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December 2018 www.boosterredux.com
Mouthpiece E-juice Pod
Hidden Hits
LED Power Indicator Green = Full Charge Yellow = Half Charge Red = Low Charge
USB Magnetic Charger
Battery
Magnetic Charging Port
JUULs increase in popularity, presence hard to detect WORDS BY Nicole Konopelko & Emma Lawson
NOTE: The students interviewed for this story requested anonymity* due to fears of getting in trouble for JUULing on school property, which is against school rules.
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PHOTO ILLISTRATION BY Aubrey Bolinger & Amanda Bourbina
Find the JUUL:
hile her classmates read Romeo and Juliet out loud, freshman Jessica Adams* sticks her hands under her hoodie to take three hits from an e-cigarette. Adams uses her hands to air out the vapor underneath her hoodie, and passes the device, disguised in notebook paper, to one of her five friends sitting in the back of the room. The group passes around the e-cigarette until each student gets through three hits. To the ordinary eye, it looks as if five students are passing notes in class. “In your eyes, you think, ‘Oh yeah, this is pretty fun because I’m doing something I’m not supposed to be ‘oh, I’m breaking the rules,’” Adams said. “That’s how we all pretty much felt.” The e-cigarette used wasn’t a vape or hookah pen — it was a JUUL, an e-cigarette that heats an inserted pod containing nicotine and an aerosol that is inhaled. JUUL Pods come in multiple flavors, including cucumber, mango and crème brûlée. Adams and her friends are not the only PHS students to have fallen for the JUUL. The Booster Redux’s survey of 175 PHS students found that 114 students, or 65.1 percent, have used a JUUL, and 70 of those students have used it on school property. The students at PHS, however, are a part of a national statistic. Across the U.S., almost one-fifth of middle and high school students have seen a JUUL used in school, according to an April 2018 Truth Initiative survey of more than 1,000 youth between 12 and 17-years-old. “It’s more prevalent and more of a problem this year,” said Hope Harmon, a registered nurse at the
Crawford County Health Department. “You went from not ever hearing about it to it’s in the classrooms within a few minutes time. That tells us that it’s out there and prevalent.” According to the company’s website, JUUL was founded by two former smokers as an alternative to tobacco cigarettes. But Adams wasn’t using it to curb her smoking habits. Adams’s history with the JUUL stretches beyond those few seconds in which she took those three hits. She originally became captivated with JUULing immediately after seeing her friend do it. “It just looked fun,” Adams said. “At first, [my friend] was just like, ‘Do it, it won’t do anything.’ I really thought it wouldn’t do anything. Later on, it became something.” JUULs contain among the highest nicotine content of any e-cigarette on the U.S market, with one JUUL Pod containing just as much nicotine as a pack of cigarettes, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. But according to Dr. Susan Pence, a pediatrician at the Crawford County Health Center, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not require JUUL to display all of their ingredients on packaging. The only chemicals that doctors know of are glycerin, Cooper water, nicotine and formaldehyde — the same substance that is used to preserve dead bodies. “The evidence is pretty clear that it is harmful,” Pence said. “It is not any safer than smoking regular cigarettes. It can actually be less safe because we actually don’t [fully] know what’s in them.“ According to Pence, each part of a JUUL equates to a different health risk. “It’s similar to if you’re in chem lab and you don’t have the hood turned on to get rid of the chemical fumes,” Pence said. “[If you] inhale it, you’re going to
get some pretty big irritation in your chest. That can take weeks to go away.” Adams, for example, began noticing sharp pains in her chest three weeks after she began JUULing. “I didn’t feel like it was a good thing,” Adams said. “I felt pain and that’s whenever I realized, ‘This is not okay for me. I shouldn’t be giving my body this.’” The JUUL’s design makes it easier to hide than ever. The devices can be charged in a USB port, and are often mistaken as flash drives. The only signs of a JUUL being used are a vapor and a sweet scent. “I picked one up the other day and thought it was a portable charger because it looks exactly like something that [a student would] plug into [their] cell phone,” principal Phil Bressler said. “I don’t know how many times people have had them laying on the table and I had no idea.” Students have developed different strategies to hide their JUULs. Senior Roger Davidson,* for example, clenches his JUUL into his fist. After taking a hit and holding his breath for five seconds, the vapor from his JUUL dissipates. He does this at least twice during every class period: a teacher has yet to notice. “I became good at [hiding] it,” Davidson said. “I practiced at first to see if it would work. I was like, ‘How long do I need to hold my breath, how much air do I need to suck in?’ I figured it out within two or three tries and I was just like, ‘Cool. It’s like a smoke trick.’” Senior Cooper Brown*, on the other hand, doesn’t use his JUUL in classes. Instead, he JUULs in the privacy of a bathroom stall. “Honestly, it’s kind of satisfying,” Brown said. “It’s like calming because of the nicotine in it. I’ll leave during class once every two days just to use the restroom and JUUL. But if I don’t leave during the class, it’s during passing period.”
“Honestly, it’s kind of satisfying. It’s like calming because of the nicotine in it.”