The Modern Epidemic
The explosion of pop culture in the 2000s has crystallized the image of an American teenager on the national stage. No longer are American youth associated with a dedication to sports or to academics. Instead, their characterization has now become an addiction to technology. With increased access to social media, many parents have faced obstacles in their efforts to protect their children from pervasive trends that run rampant and unregulated online.While these trends have taken the internet by storm one day and disappear the next , one has remained persistent through it all: the nicotine epidemic.
To look towards past precedent, it’s clear that the numbers of e-cigarette and vapes over the past decade have surged dramatically. According to the 2019 National Youth Tobacco Survey, between 2011 and 2019, the number of high school students using e-cigarettes grew from 1.5% to 27.5%. But, when we attempt to analyze the reason behind this increasing trajectory of use, it points us to one main culprit. Social media has played a significant role to the growing use of nicotine among adolescents, where platforms such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snapchat have done nothing less than glamorize vaping, often featuring influencers using the devices in a way that appeals to highschoolers, middle schoolers, and even elementary school students. According to a study by the Truth Initiative, exposure to e-cigarette content on social media is associated with higher rates of vaping among teenagers and younger children. In an effort to appeal to their younger audiences, Companies have piloted various marketing initiatives on these adolescent-populated apps, with things like new flavors, trendy music events, and even scholarships worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for students. These scholarships are obtained through student essay submissions on the potential benefits of vaping, ultimately only growing the drug’s domain. As popularity explodes throughout the medium of Social media, it’s clear that public perception of these drugs has surfaced as the driving factor for its increased usage.
The problem is that despite the influx of drug usage nationally, federal policy has continuously failed to regulate it. In fact, past legislation and efforts from the government to curb nictoric products have only unintentionally accelerated the popularity of vaping. The primary act that was passed to regulate nicotine products was the Tobacco Control Act, which gave the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) immediate regulatory authority over most forms of cigarettes, and authorized the agency to extend its jurisdiction to all other tobacco products. The Tobacco Control Act was signed into law on June 22, 2009 with the goal of reducing smoking rates, preventing tobacco-related diseases, and limiting the appeal of tobacco products to minors. Its key provisions include bans on certain types of advertisement and promotion of tobacco products, mandated health warnings, and prohibition of flavored cigarettes. Despite the policy proving effective in declining the numbers of teen cigarette use, , it set a precedent for a new problem as youth scrambled to find alternatives.. When students were asked in the National Youth Tobacco Survey which tobacco products they perceived as causing no harm or little harm when used only occasionally, 28.2% said e-cigarettes, compared to 9.5% for cigarettes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that many young people report using e-cigarettes because they think they are less harmful than traditional cigarettes. While most teenagers are aware that vaping is bad, the perception of cigarettes being worse, an idea that has been supported by government action, will always make picking up a juul the “safer” and more appealing option
But, the responsibility of the nicotine endemic is on more than just the consumers. That’s because the Tobacco Control Act didn’t just attract teens to the e-cigarette market; it drew companies in as well. Because of the regulatory gap that the act left between traditional nicotine nicotine products and newer products like e-cigarettes, e-cigarette companies now had more freedom then their traditional tobacco competitors to aggressively market their products towards youth. Problematically, this only incentivized companies who had exclusively sold traditional cigarettes to move away from their roots and instead towards the vape industry. The National Library of Medicine corroborates this point by explaining that “the electronic cigarette industry has grown in size and organizational complexity in recent years, most notably with the entry of major tobacco companies in 2012.” In the three years between the passage of the Tobacco Control Act in 2009 and their official entry into the newer nicotine industry, they were forced to adapt to the restrictions of the act in order to keep their own profit alive. Now, companies like Marlboro have formed their own conglomerates which include-vapor production.
As the prevalence of vaping among youth continues to increase and past legislation has routinely shown ineffective, the focus of our nation should now shift to determining how to impede this movement rather than advance it. With its rapidly growing nature, it’s t become imperative now more than ever to look past the smoke for a clear solution.
Our Sources
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5869180/
https://www.rallyhealth.com/quit-smoking/why-do-so-many-teens-vape
