The Food and Drug Administration has reversed its marketing ban on Juul Labs after new information and studies were provided, but doctors warn these products are still toxic.
A two-year ban on Juul vaping products is now up in smoke. The FDA reversed its hold on Juul. They originally banned the company from marketing their products due to limited evidence on possible toxic ingredients inside the pods.
However, due to new laws and new information provided by Juul Labs, that ban evaporated. Which frustrates pulmonologists like Lee Health's Dr. Shyam Kapadia.
“Vapes can contain up to ten times the nicotine of one single cigarette,” he said. “And those vapes were designed that way on purpose so that they can get you addicted.”
Kapadia said Juuls are dangerous. He has put many patients on ventilators due to vape-induced lung injuries.
“We just had a patient a couple of weeks ago who was on the ventilator for several days fighting for his life,” he said. “The patient came to the hospital with very low oxygen saturations and was on the brink of death that we had to bring him back because he decided that he wanted to vape.”
A major cause of this is due to the ingredients inside the e-cigarettes.
“Like aldehyde diacetyl nicole,” he said. “Things that lodge into your lungs, things that are found in weedkiller. They put that into vapes. And those are things that you don't want in your lungs in the first place. And they can cause a lot of harm.”
Kapadia said marketing bans need to be in place for our protection.
“Companies like Juul did what they would do to make millions and millions, billions of dollars for themselves,” he said. “They didn't care about youth. They didn't care about addiction. They didn't care about your family when you got addicted and ended up on life support in our hospitals.”
When it comes to children, Kapadia said 2.2 million children are addicted to vaping in the United States.
The director of Family Advocacy at the Children's Advocacy Center, Vail Fisher, said this is a trend happening in SWFL.
"We're seeing it quite frequently, even with our middle schoolers and high schoolers and sometimes even elementary schools that are coming in and their parents express concerns for vaping," Fisher said.
The majority of children choose to pick up flavored vapes.
“It's unfortunate, especially when it's somebody younger youth that didn't know any better,” Kapadia said.
They are finding ways to get vapes and hide them from adults at school and home.
“What children are dealing with is that they can engage in vaping in between classes, in the restrooms if they're able to keep it discreet,” Fisher said. “That's an additional risk because then we're seeing increased nicotine use within our kids."
Kapadia hopes the FDA is working to create more permanent bans on vapes.
"If I had a chance to talk to the FDA, I'd tell them to ban vapes,” he said. “Let's do the right thing. Let's do what's best for our community. Let's do what the medical associations have been telling us for years.”
Kapadia wants to not rewrite the past when it came to smoking cigarettes, and look to the future instead.
“Make sure that we don't have a community full of cancer disease,” he said.
Fisher offered advice to parents who may be going through a troubling situation with their children.
“If I have a parent that comes to me and says, ‘I have my middle schooler, they're vaping. I know they are. I don't want to necessarily accuse them, but at the same time, I want to take protective action.’ What I would say is that you want to check your intent. What is the intention?” Fisher said.
Fisher said to lean away from accusatory words and choose to have educational conversations with your child instead.
“Another thing you could do is to the CAC, we serve four different counties,” Fisher said. “So we have a wide array of resources readily available for any parent who wants to reach out and contact us, and as well as any child that might need an as well as any child that might need that support.”
If your child is addicted, free help is available. Just click here .