It started as way to quit smoking—but now Juul itself is the teen drug of choice
Welcome in to Plain English for Monday, June 18, 2018. On today’s episode, you’ll learn why Juul, a kind of e-cigarette, is now the most popular drug among American teenagers—and why that has some people worried. We’ll also talk about how to use the English phrasal verb “sweep through.”
Today is episode 56, so you can find the full transcript of today’s program on the web site, at PlainEnglish.com/56. You probably know by now that each transcript includes instant translations of difficult words and phrases from English to Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and French. And if you’re listening on the go, the translations work great on your phone. Just tap on a highlighted word and you’ll see the translation into your language. PlainEnglish.com/56.
Juul in school: e-cigarettes are the drug of choice among American teens
The latest trend sweeping through America’s high schools and middle schools isn’t a celebrity or television show—but an old-fashioned drug, nicotine. Unlike their parents and grandparents, though, teenagers today are getting their nicotine fix through water vapor.
Electronic cigarettes take a flavored liquid mixed with nicotine, heat it up, and release it as water vapor for users to inhale. It’s a way to get a nicotine fix without all the nasty downsides of lighting up a cigarette. The biggest nasty downside, obviously, is the tar and carbon monoxide that comes from lighting the tobacco on fire and inhaling the smoke. That’s the part of cigarette smoking that gives you cancer, not the nicotine, so an electronic cigarette is a huge improvement on traditional smoking. E-cigarettes won’t make you smell bad, either, and they’re easy to use discreetly so you don’t have to go outside to take a pull.
As one famous line goes, people smoke for the nicotine, but they die from the tar. So if electronic cigarettes can give smokers the nicotine their bodies crave, but without the smoke that kills them, then that’s a good thing, right?
If only it were that simple. Because now a lot of people who had never smoked before have started using e-cigarettes for fun. And, you guessed it, those people are young.
Enter Juul. Juul, spelled J-U-U-L, is by far the most popular brand of e-cigarettes. A Juul is a small device that looks like a flash drive or a portable phone charger, and you buy pods of liquid, which produce the vapor. The cartridge costs $35 and four-packs of pods cost $16, so $4 per pod. The pods contain the same amount of nicotine as a pack of cigarettes, so Juul pods are actually a cheaper way of getting nicotine than cigarettes are. Juul comes in eight flavors: cucumber, mango, mint, crème brûlée, menthol, fruit medley and two that taste like tobacco. The most popular are mango and mint.
Juul has become a cultural phenomenon that has taken parents, school officials, the US government, and the medical profession by surprise with its popularity. Teenagers are [taking Juul] in school, at home, in their cars—all the time, everywhere. They start early in the morning and sleep with a Juul under their pillows. They plaster Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube with photos and videos of themselves with their Juuls. They buy personalized, colorful skins for their Juul devices. They use Juul while drinking; they use it with their friends; they use it at home and hide it from their parents. They make internet memes about Juul. And all the while, they are ingesting a very addictive drug, at a time when their brains are still developing.
You see, while Juul is undoubtedly better than cigarettes for people who were once cigarette smokers, it’s pretty bad for people who start using Juul without ever having smoked. The impression among young people today is that smoking is gross, but Juul is great; they think it’s a “harmless cigarette” that helps relieve stress.
A lot of people disagree, especially about that harmless part. Even if nicotine doesn’t cause cancer, it is an extremely addictive drug, and people are taking it at a time when their brains are still developing. By using a drug like this, you train your brain to reward your body for taking this drug. That’s why an addiction to nicotine in any form early on can be extraordinarily difficult to quit later on in life. It might also contribute to poor impulse control or attention deficit disorder.
For its part, the company does not market to young people and has stated that they don’t think that anyone should start using Juul unless that person is already a smoker. Their perspective is that their product is a life-saving innovation that will help people who smoke now to switch to a much safer alternative that could save their life. In the United States alone, 500,000 people die each year due to smoking, and cigarette smoking is still the number-one cause of preventable deaths. Juul says they want to be the product that prevents those deaths.
In order to fulfill that mission, they have to make their product attractive enough to win over existing smokers. But the cooler, more attractive the product, the more likely people will start using Juul for its own sake, instead of as a tool to quit smoking.
Meanwhile, schools and parents around the US are starting to respond to Juul. Schools are closing bathrooms and introducing e-cigarettes into their anti-smoking programs early. And parents are paying closer attention to those small, ubiquitous devices that they thought were flash drives.
I’d like to say hi to a few listeners today. Lucas in São Paulo; Anna from Budapest, Hungary; and Inbar from Israel all wrote to say hello over the last week and I wanted to say hello right back to you all. Thanks for listening to the program and for being in touch.
I thought that some of you might be curious about where your fellow listeners are, by and large. So let me share a few facts about the audience of Plain English. First of all, the country with the most listeners by far is Brazil. That really surprised me. The next-most popular country is Mexico, which is what I expected. Then comes Japan, the United States, Germany, Turkey, and Poland. The interesting this is that we have had listeners in 108 countries around the world, which is great. Just in this week, I’ve had people from five or six different countries send me notes. So wherever you are listening from, even if you’re the only person in your whole country who listens, you are a part of a big community around the world full of people who are working on their English. And it is a sincere pleasure for both JR and me to be involved in your lives and a part of your English journey.
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