Although the FDA has launched a health campaign about the health effects of vaping, experts are unsure that the ads will be effective.

“The Real Cost” campaign launched in 2014 as the FDA’s attempt to warn young adults and teenagers about the risks of cigarettes and other tobacco products. More recently, the federal agency decided to change the course of their campaign to include warnings against vaping.

The first of these new FDA advertisements reportedly features street magician Julius Dein. In the advertisement, Dein places a JUUL e-cigarette into the hand of the teenager and magically turns it into a traditional cigarette. Following Dein’s “magic trick”, the advertisement reads: “Teens who vape are more likely to start smoking cigarettes.” In the background, Dein says: “It’s not magic; it’s statistics.”

Studies have reportedly shown that teenagers who use e-cigarettes are more likely to try traditional cigarettes than teenagers who have not tried vaping. These studies reportedly inspired the FDA’s latest ads about vaping.

However, some experts predict that the new anti-vaping ad campaign will be “completely ineffective” because most teenage e-cigarette users may not have tried traditional cigarettes.

“I do not find the ads at all compelling,” Boston University professor Michael Siegel told MarketWatch. “The promise of the ad is that if you vape, you are going to suddenly find yourself smoking. But the experiences that youth are having are not consistent with that. Kids who are vaping are not seeing all their friends who vape starting to smoke.”

Health Risks of Vaping

The health effects of vaping are becoming more of a widespread issue. JUUL Labs, a popular e-cigarette brand, faces lawsuits and criticism from consumers and regulatory officials claiming that the company took advantage of youths with their early advertising campaigns. As a result, countless teenagers have allegedly started using e-cigarettes.

From 2017 to 2018, the number of high school students who used e-cigarettes reportedly increased by 78 percent. According to a national youth survey on tobacco, 68 percent of high school e-cigarette users reported using flavored e-cigarettes, a selling point that allegedly attracted countless young individuals to the JUUL brand.

Vaping has been tied to a number of issues in young adults, including seizures, strokes and impacting brain function.

Unfortunately, most teenagers are allegedly unaware of these risks, and that using e-cigarettes such as JUUL vape pens may result in a lifelong addiction to nicotine. Vape pen liquid has the nicotine equivalent of more than a pack of cigarettes. Nicotine is an extremely addictive substance that has been shown to be as addictive as hard drugs.

By the time teenagers become addicted to nicotine, it may be too late to quit.

In a statement last year, FDA Commission Scott Gottlieb said:

“We didn’t predict what I now believe is an epidemic of e-cigarette use among teenagers. Today we can see that this epidemic of addiction was emerging when we first announced our plan last summer. Hindsight, and the data now available to us, reveal these trends. And the impact is clearly apparent to the FDA.”

“E-cigs have become an almost ubiquitous and dangerous trend among teens,” Gottlieb added on the health effects of vaping. “The disturbing and accelerating trajectory of use we’re seeing in youth, and the resulting path to addiction, must end. It’s simply not tolerable.”

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This article is not legal advice. It is presented 
for informational purposes only.