The Food and Drug Administration banned all Juul products from the United States after recognising it ‘played a disproportionate role in the rise of youth vaping’
The FDA has said Juul must stop selling its vaping device and its tobacco and menthol flavoured cartridges across the United States. AFP
There is bad news for the vaping industry in America.
The United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has banned e-cigarette maker Juul from selling and distributing its nicotine products, leading to the shares of the company going up in smokes.
The FDA issued the ban, stating, “The company must stop selling and distributing these products. In addition, those currently on the US market must be removed, or risk enforcement action.”
The FDA said Juul must stop selling its vaping device and its tobacco and menthol flavoured cartridges. Those already on the market must be removed. Consumers aren’t restricted from having or using Juul’s products, the agency said.
Shortly after the news broke, Twitter was abuzz with many questioning how guns could still be allowed, but e-cigarettes were being banned.
Here’s a better understanding of the ban and its consequences.
Why ban Juul?
Founded in 2015 and now headquartered in Washington DC, Juul quickly became the most popular e-cigarette brand in the US — and is now second only to Reynolds’ Vuse brand — thanks to a massive, hip social media campaign that launched its products on the national market.
At its peak, the company’s valuation was $38 billion.
Juul, which looks a bit like a USB flash drive, is immensely popular among teenagers and is considered something of a teen status symbol. Its appeal to young people, which has raised concerns of reversing long-term declines in the number of youths picking up smoking, is what first got the company into trouble with the FDA.
The ban on Juul came on the heels of an investigation, which accused the company’s sweet and fruit-flavoured products, along with its marketing strategy, encouraging people to pick up vaping, for the past four years.
Despite stopping the sale of sweet and fruity flavours in 2019, the company continued to being probed and in 2020 the e-cigarette cartridges were also completely banned.
The new ban comes as the FDA requested that all US e-cigarette manufacturers hand in data on their products for the agency to review whether these should stay on the market.
In their explanation to ban Juul, the FDA noted that it may have played a “disproportionate? role in the rise in teen vaping. The agency said that Juul’s application didn’t have enough evidence to show that marketing its products “would be appropriate for the protection of the public health.”
The American Lung Association applauded the move: “Today’s decision is welcomed and long overdue. @FDATobacco made the right decision to end the sale of all Juul products including #menthol. They remain one of the most popular e-cigarettes among teens. Stopping these sales is an important step in ending the youth vaping epidemic,” it said on Twitter.
However, the decision incensed Amanda Wheeler, the president of the American Vapor Manufacturers Association.
Speaking to NPR, she accused the FDA of waging a “campaign of regulatory arson against the nicotine vaping products that millions of Americans rely on as an alternative to cigarettes.” It was a sign, she said, of the FDA’s “staggering indifference to ordinary Americans and their right to switch” to vaping.
Founded in 2015, Juul is highly popular in the US and has been blamed for sparking a national surge in teen vaping. AFP
What next?
After the announcement, Altria, which has a 35 per cent stake in Juul, slid nine per cent.
With the ban, there’s hope that e-cigarettes in the US will reduce drastically.
In the US, a 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study showed that more than 2.5 million US students used a tobacco product of some sort and 80 per cent of tobacco use was attributable to disposable e-cigarettes and cartridge products, like a Juul.
The study also showed that about two million high-schoolers (13 per cent of the study population) and four per cent of middle-schoolers (470,000 participants) reported “current” tobacco use.
The move is a part of a larger Biden administration war on nicotine: in April, the FDA announced that it would be pushing for the elimination of menthol cigarettes, which are disproportionately smoked by Black Americans.
But Biden’s nicotine war hasn’t been well received and its timing has been questioned as the administration has supported the decriminalisation of marijuana.
With inputs from agencies
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