Thanks to vaping, decades of anti-smoking progress in teens has been wiped out

For two decades, adolescent smoking has been on the decline, but thanks to vaping products like Juul (which has 75% of the market), teen smoking just jumped by levels not seen for 43 years.

Almost all the kids who vape are vaping nicotine: a toxic and highly addictive substance (source: smoker for 17 years, ex-smoker for 18 years).

Juul's income growth over the past year? 800%.

Nearly all of the increase comes from an increase in vaping nicotine, and my skepticism about this disappeared when I looked up revenue figures for Juul, the top seller of vaping devices and pods. I knew that the Juul fad had practically taken over American high schools recently, but it turns out that Juul reported a monster revenue increase of nearly 800 percent between 2017 and 2018 (from $107 million to $942 million), and they control about 75 percent of the market. That’s enough all by itself to account for a huge single-year increase in vaping.

The Juul Fad Is Far Bigger Than I Ever Would Have Guessed [Kevin Drum/Mother Jones]

(via JWZ)