Youth Ignorant About Nicotine Levels

Many U.S. youth don’t know how much nicotine is in the vapor products they are consuming, according to a recent study.

The study looked at 17-year-olds to 24-year-olds in California, asking them about their tobacco and nicotine usage, specifically pod-based e-cigarettes. The study showed that 26 percent of respondents had used Juul products, 24 percent had smoked combustible cigarettes, 23 percent had used nonpod-based e-cigarettes and smaller percentages had used other pod-based products.

Users didn’t know how much nicotine was in these products, though. At the time of the study, packaging for Juul products simply said “5 percent”; this has since changed to read “5 percent nicotine,” but that hasn’t helped young users determine what this means in terms of quantity or how it compares to nicotine content in combustible cigarettes, according to the study’s authors.

“These young people had no idea how much nicotine they were consuming,” said senior author Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University. “If we asked how many milligrams of nicotine are in a Juul pod, for example, we found the answers were all over the place.”

According to the study, young users chose pod-based e-cigarettes because of their ability to easily hide them (58 percent of respondents) and because the smell is less noticeable than other e-cigarettes (55.6 percent of respondents).