Death and injury caused by e-cigarettes

Government officials struggle to respond to the harm caused by vaping devices

Althea Ulin / Asst. News Editor / The USD Vista
Celina Tebor / Managing Editor / The USD Vista

Though small electronic cigarettes may seem harmless, their effects have caused death and injury in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,080 confirmed cases of illness occurred due to vaping in 46 states and 18 deaths as of Oct. 1.  

University of San Diego sophomore  Thomas Gnesda spoke to his experience with nicotine. Gnesda previously smoked cigarettes and chewed tobacco, but switched to e-cigarettes for their relative health benefits up until recently.

“I quit everything,” Gnesda said. “Really, smoking anything isn’t good for you. And there’s studies coming out that are saying that. It’s just coating the inside of your lungs with … I don’t know all actual the details … but it was enough to make me be like, ‘you know, I really don’t need this and it’s expensive.’”   

Vaping hysteria

E-cigarettes, mainly Juuls, have been under fire this year for their increasingly-complicated relationship with the health crisis of young Americans. Though vaping comes in many forms with different brands, vaporizing models, and pod/juice options, Juul dominates the market with 75 percent of sales. The recent hysteria surrounding vaping has come following these staggering statistics on the mysterious vaping illness. Federal, state, and local governments have already begun to instate legislation against the vaping industry in attempts to make such devices more difficult to obtain, most notably by high school students. 

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has already been investigating the role of social media influencers and other marketing tactics as a means to reach minors. Juul Labs Inc.’s first advertisement campaign in 2015, titled “Vaporized,” claimed to make vaping cool for 20- and 30-year-olds, but is marked as kickstarting the appeal of the company to a younger audience. 

According to a recent federal survey,  28 percent of high school students said they had used an e-cigarette device in the past 30 days, which is an increase of 21 percent from 2018. According to the survey, almost 30 percent of college students have used similar nicotine products. This aligns with research published in The Journal of Adolescent Health saying that a quarter of Twitter users that retweeted tweets from the official @Juulvapor account were under the age of 18.

Gnesda also made similar conclusions.

“I feel like it’s affecting younger and younger kids more than anything,” said Gnesda. “I have friends with brothers and sisters who are like 14, 15, and vaping Juul pods.”

As disclosed by The Wall Street Journal, federal prosecutors and district attorneys in California are gearing up a criminal probe, though the specific charges have not been disclosed. From what has been made public, the charges will look at advertising techniques targeting illicit consumer bases as well as the nicotine content in the pods and refills. 

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker declared a state-wide health state of emergency banning the sale of e-cigarette products for the next four months. North Carolina filed a civil lawsuit against Juul in May, accusing the company of advertisements targeting minors and undermining the strength of their products and health risks that their products present. California will be the first state to seek criminal prosecution against Juul. 

Juul is not just under investigation for its potential foul play in marketing, but also for false advertisement surrounding its health risks. Included in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) report submitted to a House of Representatives subcommittee this summer, a representative of Juul claimed in a presentation with students that Juuls are “totally safe,” and even recommended to a student that the student “should mention Juul to his (nicotine addicted) friend because that’s a safer alternative to smoking cigarettes, and it would be safer for the kid to use.” 

A portion of the FDA report concerning Juul’s alleged false advertising reads, “referring to your product as ‘99 percent safer’ than cigarettes, ‘much safer’ than cigarettes, ‘totally safe,’ and ‘a safer alternative than smoking cigarettes’ is particularly concerning because these statements were made directly to children in school. Our concern is amplified by the epidemic rate of increase in youth use of ENDS (Electronic Nicotine Delivery System) products, including Juul’s products, and evidence that ENDS products contribute to the youth use of, and addiction to, nicotine. To which youth are especially vulnerable.”

Many local governments have taken measures to ban flavored e-cigarettes due to the FDA’s finding that 81 percent of nicotine and tobacco users started with flavored product which makes up 80 percent of Juul sales. The FDA claimed that amidst its investigation, Juul had been uncooperative with the agency, withholding requested documents that had previously been produced for a congressional committee. Juul dominates the e-cigarette business, having been valued at $38 billion as a startup in 2018, a shift that is crumbling the profit of big-tobacco companies. 

The Juul cartridges are easily counterfeited, and many off-brand companies make Juul-compatible pods for much cheaper. In an FDA survey done of almost 10,000 high school students, over two thirds of Juul users claimed they started with a flavored pod that Juul does not produce or sell. 

Prosecutors fear the prominence of the conterfiet cartridges while regulating the legal products. Until the e-cigarette black market is ended prosecutors fear regulation will do little. Bill Loucks, a co-founder of TKO Products (a cartridge producer) said in an interview earlier this year with The Wall Street Journal, “the black market needs to be shut down and legal, safe products will protect the public.” 

Aside from the little regulation regarding the makeup of legal vape juice, the bootleg brands and distributors put all kinds of unstandardized chemicals into their flavors. These chemicals are  known to cause suppressed immune responses and cell damage. Brands that claim they have stronger nicotine pods often use thickening oil used in THC cartridges that are known to cause an unusual form of pneumonia, often associated with the growing vaping illness. This was originally thought to be a simple overdose of vitamin E in the thickening oils upon initial observation at the WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, NC, but was found to not be the case in a similar Mayo Clinic study.

Regardless of the allegations being made against Juul and the  e-cigarette business, Juul has been preparing for an upcoming company expansion, recently issuing a convertible debt on $785 million to fund the expansion.The company has already raised $750 million of this debt in the past two months and expanded its original employee base of a couple hundred employees to a couple thousand pushing their products overseas into Europe and Asia, most notably to China, which is home the world’s largest tobacco marketplace.