The vape industry’s attack on our kids
The “Juul” looks more like a thumb drive, but kids across Connecticut and the nation are using them, often in school, to vape and feed a growing epidemic of nicotine addiction among children and young people. Kids are also selling vape to other kids in school, and are coaching their peers online and through social media on how to vape without detection.
Like most parents of young children, I can hardly imagine yet another industry targeting our kids. And yet the major e-cigarette companies, i.e., the vaping industry, have set their sights on our kids like their big brothers the tobacco industry have done for so long. They use new and creative marketing ploys — advertising that looks more like branding for cookies, juice boxes, even whipped cream. And now the vaping industry is offering scholarships. Through cynical product design and marketing strategies, the nicotine industry is finding creative ways to hook kids, teens and young adults on their addictive products, and the threat to our kids’ health is real.
Just last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration released joint survey results showing that ecigarettes, the more technical term for vaping, are by far the most commonly used tobacco products by both middle school and high school students. (The FDA widely defines tobacco products as those containing nicotine.)
This fact, paired with the 2018 study finding by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that vaping cannot be considered safe and increases the chance that teens will try regular cigarettes, should raise alarm. To boil it down: Kids are using vaping products and it is a gateway to smoking, whose dangers we know all too well.
This is why it is so disturbing that vaping manufacturers and retailers are pumping out packaging, flavors and look-alike products that are traditionally geared toward kids. Is that a juice box or a nicotine liquid? Kids should not be put in the position of having to discern the difference. And as for teens and young adults, there the marketing gets even more sophisticated. Through college scholarship contests that ask applicants to expound upon the virtues of vaping, or the type of vaping products they like best, the nicotine industry has found a way to incentivize use of their products.
The FDA and the Federal Trade Commission have started cracking down on these companies, but there is more that can be done on the state level. In fact, there is more that must be done, including:
1) An investigation and potential legal action by the attorney general focused on the marketing practices of e-cigarette companies, with particular emphasis on how they target minors and young people (if possible, on a multi-state basis in conjunction with other attorneys general);
2) A law to raise the smoking and vaping age to 21, and prohibit the sale of tobacco and nicotine products, including vaping products, to anyone under 21 (a bill to do this passed the legislature’s Public Health Committee this year on a bipartisan vote but did not pass into law);
3) A law to prohibit online sales of vaping products (the legislature this year banned sales through vending machines); and
4) An increase in fines and penalties for marketing or selling tobacco and nicotine products to minors, including vaping products.
As always, regulation and enforcement actions must be done in a way that is thoughtful and targeted. Though harmful to kids, e-cigarettes can serve a useful purpose as smoking cessation aids for adults. But we cannot let the limited usefulness of the product hamstring our duty to protect our kids from what could become the next public health crisis.