Juul was TRYING to hook teens

Why target teens? To put it politely: 1) teens lack life experience, stubbornly ignore adult advice, and imagine themselves immortal 2) most teens succumb to peer pressure and join "cool" crazes 3) the cigarette industry had already cashed in on the addictive properties of a toxin called nicotine.

Juul Says Its Focus Was Smokers, but It Targeted Young Nonsmokers: The company planted the seeds of a public health crisis by marketing to a generation with low smoking rates, and it ignored evidence that teenagers were using its products. Juul’s remarkable rise to resurrect and dominate the e-cigarette business came after it began targeting consumers in their 20s and early 30s, a generation with historically low smoking rates, in a furious effort to reward investors and capture market share before the government tightened regulations on vaping.

As recently as 2017, as evidence grew that high school students were flocking to its sleek devices and flavored nicotine pods, the company refused to sign a pledge not to market to teenagers as part of a lawsuit settlement. It wasn’t until the summer of 2018, when the Food and Drug Administration [finally!] required it to do so, that the company put a nicotine warning label on its packaging.

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From 2016 to 2018, the years Juul’s growth became astronomical, the number of adult nonsmokers who began using e-cigarettes doubled in the United States, according to an analysis of federal survey data by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease. The study estimates that six million adults [and teens] were introduced to nicotine via e-cigarettes.

During that time, millions of high school and middle school students began vaping, according to federal health surveys. More than five million youths — one in four American high school students and one in 10 middle school students — now vape, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration said in a joint report this summer. Nicotine is a highly addictive drug that impedes the developing brain, and many teenagers have struggled to quit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/23/health/juul-vaping-crisis.html .