By ISABELLA VACCARO
Recently, the FDA issued warnings to several stores that sell Juuls to underage teenagers. They will continue these raids of Juul retailers across the country, following a barrage of complaints from parents and government officials about the detrimental effects of the highly fashionable, yet dangerous vape pen.
I have seen many news outlets cover the Juul craze; they warn of its horrifying health effects and inform readers that the FDA is taking action against the $15 billion company. The conversation has been around for a while, dating back to July, when CNN ran a piece covering the Attorney General’s investigation of Juul Labs and its supposed target market of minors.
However, it was not until I stumbled upon an article in Vogue, in which author Cazzie David, a Juul fiend herself, actually broke down the epidemic, that I became invested in the topic. David’s article, “How to Quit the Juul, According to Comedian Cazzie David,” is written as a first-person narrative that David uses to target the young generation of Juul-ers today.
She admits, halfway through the piece, that she had been Juuling while writing it — taking a “hit” every two sentences, to be exact. She uses stark metaphors to describe just how trapped Juul customers are, not only due to its “dangerously addictive” substance, but also its trendy appeal among the “cool kids,” saying that even “Coca-Cola is also widespread and addictive and still no one is Coca-Cola-ing around town.”
Everything anyone has ever thought about Juuls, but has been too afraid to admit, David blurts out, apologetically, in this piece about how to quit Juuling for good. The way she writes — seriously but masked in a humorous outer shell — makes you want to continue reading.
David lists 13 steps on how to effectively quit Juuling, each one with a more witty twist than the last. Some of her ideas? Letting a sweaty guy at a nightclub take a hit of it, buying a Gucci Juul sticker so you’re embarrassed to take it out in public, staring at yourself in the mirror with your phone in your mouth, or my favorite, imagining the moment God will replay your life for you when you die and realizing how many moments of it were spent sucking nicotine out of that Juul.
Her steps are wildly creative and funny, but many of them are actually plausible. They appeal to a young audience — an audience who is attending nightclubs and buying pack after pack of pods. It makes sense that an airy, yet actually important article like this should work in trying to help Juuling youngsters quit. The academic and sometimes arrogant language of CNN, The New York Times and other major news outlets probably push teenagers away in how they cover Juul news, but Vogue connects to its young readers, letting them know that they are not alone in this addiction, and there are ways to stop.