FDA suspends Juul ban as company appeals

I'm honestly not sure at this point why Juul is on the chopping block. I'm a college student, and Juul took off during my sophomore year of high school. They absolutely marketed to teenagers and created a dangerous product, but they're no longer the biggest player in the game.

By my senior year of high school, most kids had moved on to disposable vapes. From what I know, they're about the same price, you don't have to worry about recharging them (and having a teacher/parent ask you about your "usb stick"), and have the same number of hits

Juul should absolutely be fined/etc for marketing to children and starting the vaping epidemic in high schools, but the FDA is years too late on that front

Juul was especially targeted by the FDA as Juul's advertising and marketing was specifically targeting the younger crowd. There are other products on the market that are similar to Juul (i.e., RJ Reynolds vape products), but the marketing appears to be different in tone than Juul.

On another note but relevant, there is an interesting conversation that is yet to be had with the Supreme Courts recent ruling on the EPAs overreach of executive power...the same argument could be made with the FDA.

This decision is hard to justify on the basis of scientific evidence of harm. Despite the tobacco industry's decades-long effort to deny the link between lung cancer and smoking tobacco, it seems well-understood that the combustion product benzo[alpha]pyrene plays a major role. This is one of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (5 rings in this case) which, after being processed by lung cytochrome p450 enzymes, will form mutagenic DNA adducts. Adducts that form in regions of the genome that control the cell life cycle can result in cancers, particularly if defects exist in normal DNA repair mechanisms. For example:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3268909/

Some of the enzymatic activity resulting in conversion of PAHs to activated PAHs capable of binding to DNA appears to be promoted by nicotine and inhibited by THC, curiously enough, i.e. the cannabis-vs-tobacco smoke issue:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1277837/

However, there's no benzo[a]pyrene or similar PAHs generated via vaping, it's just nicotine in an aerosolizable liquid (propylene glycol + glycerine) which doesn't seem to have any medical negatives. Juul also includes benzoic acid as a preservative to avoid microbial growth, however, which is something I'd avoid inhaling personally.

Nicotine is indeed a highly addictive substance, but there seems to be no scientific reason to allow smoking plain tobacco while banning vaporized nicotine. I'd suggest removing the benzoic acid, which would of course shorten shelf life and perhaps require refrigeration, if anything.

People have consumed Tobacco (I assume in the search of Nicotine) for centuries. There is obviously some human enjoyment and satisfaction in doing so. Transitioning from more harmful smoking to less harmful 'smoking' is good. Letting people choose unhealthy things to enjoy is good (assuming a decent risk calculation). The antivape movement seems so weird amongst the general social themes in the US to open up weed and in more fringe cases decriminalize more drugs.

It seems like FDA overreach. I mean I get that we don't want teens to get hooked on a bad habit, but.... sugar is marketed like crazy to toddlers, kids, teens etc. in a much more aggressive way and is by far more harmful in the long run.

I don't vape anymore, but it was fun and passed the time. I'd much rather see FDA approved vape formulas than random suppliers with who knows what inside them.

The basic premise that Juul didn't, "submit sufficient evidence that they are safe," seem suspect in and of itself. How do you prove something isn't dangerous? I can prove it is dangerous with studies, but to prove it isn't dangerous seems like an impossible task.