The Juuling Epidemic

STORY BY COLE SHUCK »
It is no secret that Juuling has become an

epidemic in high schools throughout the country. Students are not surprised when they see vapor coming out of the corner stalls when

they are in the bathroom. More majors for tobacco use have been given this year than any other category of major. So what is causing
students to start Juuling during school, and
what is the school doing to stop it?
Juul has become popular among teens
for its convenience. Because the typical Juul
is extremely small, it can be easily hidden,
easily charged, and is very easy to use as
there are no buttons on the device. Along with
that, it produces hardly any odor and smoke

compared to vapes and other electronic ciga-
rettes. This makes it very easy for students to

get buzzed throughout the school day without
being caught. While nicotine products cannot be
purchased by students under 18, there is an
extremely easy way around that by having a
student over 18 buy it for them. So really, as
long as a student has enough money and a
friend over 18 willing to make the purchase for
them, they can easily get their hands on a Juul
if they ever wanted to.
A Juul starter pack that contains the Juul
device along with a charger and four Juul pods
at the local Kwik Shop is $49.99. A four pack of

Juul pods cost $15.99 which can get very ex-
pensive depending on how fast a person goes

through them. Because of the expense, many
students have switched from Juul to similar
products such as NJOY. An NJOY device only
cost $7.99 which compared to the Juul is
super-cheap, allowing even more people to
become hooked on this trend.
There are many effects that students at

EHS may be unaware of. E-cigarettes con-
tain a variety of harmful chemicals in their

vapor and even heavy metals like nickel,
tin, and lead. Diacetyl, one of the chemicals
used for the flavoring in many e-cigarettes,
has been recently linked to a lung disease.
While long term effects for Juuling in specific
are unknown because of how recently it was
created, the long term effects for nicotine are
known. One of the huge problems with teens
and nicotine is how nicotine damages parts
of adolescent brains. This can cause problems
in attention, mood, learning, and overall focus.
Juul and the rest of the e-cigarette industry
have done a variety of things to market these
products to teens and get them hooked on
nicotine at a young age. Since last November,

Juul is no longer selling flavors like mango, fruit, cucumber, and creme because of epidemic with teens and Juuls. Other companies have gotten creative with marketing to

students by disguising their products. One of
these examples is the PuffIt Inhaler Vaporizer,
which is a vape that looks like an inhaler.
Senior Kasper Hiebert-Kelley uses nicotine
products like these every day, but unlike other

students he feels these e-cigarettes have actually helped him.

“A while ago, I was pretty stressed so
some friends gave me cigarettes. It got bad to
the point where I was smoking like a pack a
day. Later I switched to a vape and because
I could control the amount of nicotine in the
juice it that helped me use a lot less nicotine
than I would have,” Hiebert-Kelley said.

When Juul started to get popular, Hiebert-Kelley started using it for awhile and just recently stopped.
“Honestly, I stopped Juuling not because
it was expensive, but because I upgraded my
vape,” Kasper said.
The recent rise in popularity from all of

these convenient nicotine products has result-
ed in more nicotine use at school. Vice Principal Joe Zlatnik said that 17 majors for tobacco/alcohol use have been made this year. None
of these have been alcohol, and only one of
these instances was a regular cigarette. The
remaining 16 majors in this category were for
e-cigarettes and Juuls.
So what is the EHS staff going to do to stop
students from Juuling at school, and has the
staff made any progress in stopping it this
year?
“We had a meeting early in the year and I
brought a bunch of different vape devices, and
most teachers didn’t know what they were,”
said Zlatnik. Now, more and more Juuls and
vapes are being detected because now the
teachers have learned to recognize them.
But, the difficult part of catching Juuling
and vaping is that it is frequently done in the
bathroom.

“We are aware that most Juuling is happening in the bathrooms, but I’m not going to start opening up bathroom stalls for obvious
reasons,” said Mr. Zlatnik.
Some of the Eudora’s staff including Mr.
Zlatnik recently met with a Douglas County
official about teens and tobacco use. They are
planning to do an event about this sometime
in April, where they can hear students’ input
on the matter, and possibly help stop this
trend of Juuling during school.