What happens when Juuls are banned?

What happens when Juuls are banned?

Anyone who has spent a week in high school knows about juuls and more importantly, how many teenagers use one. Recently The FDA and The Trump Administration have been trying to ban the popular product in wake of 6 nicotine related deaths caused by juuling. While this will be a good decision for the health of teens who have illegally acquired the product, it can also be a problem. Many teenagers who use a Juul regularly have become addicted and a sudden disappearance of all the nicotine that they’ve become accustomed to can force them into withdrawals, cause them to seek alternative drugs, or lead them to chain smoke cigarettes to compensate for the amount of nicotine they’re body is used to. 

Juul pods have been proven to contain as much nicotine as a pack of cigarettes and some high schoolers go through a pod or more a day. If the ban takes place and these students are forced into withdrawals, it can harm them. Sweating, insomnia, cramps, nausea, irritability, depression, headaches, and weight gain are just a few symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. If more than half the students in a school suddenly go through withdrawls, class productivity will be down and it might make the students who were addicted to seek other options for a high. 

Vaping has been considered a gateway drug for teens and adults alike. Taking away the gateway drug would help stop people from trying drugs for the first time, but for people who are already addicted, it could force them to look for alternatives. Cigarettes would be an alternative but for teens, who oftentimes hide vaping from their parents, wouldn’t want to smoke them because of the potent smell. This would lead them to start taking more harmful drugs as an alternative high, and these alternatives can be more harmful and have a higher addiction rate. If teens did substitute vaping for smoking cigarettes, it can lead to chain smoking because juul pods contain much more nicotine than a cigarette. Chain smoking smells, holds a dirty stereotype, and can make the smoker seem unemployable. Any alternative to juuls is as bad if not worse than the vaping itself.

The Juul company needs to be held responsible for its actions of marketing seemingless harmful flavors of nicotine to teens and should take steps to correct what they’ve done regarding the lives of the people who have died in relation to their product. Before the ban takes place, there should be a plan in place for the teens who will end up going through withdrawals and students should be given a heads up about the ban so that they have the option of a self-regulated withdrawal. Vaping is a harmful and addictive epidemic amongst teens and while the ban of juuls will help overall, we need to help the teens who are currently addicted.