What is the UK doing to tackle underage vaping?
The FDA has recently restricted E-Cigarettes flavours to tobacco, mint and menthol products in an effort to reduce vaping among teens in the US.
This comes after a study showed an 80% increase in vaping among high school students.
Juul, the biggest vaping company is at the forefront of the FDA tobacco takedown and has recently agreed to keep teens from accessing their products.
Last Tuesday Juul CEO said that they are going to verify the age of online shoppers. “Our intent was never to have the youth use Juul,” he said on YouTube, “but they are.
“We must lead the category in decreasing underage youth.” He announced that they are no longer accepting retail orders for several of its flavors: Cucumber, Mango, Crème, Fruit to more than 90,000 retail stores but will continue to sell them online for people over 21.
In the UK, with over 3 million (6%) people vaping at the moment, Action on Smoking and Health found there are now four times more e-cigarette users than there was 6 years ago. Watch our TV report on that trend and why we should be more concerned about it:
What should have been a warning trend is actually encouraged by the NHS, which claimed that vaping is 95% safer than smoking conventional cigarettes. The Houses of Parliament recently became a vape-friendly zone.
The truth is, nicotine shots in vaping pens are highly addictive and can impede brain development in people under 26. Even without adding nicotine to it, we don’t really know what the long-term effects of regularly inhaling aerosol are.
With #vapechallenges getting millions of views all over social media, and so many vaping shops appearing in our high streets, we might see a rise in underage vaping.