-Source-Forbes-
Just when cigarette smoking among adolescents is at its lowest, vaping has taken over as an alternate stealth delivery mechanism for the addictive drug nicotine.
Vaping is perceived as the cool in-thing, socially appealing, glamorous, flavorful, and healthy. Smoking, on the other hand, is bitter, smelly, harmful, uncool, passé and a taboo.
Over the past 50 years, tobacco control policies and programs have helped the fight toward reducing smoking rates by more than 60% (from 42.4 % in 1965 to 15.1% in 2015). However, this hard-earned trend may be losing the battle to vaping. The immense popularity of JUUL, a highly potent e-cigarette among teens may be creating nicotine addicts en masse. Healthcare professionals are concerned about an ensuing public health disaster.
In the U.S., cigarette companies are prohibited from glamorizing cigarette smoking in the media or using youth-appealing targeted marketing campaigns. Ironically, e-cigarettes manufacturers are using these same tactics on steroids. As a result, teens are increasingly giving e-cigarettes and cigarettes a try.
Adoption of e-cigarettes, and JUUL in particular, has been more rapid than for any consumer product in the recent history. Since its 2015 launch, JUUL sales are up almost 900%, with 70% ownership of the US e-cigarette market. In the U.S., JUUL has become ubiquitous at demographically affluent high schools – precisely at locations where smoking has declined the most in recent decades. Read more
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