--:-- [Upbeat music fades out]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hey, we're heading into the weekend. Why not head into the weekend by sending someone some money internationally? You could use TransferWise to make a friend or family member or even maybe a stranger's day. Check out TransferWise for free at TransferWise.com slash today or just download the TransferWise app.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more casual tone]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When I was a kid, I thought smoking looked pretty cool. How long have you been a smoker? 22 years. But these days, the kids, they're more into vaping. They're more into Juul.
--:-- [Sound effects: Juul sound effects]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. I'm gonna attempt to hit the Juul for 30 seconds straight without exhaling. Then we're gonna go out in our bathing suits. And roll around in the snow. And then rip our Juul for like two minutes. It tastes like a blueberry muffin, man. You want another hit, bro? One more.
--:-- [Sound effects: Juul sound effects]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Guys, I pimped my jewel. I turned it gold. I like the mango. It's just like one of the best flavors I've ever tried, really, in my vaping career.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And now Uncle Sam's coming to crash the party. The FDA calling it a dangerous epidemic. The proportion of high school teenagers using e-cigarettes has reached nothing short of an epidemic level. The agency sending out warning letters to retailers and giving an ultimatum to the makers of the popular Juul and four other manufacturers. They have 60 days to show that they can keep their nicotine products out of the hands of underage users.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On Wednesday, the FDA took its gloves off. The Food and Drug Administration said that 2 million middle and high school students were using them last year. It put makers of the most popular devices, devices like the Juul, on notice. They've got 60 days to prove that they can keep their e-cigarettes away from kids. If not, they might face charges, like criminal charges.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more casual tone]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We explained the allure of the Juul back in May, and we thought it might be helpful to provide a little reminder. Because this e-cigarette hype is huge. This isn't like smoking when you were in high school. Kids aren't even trying to hide anything anymore. They're vaping in school. They're vaping in class.
--:-- [Sound effects: Juul sound effects]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The jewel would be my favorite thing to take. Just get you something like that, like a small vape that you can hide. Slip it into your underwear or something and like put it on your waistline. And when you go into the bathroom to get your fucking nicotine fix, you just reach in there and grab it.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Meg Kenney: Hi, I'm Meg Kenney, the assistant principal at Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester, Vermont. We started to catch on that students were using them in classes or on the school bus. And because the device, you know, really looks like this USB drive and is small and compact and easily concealable, and there is no really distinct odor and there's no smoke left behind. That's one of the challenges for schools is that when you glimpse it, you're not thinking, oh, that's a Juul. They're smoking nicotine oil with that.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Meg Kenney: This seemed to be popular with our younger students, our 9th and 10th graders, more than our students in 11th and 12th grade. We've also seen the combination of using the jewel on campus combined with social media. Like there was a little bit of a who could use a jewel in different places and take a picture and snap it around.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Meg Kenney: And that kind of became a little bit of a thing, I think, for students to be like, oh, I'm going to one-up you. I'm going to fire up my jewel, and nobody's going to know, and I'm going to snap a picture wherever around the campus. And that's often how we found out about it. Like, somebody would say, hey, so-and-so is sending pictures around of them jeweling in the bathroom. or in their class.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Meg Kenney: And there was actually a little bit of a distribution ring happening where students would order the Juul product over the internet, or they would know somebody who was 18 who could legally buy the product, and then they were selling them on campus.
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--:-- Julia Belluz: I'm Julia Belluz, the senior health correspondent at Vox.com. So I've never felt older reporting on a story than I did reporting on The Jewel. Why does reporting on The Jewel make you feel so old? Because it's like this whole language and culture that's emerged among high schoolers.
