The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning to Juul Labs about their advertising practices and ordered them to make changes in a letter sent on Sept. 9. The FDA argued that Juul was making false claims about the safety of their products to teenagers, contributing to an increase in teen vape use.

This action from the FDA comes a year after they declared teen e-cigarette usage a health epidemic. The FDA stated there has been an 80% increase in high schoolers who vape in the past year.

“I think JUUL’s original target was to get adults off of cigarettes but as they continued to make more money from underaged kids they got carried away and stopped caring who’s buying their devices,” Grace Lampugnale ’20 said.
In the letter to Juul Labs, the FDA pointed out specific false claims JUUL has made about their products being safe. This includes comments a JUUL representative made while speaking to students, saying the “FDA was about to come out and say [JUUL] was 99% safer than cigarettes,” according to the letter.

Westport is hosting its own seminar on teen vaping on Sept. 21 at Town Hall. Tricia Dahl, a Senior Research Assistant at Yale, will be talking about the long-term effects of e-cigarette use and vaping. The meeting will cover how vaping affects the performance of student athletes and how to recover. Both parents and students are permitted to attend.