Ex-smokers ‘freaking out’ about ban on Juul pods and e-cigs

Keep your bans off her e-cigarettes.

Kelly Maxwell, a 30-year-old from Orange County, New York, said she’s “freaking out” about a potential Juul ban. She credits the vaping device with helping her recently quit cigarettes, after smoking them on and off since she was 13.

“I switched to Juul for harm reduction,” she said of saying goodbye to her beloved Natural American Spirit pack. “I have an addictive personality and I don’t do well with cold turkey quitting.”

But the Food and Drug Administration banned Juul products last Thursday, citing concerns about its toxicology data. Though the company got a temporary reprieve the next day, the e-cigarette giant’s future remains uncertain.

America’s biggest e-cigarette distributor has been blamed for the youth vaping epidemic, but adult users like Maxwell say they’ve come to rely on Juul to help them smoke fewer cigarettes and that they don’t know what they will do with a ban.

Maxwell tried giving up cigarettes at various points over the past decade, but she fell off the wagon hard in 2020 during the early days of COVID lockdowns.

“I was smoking cigarettes more than ever,” she recalled. Her job as a producer for TV shows and documentaries often involved traveling out in the field, but that was put on pause and it made her anxious.

Last month, she tried again to wean herself off of smoking cigarettes. On the weekends, she sometimes smoked a pack a day, while during the week she’d go through five to 10 cigarettes.

Now, Maxwell typically goes through a four-pack of Juul pods, which costs around $20.99 in under one week. It’s still cheaper than what she spent on cigarettes, estimating she shelled out around $30 per week, sometimes nearly $50.

Juul was designed by two Stanford grad students who wanted to create a gadget that would help them and others smoke fewer cigarettes. It launched in 2015 with the seemingly noble aim of taking on Big Tobacco, but it ultimately became part of it.

Patricia Folan, a registered nurse and the director of the Northwell Health Center for Tobacco Control, is skeptical of Juul as a tool to help smokers.

“My experience with e-cigarette users in our cessation program has been that they report feeling more addicted than when they smoked cigarettes. They attribute the difference to the fact that they are able to use the vape products constantly throughout the day compared to the limited time they smoke individual cigarettes,” Folan explained.

“It has not been demonstrated that e-cigarettes help people quit smoking combustible cigarettes. Often, they become dual users,” she said, noting the dangerous impact e-cigarettes have on the heart and lungs.

Folan continued: “The health effects related to smoking cigarettes or using e-cigarettes are hazardous. We know from decades of researching the long-term health effects of smoking cigarettes. It is still to be determined what the long-term effects of e-cigarettes will be on adults and teens.

“Many of them contain cancer-causing agents. The high levels of nicotine can interfere with the developing brain of teens and lead to lifelong addiction.”

Maxwell is hoping she won’t have to deal with a Juul ban, but she is starting to make alternate plans.

“I was thinking about going out and getting more of the tobacco cartridges, even to sell them,” she said.

If that day ever comes, she may consider lighting up Black & Mild cigars as an alternative to going back to cigarette smoking or she’ll just go greener.

“Honestly, I’ll just smoke more weed,” Maxwell said.