Parents Need to Know About a New Tobacco Hazard for Kids

 

November 25, 2021



Courtesy MT DPHHS

Most parents now have probably heard of JUUL, but how about Puff Bar?

The new National Youth Tobacco Survey shows that Puff Bar has overtaken JUUL and other brands as the most popular type of e-cigarette.

Like many e-cigarette products, Puff Bar comes in kid-friendly candy flavors. A key difference though, is that Puff Bar is a disposable product. Kids use one and throw it away. Use of disposable devices like Puff Bar increased about 1000% among high school e-cigarette users, according to the 2020 National Youth Tobacco Survey.

Disposable products are exempt from recent federal policies that restrict flavored pod- or cartridge-based e-cigarette products, such as JUUL. What’s more, Puff Bar claims to contain synthetic, or factory derived, nicotine. This is yet another example of how the tobacco industry creates new products to skirt regulations and addict new users.

Like JUUL, Puff Bar looks like a USB drive and is small and easy to sneak into the classroom. It’s also packed with high levels of nicotine, which is addictive and can harm child brain development. One Puff Bar contains about 50 cigarettes worth of nicotine.

The National Youth Tobacco Survey shows more than 2 million U.S. teens say they use e-cigarettes, with a quarter of them saying they vape daily. These results date from a pandemic year when many kids were away from school. Health officials and advocates fear that use numbers will increase again now that more kids are going to school in-person again.

About 8 out of 10 Montana high school students who use e-cigarettes reported using flavored products tasting like fruit, menthol, mint, sweets or alcoholic drinks, according to the 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Youth and young adults perceive flavored products as more appealing and less harmful than tobacco-flavored products.

It’s important to talk to your kids about the risk of tobacco products, which can harm their health and lead to lifetime addiction. Just because something tastes like candy doesn’t make it safe.

To learn more about how flavored e-cigarettes like Puff Bar harm Montana kids, visit tobaccofree.mt.gov.

For those under the age of 18 needing help quitting all forms of tobacco, including e-cigarettes, free and confidential help is available at MyLifeMyQuit.com.

 

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