By Olivia Warren | Staff Reporter

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given JUUL sixty days starting Sept. 12th to prove they can keep their devices away from minors otherwise they will be removed from stores altogether.

JUUL is a smoking device similar to an e-cigarette that has taken off in as short as a year. The product is intended for adult users to cut down on smoking cigarettes with this small and accessible alternative.

The issue is that children who have never smoked cigarettes before are purchasing JUUL products illegally and becoming addicted to nicotine.

The FDA stated, “…since the beginning of March, FDA compliance checks have uncovered 40 violations of illegal sales of JUUL products to youth”.

Though this may be the case, it is not entirely the company’s fault for the purchase and usage of JUUL products by minors but rather the vendors’ for allowing sales to children.

Children have been accessing and using e-cigarettes and ‘vapes’ long before JUUL came around, and I believe they will continue to purchase and utilize them long after JUUL is removed.

To remove JUUL products from stores completely would only spark a rise in the purchase and sales of cigarettes which would not necessarily aid the problem.

Or in another case, similar to Prohibition, taking away JUUL products would only make them more enticing to children which would create more online sales than before.

Emma Sams-Tye, a junior at A&M-Commerce, said, “Taking JUUL off of the market would only heighten my interest in cigarettes that contain harmful chemicals for the body and have proven to cause cancer in multiple cases.”

Another junior at TAMUC, Valerie Hartweg, has come to the same realization, stating, “I am worried about smoking cigarettes in the instance JUUL is taken off the market.”  

JUUL users are threatened by this influx in minors purchasing the product because the FDA would be taking it away from the adults it was intended to be used by.

As a JUUL user myself, I propose that taking away the brand from stores completely is not the answer but rather cracking down on online vendors and regulating checking identification in gas stations and smoke shops where the merchandise is sold.

Parental control should be another factor in cutting down on JUUL usage by children. Parents should be monitoring their children’s online orders and whereabouts rather than suing a company for their child’s sudden nicotine addiction.  

This is more of a regulation problem than an issue with the JUUL Company and brand itself.