mango

These days the e-cigarette headlines mostly involve people who have suffered serious and even mysterious illnesses as a result of vaping devices. And maybe that is as it should be. But for me, one of the more devastating aspects of this e-cigarette nightmare is that today millions of school-age children have become addicted to nicotine, an addiction most of them would have never suffered if e-cigarettes were not marketed to children.

Childhood Nicotine Addiction is No Accident

JUUL Labs, Inc. targeted children in its marketing campaigns. The company spent millions promoting kid-friendly fruit-flavored vape pods. JUUL paid for and developed social media campaigns on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and other platforms. Although the main JUUL Instagram account is now inactive, many other JUUL or vape-related sites feature young people exhaling clouds of the white vapor while sitting on a beach, on the bleachers of a school football field, or driving around town. Congress developed evidence last year that JUUL created an “influencer program” with more than 25,000 social media personalities paid to market the JUUL device to teens. And it worked. As the graph at right shows, seven in ten teens were exposed in some form to e-cigarette advertising.

Like many parents, vaping and e-cigarettes caught my wife and me by complete surprise. Two years ago we asked our oldest child how many kids he knew in his high school who were vaping. He said, “it will be much faster to list the kids who aren’t vaping.” We were stunned. We knew very little about vaping, and at the time I assumed it was some kind of fringe product used by adults already addicted to nicotine.

Unfortunately, studies indicate that one in five high school kids have tried vaping, but in my unscientific observation I believe the number is higher. Still, there are more than fifteen million kids in enrolled in public high schools in this country, so even if the number is “only” one in five, this means over three million public high school children have either tried or are currently using vaping products like JUUL.

What we do know is that e-cigarettes are extremely popular and profitable for the companies selling the devices. The primary manufacturer, marketer, and seller of these vaping devices is a company called JUUL Labs, Inc.

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I was involved in a case for the faulty hip replacements. Clay Hodges represented me. I can't say enough about how much he has helped me. Clay was able to win multiple settlements on my behalf with most of them being the maximum amount able to be awarded. Matt J.

Clay, thank you sir for making a disheartening experience at least palatable, you and your staff were honest, caring and understanding through the entire process of my wife’s hip replacements, while monetary settlements never make the pain and suffering end, it sometimes is the only way people can fight back to right a wrong. J. V.

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Articles Tagged with mango

Nicotine Addiction in Children: The Legacy of Vaping, E-Cigs, and JUUL

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