free Kids and the American Academy of Pediatric and others. They're worried that vaping is going to offset the health gains that have been made around seeing our smoking rates decline. And so they've been pressuring FDA to do something about this. I think there's also this genuine concern and confusion about what's happening with this market and why we're seeing a single product explode the way Juul has.

So what did Juul say back to the FDA? So Juul's CEO, Kevin Burns, released his statement on April 25th, and he said, quote, Our company's mission is to eliminate cigarettes and help the more than 1 billion smokers worldwide switch to a better alternative. At the same time, we're committed to deterring young people as well as adults who do not currently smoke from using our products. We cannot be more emphatic on this point. No young person or non-nicotine user should ever try Juul. Is it the job of Juul

or the FDA to make sure that kids aren't becoming addicted to nicotine through Juuling? So the FDA is the regulatory body that's supposed to protect public health and make sure that kids aren't becoming addicted to nicotine through dueling. So the FDA is the regulatory body that's supposed to protect public health and make sure that products harmful to young people aren't being marketed directly at them. But having said that, it's a conundrum because yeast cigarettes, they're almost designed to evade regulation, right? The technology is evolving so quickly. Their use is evolving. The culture around technology is evolving so quickly. Their use is evolving. The culture around them is evolving really quickly. And regulators are in this position of catch up

about what to do with them. You mentioned smoking rates have been on this steady decline over the past several decades. So if all these kids are smoking jewels now, could they end up reviving cigarettes, ironically, tragically? That's really the million-dollar question. Again, when we were growing up, we didn't have these less harmful options available when maybe we wanted to dabble in smoking and try something out. And so maybe, you know, the kids these days who are trying Juul or other devices maybe they're going to be exposed to less harm than we were when we were trying cigarettes but on the other hand maybe

these devices renormalize smoking or they get young people into nicotine and that leads to this tsunami of public health effects that no one can foresee now. When I was like in Toronto smoking cigarettes for the first time, I remember when they put images on the packs of cigarettes, like a cancerous lung, or like a kid saying, my mom's dead. And I'll never forget that image of like a hand squeezing like 20 cigarettes and all this like toxic bile coming out of it. These images are like seared into my mind. But I haven't heard anything about vaping to make me feel like it's dangerous or terrible. So we haven't updated our health warnings on cigarette packs since 1985. What if our show made a song to help kids understand what's wrong with Juuling?

That would be great. You know what musical artists we could parody? Juul? You know what musical artist we could parody? Jewel? You agree? He hits the thing a hundred times a day the teacher tries to confiscate the kids. There's no way Another man go pop a cucumber puff can't get enough. You know you love it when your selfie blows up Don't go Your jewel Cuz it's full of nicotine. La la la, vape your Juul.

It's like one or two packs of smokes. Don't go vape your Juul. It's really not cool. La dee da dee dee da da,dee-dee-da-da. Ah-ha-ha. Julia Blues doesn't jewel. She writes about health at Vox. Christina Animashan sings better than anyone else at Vox. And Noam Hassenfeld is the Rick Rubin of Vox.

I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. Bridget McCarthy is our editor. Afim Shapiro is our engineer. Luke Vanderplug produces, and the unreachable Breakmaster Cylinder makes music for us. Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher, and we're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm John Henry. I am eight, nine years old, and I live in Washington, D.C. You can follow Today Explained on Twitter at today underscore explained. The nice thing about going to the store, like Luke Vanderplug learned, is that you can just like try out a bunch of different mattresses and figure out what your type is. Yeah. So which type are you? Firm. I'm a firm gal all the way.

Okay. And you currently have this mattress firm mattress? I do. In fact, I am lying on it right now. Oh, wow. It feels very luxurious. And I think I'm probably going to have it forever. Mattressfirm.com slash podcast.

The coupon code podcast10 gets you 10% off before May 8th. You don't need it, but someone out there might. Yes, that's true.