Juul vape pens can be customised, made into fidget spinners – and one pod contains as much nicotine as an entire packet of cigarettes. No wonder kids love them

Meet Juul – the Marlboro of e-cigarettes that comes in creme brulee flavour

Name: Juul.

Age: Three years old.

Appearance: A small rectangular pen that contains a ton of nicotine.

Listen, I already know what e-cigarettes are. But the Juul isn’t just any e-cigarette. It’s the iPhone of cigarettes.

I don’t know what that means. Does it get drastically harder to use whenever a new model comes out? No, it just means that it is cool and well branded and kids love it.

Kids love e-cigarettes? Yep – despite the fact that the Juul website is only accessible by over-21s. E-cigarette manufacturers aren’t allowed to market to children – but last year, one Boston high school had to send emails home to parents because so many students were Juuling underage.

Specifically Juul? Yes. Juul has a 54% share of the e-cigarette market. That’s more than Marlboro had at its peak.

Why Juul, though, rather than any other brand of e-cigarette? Well, it might be the range of flavours. The Juul website offers vapeable pods that come in cool mint, creme brulee and cucumber, among others – although they are targeted at cigarette smokers, not children.

So that’s it? Juul is popular because it inspired kids to smoke cucumbers? Not quite. There is also something called the Juul Wave.

I’m not sure I want to know about this. The Juul Wave is when Juuls go viral. You can customise your Juul with nail polish. You can tweet memes about your Juul. You can hashtag your Juul on Instagram. In a horrorshow of inevitability, someone has already started making and selling a fidget spinner attachment for Juuls.

I hate everything about this. There is also a nicotine issue that we should probably address.

What nicotine issue? Each Juul pod contains 59mg of nicotine, which is the equivalent to an entire packet of cigarettes, and designed to last just as long.

Dear God. And although vaping isn’t thought to be as harmful as smoking traditional cigarettes, the general effects of nicotine still include addiction and “difficulty exerting energy and breathing”.

I’ve had an idea. Let’s ban them. The trouble is that Juul was initially designed as a cigarette replacement for people trying to give up smoking. But kids have discovered it, and it’s often the first thing they smoke.

But why? According to one student interviewed by the Panther, Chapman University’s newspaper, “(People) assume you’re cool if you’re Juuling. It’s a statement. Everyone wants a Juul because it’s recognisable, attractive and cool.”

This sounds exactly like a pitch scene from the first season of Mad Men. True, everyone smoked heavily on that show, and they all made it OK. You know, apart from all the heart attacks and terminal cancer.

Do say: “The Juul is cool.”

Don’t say: “But then again, sucking on a little torch that smells of cucumbers has always been cool.”

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