CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A parent advocate said she does not want to see back to school time in West Virginia translate to back to Juul time, referencing e-cigarette usage, for students.
“We have to make our voices heard so they know we will not let our kids be preyed upon by Juul and the gang. It’s copycats. Big Tobacco 2.0,” said Meredith Berkman, co-founder of Parents Against Vaping e-cigarettes or PAVe.
Juul products are a type of e-cigarette designed to resemble USB drives.
In 2018, nearly 21 percent of high school students across the U.S. used e-cigarettes and, altogether, more than 3.6 million middle and high schools students used e-cigarettes in 2018, according to information from the National Youth Tobacco Survey.
It represented a jump in e-cigarette use of 78 percent from the previous year, enough for “epidemic” levels in determinations from the U.S. Surgeon General and the Food and Drug Administration.
The e-cigarette usage rate was above 14 percent for young people in West Virginia, the state with leading tobacco use numbers, in the latest available data with updated rates due out before the end of 2019.
“We’re hopeful that we’ll see an improvement, but there’s nothing in the record to indicate that anything has been getting better, only getting worse,” said John Schachter, communications director for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
“That’s why we have to keep doing everything we can to prevent kids from using all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes.”
Both Schachter and Berkman have joined calls on the FDA to immediately move to ban e-cigarette flavors that could be especially appealing to young people.
“Juul, the most popular and common of these e-cigarettes, has flavors like menthol and mint and cucumber and mango and fruit and creme that’s attracting youth,” Schachter said.
“For other e-cigarette products, there are flavors like cotton candy and gummy bear that are obviously intended to attract and lure youth.”
Last week, lawyers in West Virginia filed a class action lawsuit against the makers of Juul electronic cigarettes accusing the company of intentionally marketing the products to young people.
Named in the lawsuit is a client — identified as “P.K.E.” — who is described as a teenager, 16, addicted to a Juul e-cigarette.
The filing came in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia and it’s one of many such legal actions pending in courts across the U.S.
“There are a bunch of class action lawsuits. There are also a bunch of individual lawsuits, but those lawsuits can take years,” Berkman said. “We can’t wait. It’s a race against time because our kids are being used as human guinea pigs in the Juul experiment.”
The website header for Juul states, “WARNING: This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.”
The company’s website includes many other warnings about the addictive powers of nicotine, as well as statements against the use of the products by youth.
From the start, though, Berkman claimed Juul makers set out to market a “cool” product to get young people addicted.
“It worked. Now it’s our job, as parents, to make sure that we fight it and protect our kids. Slow the growth of the epidemic and keep younger kids from starting,” Berkman said with a call to action to parents, educators and students to understand the risks of e-cigarettes.