If you are at all familiar with tobacco products, smoking, or e-cigarettes, then you have probably at least heard of the company JUUL. Founded in 2007, this electronic cigarette company was founded by two former cigarette smokers in an effort to help wean people off cigarettes, as they can become incredibly addictive over time and are known to cause lung cancer. They quickly became incredibly well-known, earning the title of most popular e-cigarette by 2017. Today, they are widely used by youth across the nation, which wasn’t the company’s intended goal.
Because of this, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been enforcing a ban on commercial sales of JUULs since the beginning of July this year. Their reasoning was, according to the FDA website, that there isn’t enough evidence to prove that JUULs are beneficial in protecting the public health of the public, specifically the youth of our nation. The acting director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, Michele Mital, had this to say about the issue: “The FDA is tasked with ensuring that tobacco products sold in this country meet the standard set by law, but the responsibility to demonstrate that a product meets those standards ultimately falls on the shoulders of the company. As with all manufacturers, JUUL had the opportunity to provide evidence demonstrating that the marketing of their products meets these standards. However, the company did not provide that evidence and instead left us with significant questions. Without the data needed to determine relevant health risks, the FDA is issuing these marketing denial orders.”
Shortly after issuing the above statement, the FDA withdrew their ban on JUUL products for a short time, due to there being certain scientific issues that needed to be looked over once more. JUUL used this opportunity to place a lawsuit against the FDA, and according to their lawsuit, their reasons were that, “Withholding disciplinary reviews… impedes JLI’s [JUUL’s] ability to seek appropriate relief from FDA’s decision and is also completely at odds with the purpose of FOIA and the transparency Congress expects from administrative industries.”
Given that the youth are a large part of JUUL’s user-base, some of the student on EMU’s college campus have lots of opinions regarding JUUL as a whole and if they think the ban on JUUL will fix the now ever-present problem of the youth getting hooked on a substance that is potentially harmful. Tim Jones, a graduate student at EMU, had a good bit to say about the ban and why JUUL products might not be so bad. “I don’t use them myself, nor do I know others who do,” he said, “however, I think that with a lesser tobacco content than normal cigarettes, it makes it a lot better for people to smoke. People smoke for a lot of reasons, like addictions, stress, and many other things, and they can’t just drop it whenever they want. A JUUL product with a lesser tobacco content would help people get off those higher-content products, or just give them something to smoke with less health problems associated.”
This ban is something that affects many people, not just on our college campus, but all throughout the United States, and JUUL helps many people wean off a cigarette problem with a much lower health risk. If JUUL can figure out a way to market this towards that specific audience while keeping the youth out of it, they might find a way around this growing controversy.
