Last week, after a five-year delay, the Food and Drug Administration finally authorized the marketing of Juul’s e-cigarettes. To my great surprise, there was very little outcry.
Oh sure, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which has waged war against Juul for nearly a decade, called the authorization “a big step backward for preventing youth e-cigarette use,” and the American Lung Association said it was “deeply troubled” by the decision. But only one legislator of note, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, a Democrat, took the opportunity to criticize the decision, while the American Cancer Society, another Juul hater, didn’t even bother to put out a press release.
There is a good reason for this lack of outrage—two, in fact. The first is that the so-called “youth vaping crisis,” in which Juul was accused of hooking kids on nicotine, has vanished. In 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 27.5 percent of high-school students had vaped during the previous 30 days, with the sleek Juul e-cigarette by far the most popular brand. Last year, the CDC reported that the percentage of high-school students who vaped had dropped to 5.9 percent—with fewer than one percent using a Juul product, the company says.
