You probably seen a JUUL at your local college campus. Maybe it’s the person who sits in front of you in class and they’re charging it on their laptop, or someone is using it at a party. We’ve all seen them at one point or another.
On Tuesday November 13th, JUUL announced that they will be shutting down all of their social media accounts, discontinuing social media promotions, and suspend the selling of their flavored pods. The San Francisco company has more than 70 percent of the E-cigarette market share according to the New York Times. (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/health/juul-ecigarettes-vaping-teenagers.html) In addition, JUUL is blamed for the rise of young adults with a nicotine addiction who are nonsmokers.
JUUL was created to help smokers quit smoking. Due to flavors like mango, crème, and cool cucumber teenagers have started to “JUUL.” According to the New York Times, more than three million middle school and high school students use e-cigarettes.
People claim that JUUL had no choice but to shut down their social media and stop selling pods after “The FDA seized documents related to marketing strategies from the company’s headquarters last month, and while some states were investigating whether its tactics were directly aimed at minors.” (New York Times)
The FDA announced that they were blindsided by the rise in popularity of E-cigarette use by minors. This past September they gave JUUL and other manufactures that sell e-cigarettes, “60 days to submit plans to prove they could keep them away from minors. That deadline passed this past weekend.”
“More than three million middle and high school students reported using e-cigarettes, according to preliminary, unpublished government data, with about one-third of them saying the flavors were a big factor in their choice.”
Pods such as crème, cool cucumber, mango, and fruit will be discontinued and JUUL will stop selling them. They “account for about 45 percent of retail sales for the $16 billion company, according to some estimates”
The company also plans to have a better age verification system, in order to ensure that buyers are 21 and older.
For more info:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/health/juul-ecigarettes-vaping-teenagers.html