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--:-- Julia Belluz: And I don't know, do you have friends who are like avid jewelers or vapers? Because I don't. Unfortunately, I do. And I make fun of them.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: When I think about my time in high school, there was like the smoking section outside the school. It's a different scene out there that you see on social media. And it cooler than bell bottoms apparently or something right The jewel is not cool but it does have this really catchy name And its pods come in eight flavors Mango Virginia Tobacco Cool Mint Cool Cucumber Classic Menthol Fruit Medley, Creme Brulee, and Classic Tobacco.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: Some of these flavors sound a lot more like things you'd find in a kid's snack box than a vape device. How do you use the Juul? So you stick the pod into a cartridge on one end of the device, and then you inhale through a mouthpiece at the other end of the Juul, and then the device vaporizes this e-liquid in the pod, and then you're vaping.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: And when the device runs out of power, you just stick the Juul into your computer's USB port and you recharge it. You mentioned that it's kind of exploding right now just in terms of sales. How popular is the Juul? It seems like Juul's the top-selling cigarette by a long shot, and it's only been on the market for three years, which is just staggering when you think about the fact that there are hundreds of other e-cigarettes on the market.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: Wow. To put that into perspective, in March this year, Juul had more than half of the market share for retail e-cigarettes in the U.S. And that's just bonkers for a single device. So who's buying this Juul? Who's using it? There's a lot of anecdotal reports about, you know, this just spreading like wildfire on campuses.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: And if you look on Twitter or on YouTube under hashtags like do it for Juul, you find kids showing off, kind of doing tricks with the devices. Yeah. Yo, what's good? Nope. We got the Juul here. Going to teach you some tricks. How many tricks? Four, right? Top four tricks. Top four tricks with the Juul. Get that buzz. Juul army.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: All right, so to start, we're going to start with a ghost. And it's basically where, like, the smoke comes out of your mouth. Like, it comes out your mouth that way. And you just inhale it back in. So it's kind of something like this. And yeah, when you start to talk to teenagers who are using it, I think there are a lot of reasons why it might be particularly appealing for youth.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: So, you know, the fact that you can easily hide it. You know, your parents might not know what it is. The fact that there are all these flavors that are really appealing. It's very discreet. It's lightweight. It's easier to use than other devices.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: How much does it cost the Juul? What's it run? So there's a starter kit, and you get the e-cigarette, the USB charger, four pods, and it sells for about $50, and then the device itself alone, $35.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: Where are these kids getting all that money? Back in my day, a pack of cigarettes was like $4. Yeah, and a pack of four Juul pods is about $16. So how did this become like the biggest e-cigarette in the country? Part of it is the design. So it was designed by these two Stanford design graduates. One had a background working at Apple. And you can see that in the device. It looks like this, you know, high-tech, sleek little thing.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: It looks different from other cigarettes. It's also easier to use. It doesn't require users to replace coils or atomizers, which other e-cigarettes require. Oh, but what really sets it apart, I think, is that it just delivers this mega dose of nicotine.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: So these two Stanford grads who designed the Juul, were they targeting kids, adolescents? Was it their idea to like, hey, let's make a cool thing for the kids? No, that's the interesting thing. So when you look at the official marketing online, they talk about how they're targeting adult smokers who want to quit and how they want to end the smoking epidemic.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: And how much nicotine does the Juul have in comparison to a cigarette? So Juul claims that one of their little e-liquid pods, those things that you stick in the end of the device and vaporize, they claim that it has the same levels of nicotine as a pack of cigarettes. But the tobacco experts I spoke to said they think it's more like two packs of cigarettes.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: Oh shit. And so users will go through a pod, like some are using a pod a day, some are using a pod every, you know, four to five days a week. But you're ripping through nicotine really quickly. And the way Juul hits your body, it delivers a very similar nicotine peak as cigarettes.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: And part of that is because the nicotine in Juul comes from nicotine salts. Okay. And that's a type of processed nicotine that's easily and quickly absorbed into the body. And it doesn't create the kind of irritation, the nicotine in cigarettes, which is free-based nicotine. And so it goes down much more smoothly.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: And that was something that really worried the public health people I spoke to. Do these kids know how much nicotine is in the Juul? Researchers actually just conveniently did a study on this question. They surveyed young people aged 15 to 24, asking them about what they knew about Juul and what they thought about it.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: And only a quarter of the people who knew about Juul knew that it always contains nicotine. And these aren't Juul users, these are just people aware. I recognized Juul, yeah. And then 37% of people who had used Juul in the last 30 days knew that Juul always contains nicotine. So most did not.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: You know, every once in a while a Juul video will pop into my Twitter feed. And there one I never forget of this kid walking around a party and he has a screwdriver in his hand but he holding it so you can only see the silver tip of the screwdriver. And he'll just like walk up to random people with the tip of his screwdriver and they all try to hit it thinking it's the jewel or some other vape pen.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: It's a screwdriver! It's a screwdriver! Everyone just seems to think this is like funny. It's a joke. I mean, the video is definitely funny. It's less funny when you think that a lot of people who are using it don't realize that it contains nicotine.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: I think the way public health people are thinking about it, groups like Tobacco-Free Kids and the American Academy of Pediatrics, they're really worried that this might be the biggest public health crisis facing a new generation of American youth.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Julia Belluz: After the break, I apologize to the youth of America for thinking their vaping is funny. Kids, it's not funny, it's dangerous, and we've written a song about it. It's coming at the end of the show. This is Today Explained.
