Normal cigarettes kill on average, about 480,000 people per year, and most people know that smoking is bad for your health. What most people don't know is that e-cigarettes/vapes, which were originally marketed as a safer tool to help people quit smoking normal cigarettes, can be just as deadly. E-cigarettes have around 20x the nicotine of a regular cigarette, and nicotine addiction can damage young people’s brains. Little education is done on just how dangerous these products are. Even worse, e-cigarette companies try to aim their harmful products at teens and adolescents. In this article, I will be explaining how e-cigarette companies aim their products at teens, the education that needs to be done on e-cigarettes, the consequences of nicotine addiction in teens, and the dangers of disposable e-cigarettes.

First, the ways e-cigarette companies aim their products at teens. Almost all e-cigarette companies aim their products at teens.  Everything from the packaging to the flavors, to the ads on social media, all work to promote e-cigarettes and vape products to teens. According to a University of Auckland study called “How savvy marketing made vaping into a youth sensation” by Sophie Boladeras, May 17th, 2023, “E-cigarette companies utilize various techniques on platforms like TikTok to allure young people, prompt their followers to engage and share their content, and ultimately, to acquire their products.” E-cigarette companies also use a wide range of flavors, everything from gummy bear, to cotton candy, to even bacon-flavored e-cigarettes to appeal to teens and adolescents. An article titled “9 of the Strategies Big Tobacco Used to Target Kids with E-Cigarettes”, by the American Lung Association states, “Almost 90% of middle and high school students who vape reported using flavored e-cigarettes, the top five flavors being fruit, candy, dessert/other sweets, mint, and menthol.” With all the ads that teens see, whether on social media or in person, better education should be done on e-cigarettes so consumers can know how dangerous they can be.

Second, the education that needs to be done on e-cigarettes. In “The Vaping Epidemic in Adolescents'' an article by The National Library of Medicine, Kristen Jones and Gary A. Salzman, Jan-Feb 2020, 1991, “70% of high school students had tried traditional cigarettes. That number has been going down, to 58.4% in 2003 and even further down to 28.9% in 2017.” The main reason there have been fewer and fewer people smoking traditional cigarettes is all thanks to the education about the dangers of smoking cigarettes. The same cannot be said for e-cigarettes, in a study done on JUUL pods, a brand of e-cigarette, by the Drug and Alcohol Independence, says that “39% of adolescents did not consider JUULs to be e-cigarettes at all, and 63% of adolescents did not know that JUULs contain nicotine.” Better education focusing on how harmful these products can be needs to be done to hopefully prevent nicotine addiction in teens.

Third, the consequences of nicotine addiction in teens. There can be big consequences of early use of e-cigarettes. E-cigarettes have around 20x the nicotine as a traditional cigarette, so nicotine addiction is a real problem e-cigarette users face. The main part of the body nicotine can affect is the brain, and the results of nicotine addiction are shown in an article by the CDC describing the dangers of nicotine addiction in teens, “Using nicotine in adolescence can harm the parts of the brain that control attention, learning, mood, and impulse control. Each time a new memory is created or a new skill is learned stronger connections – or synapses – are built between brain cells. Nicotine changes the way these synapses are formed.” Because so many teens were getting addicted to nicotine, restrictions were placed on most flavors of refillable e-cigarettes, but limits were not placed on disposable e-cigarettes, which can be just as deadly as refillable ones.

Lastly, the dangers of disposable e-cigarette use in teens. In 2020, in an attempt to prevent more kids from vaping, the FDA issued a ban on the sale of most flavored e-cigarettes. The only flavors not affected were tobacco and menthol-flavored pods. What the FDA failed to do was also ban the sale of flavored disposable e-cigarettes. Disposable e-cigarettes are not meant to be refilled with pods, they are battery-operated and do not need to be charged. All flavors of disposable e-cigarettes are currently legal and can be bought online and in stores, and there are little to no restrictions on them. One of the biggest risks concerning these disposable e-cigarettes is people trying to refill or recharge them. There are many sites online giving directions on how to refill them, but exposure to the liquid nicotine in the vapes can be very dangerous. The dangers of being exposed to liquid nicotine, outlined by Kelly Johnson Arbor, a Medical Toxicologist, in an article by Poison Control, states that “Symptoms of nicotine poisoning can include nausea, vomiting, tremors, and heart palpitations. In severe cases, seizures and death can occur.” I think to stop the purchase and sale of disposable e-cigarettes, the FDA should place the same restrictions on rechargeable and refillable e-cigarettes.

With all of the people who die from medical conditions related to smoking, it's not a surprise that many smokers switched to smoking e-cigarettes. E-cigarettes were originally marketed as a safer tool to help smokers quit, but the negative effects of smoking e-cigarettes are starting to show. Many, if not all tobacco and e-cigarette companies, use social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook to market their items to teens and adolescents. They make using e-cigarettes look cool, fun, and harmless, to try to get teens to try their product. Unfortunately, most people don’t know how dangerous they can be. Exposure to liquid nicotine or the unregulated chemicals in e-cigarettes/vapes can be deadly, and little education is done on how dangerous they can be. The consequences of using these products long-term are not known yet, but unless you want someone writing an article about how the “safer option” to help quit smoking ruined so many lives, I would recommend steering clear of e-cigarettes.