In May 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued warnings this year to certain companies that manufacture electronic cigarettes or other vaping devices. The warning was regarding the packaging of the e-liquids, which were made to look very similar to kids’ products like juice boxes and candy. Many of the products also had names that made them sound appealing to kids, like One Mad Hit Juice Box, which resembled apple juice, V’Nilla Cookies & Milk, which was packaged like cookies, and Unicorn Cakes, which showed cartoons of a strawberry drink and unicorns eating pancakes. Now, these products are being taken off the shelves.
Children sometimes drink the liquid nicotine, thinking it’s going to taste like juice, and they may suffer seizures, comas, and respiratory arrest. It takes as little as half a teaspoon of the liquid to poison a child. According to the F.D.A., more than two million middle and high school students used electronic cigarettes and related products in 2016, and the flavorings were given as one of the top reasons for use.
According to data from the National Poison Data System, there were 8,269 liquid nicotine exposures among children under six years old reported to U.S. poison control centers from January 2012 through April 2017. 83.9 percent of those were under three years old, and 92.5 percent were exposed through ingestion. Legislation requiring child-resistant packaging does appear to have some benefit, as the number of exposures before and after the laws went into effect decreased by 4.4 percent. Experts believe that a combination of childproof packaging and stricter regulations on labels and advertising could noticeably lower the risks.
According to a study published in BMJ, a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal, exposure to e-cigarette advertising can also affect children’s perceptions of smoking traditional cigarettes. 411 children between the ages of 11 and 16 who reported never having smoked tobacco cigarettes or used e-cigarettes were shown images of e-cigarette advertisements and then answered a questionnaire about tobacco cigarettes. 10 of the e-cigarette ads portrayed them as glamorous and another 10 portrayed them as healthy. The results showed that while exposure to the advertisements had no effect on the appeal of regular cigarettes, those who saw either set of advertisements viewed the harm of smoking one or two tobacco cigarettes on occasion to be lower than those in the control group.
In an interview with the New York Times, a former F.D.A. tobacco official called the move “addressing the visible tip of the iceberg” and pointed out that tobacco companies have many ways of circumventing the rules to appeal to kids. The FDA says that they expect some of the products will continue to be sold, only with different packaging and advertising.
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