--:-- [Break music plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hey, is this the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder? Possibly. Who's this? Sean Rameswaram, Today Explained. Hi Hey, you know, there are so many mysterious things about you, Breakmaster. Your voice, but also your location. Where do you live? You know, space. Space. Wait, are you calling me to ask for money?
--:-- [Breakmaster Cylinder's voice]
--:-- Breakmaster Cylinder: Yeah, I'm wondering if you get transfer-wise out there. Because despite the distance, I still wouldn't mind you sending me some money and you can do that cheaply and easily and efficiently with TransferWise. Is that so? What an amazing service that sounds like.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can find out at TransferWise.com today for free. You can find out for free, Breakmaster. Oh, I like things that are free. Breakmaster, you make a lot of music for a lot of podcasts. I wonder if you make the music for the Love It or Leave It podcast.
--:-- Breakmaster Cylinder: I don't. What is that? Oh. I hope you'll tell me. It's a podcast where John Lovett, you might know him as a host of Pod Save America or as a speechwriter for President Obama. He has on comedians, journalists, celebrities, and activists for a roundup of the week's news. They play games, bring on actors for dramatic readings, and rant about everything from flight delays to Tom Cruise stunts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, God damn it. Today, today explained. Today explained.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: I'm Elijah Stewart and I'm 19 years old and I attend Providence College. I first heard about the jewel my sophomore year in high school. I think it started to become a habit maybe after even a week of using it. I mean, I cycle through a pod between every four to five days, which means like $16, $32 of my own money, which over time you're paying $1,200 in Juul pods for a year.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: So it really does do some damage to your wallet once you become hooked. When I was a senior in high school there was these group of girls that thought tobacco was so disgusting and despised it and was like how could you do that to yourself and then a couple weeks later every single one of them owned a jewel and by a weekend they were hooked.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: I think the flavors were really appealing to the public because when you hit like a mango pod per se it kind of tastes in a way like candy almost and you also get the head rush.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: I was talking with some students who I help tutor in math and science and they were telling me how They even Juul. And they were, they're in middle school still. They're in seventh grade, eighth grade, who despise cigarettes and everything, like think it's the cool thing to do, to Juul.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: I feel like a lot of the concerns with smoking are alleviated by vaping because there's obviously so much less damage to your lungs. You're not smoking tobacco, it's vapor. But how harmful are e-cigarettes? How harmful is, like, Juul?
