According to two teenagers who testified to Congress last week, a Juul representative visited a ninth-grade classroom and told students that Juul e-cigarettes were “totally safe.” He then showed the students the device, despite the fact that they were all underage. The hearing was the first of two, organized by the House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy. Juul’s co-founder and other company executives will testify Thursday, as Juul’s responsibility for the youth nicotine addiction epidemic is called into question.
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The Juul representative was in the students’ classroom as part of a “mental health [and] addiction seminar.” Teachers were asked to leave the room while the representative spoke. One teen testified that the representative mentioned his Juul connection and assured the class of the safety of Juul e-cigarettes. Juul released a statement saying the presentation was part of “a short-lived Education and Youth Prevention Program which was ended in September 2018 after its purpose — to educate youth on the dangers of nicotine addiction — was clearly misconstrued.”
According to the testimony, the Juul representative also "mentioned that the FDA was about to come out and say that Juul was 99% safer than cigarettes, and he said that that would happen very soon, and that it was in FDA approval while the talk was going on.”
Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee, called the company’s actions “very disturbing behavior, to say the least.” Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley said that “many of Juul’s tactics seem to be right out of the Big Tobacco playbook” and called their actions “extremely disturbing.”
Thanks to Juul’s marketing tactics, which include marketing their products to youth, children as young as 11 are becoming addicted to high levels of nicotine found in Juul e-cigarettes, but their age prevents the use of many of the quit-smoking products on the market today, leaving parents, physicians and addicts without treatment options.
In addition to the addicting nicotine they contain, studies show e-cigarettes also contain highly dangerous chemicals, including acetyladehyde and formaldehyde, both known to be carcinogenic, in addition to diacetyl, diethylene glycol, tobacco-specific nitrosamine, highly reactive free radicals and appalling amount of heavy metals.