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: Yeah, so there's no question that e-cigarettes are safer than cigarettes, and most public health groups, I think, would agree with that assessment. But safer doesn't mean safe. And I think that's what people forget here, what the comparator is. Cigarettes are one of the deadliest products available to consumers.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: They still kill something like one in five Americans, and that's the message, I think, that gets lost here. And the reality is we don't know about the long-term effects of e-cigarettes. Will they cause cancers? Are they going to harm the lungs or circulatory system in ways we can't even imagine right now? We just have no idea, and they haven't been used for long enough to know.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: What about nicotine? We know it's addictive, but is it dangerous? Here the thing Nicotine is not as deadly as many of the toxins and chemicals in conventional cigarettes but it is extremely addictive It targets the reward circuitry of our brain and there some concern that exposing young people to nicotine may affect how their brains are developing and in ways that may sensitize them to substance use disorders later.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: And quitting nicotine, it's serious. People go through really intense withdrawal symptoms, so we're talking about nervousness, restlessness, moodiness, anxiety, sleep disturbances, you know, changes in appetite, headache, constipation, weight gain, fatigue. It's hard enough for adults to handle this, and I think these are symptoms we probably don't want our teenagers experiencing.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: On the other hand, if you're a smoker, maybe a product like Juul can help you quit, and it's this potentially powerful harm reduction tool, and that's also why regulators are a little hamstrung, and there's been this conundrum around these devices. Products like Juul, they might hook a generation on nicotine with all these nasty effects that we've described, but they also might help smokers quit.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: Is that happening? So that's another thing we don't know. So the National Academies of Science came out with a big report this year, and they looked at questions around the health impact of e-cigarettes, and they found there was insufficient evidence that e-cigarettes can help people quit smoking. But there is a lot of evidence that most of the adult e-cigarette users are dual users, so they smoke and vape.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: So they might be people who are using vape devices to try to quit smoking. Maybe they're smokers who are vaping in places where they can't smoke just to get the nicotine they need.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: How has that changed the way tobacco companies sell cigarettes or market cigarettes? Are they all getting onto the vape bandwagon now or what? So yeah, a lot of these big tobacco companies have their own e-cigarette products and the market is pretty mixed.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: There are these small companies and startups with vape products, and then there are many products coming from big tobacco companies. You mentioned smoking rates have been on this steady decline over the past several decades. So if all these kids are smoking Juuls now, could they end up reviving cigarettes, ironically, tragically?
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: That's really the million-dollar question. Again, when we were growing up we didn't have these less harmful options available when maybe we wanted to dabble in smoking and try something out and so maybe you know the kids these days who are trying Juul or other devices maybe they're going to be exposed to less harm than we were when we were trying cigarettes but on the other hand maybe these devices renormalize smoking or they get young people into nicotine, and that leads to this tsunami of public health effects that no one can foresee now.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: When I was in Toronto smoking cigarettes for the first time, I remember when they put images on the packs of cigarettes, like a cancerous lung, or a kid saying, my mom's dead. And I'll never forget that image of a hand squeezing 20 cigarettes and all this toxic bile coming out of it. These images are seared into my mind.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: But I haven't heard anything about vaping to make me feel like it's dangerous or terrible. So we haven't updated our health warnings on cigarette packs since 1985.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Elijah Stewart: What if our show made a song to help kids understand what's wrong with juuling? That would be great. You know what musical artists we could parody? Juul? Teenagers suckin' on a USB key He says at least it's not a cigarette And you agree He hits the thing a hundred times a day The teacher tries to confiscate The kids, there's no way Another mango puff, a cucumber puff Can't get enough, you know you love it When your selfie blows up But don't go rape your jewel Cause it's full of nicotine Vape your Juul It's like one or two packs of smokes Don't go vape your Juul It's really not cool La-da-dee-da-dee-dee-da-da Ah-ha-ha-ha Julia Blues doesn't Juul. She writes about health at Vox. Christina Animeshan sings better than anyone else at Vox, and Noam Hassenfeld is the Rick Rubin of Vox. I'm Sean Ramas from This Is Today Explained. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. Bridget McCarthy is our editor. Afim Shapiro is our engineer. Luke Vanderplug produces, and the unreachable Breakmaster Cylinder makes music for us.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher, and we're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm John Henry. I am eight, nine years old, and I live in Washington, D.C. You can follow Today Explained on Twitter at today underscore explained.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more conversational tone]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks again to TransferWise for supporting the show this week. TransferWise helps you get your Jason Bourne on, your James Bond. You get a borderless account that lets you hold over 40 currencies at once and convert between them whenever you like. You can feel real fancy when you go to TransferWise.com today or download their app.
