It’s time to quit the Juul

Take a moment to consider your health and your wallet

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS | PHOTO COURTESY
Juuls may look like an unassuming USB, but they hold a lot more dangerous substances than gigabytes.

Unless you have been living under a rock, as a college student you most likely have a Juul or have a friend who does. The Juul craze started a few years back, as the e-cig craze transitioned from large devices to smaller, more discreet ones, to the now-infamous Juul brand e-cig. It seems as though everyone is on the Juul, you can’t go to the bar without seeing multiple people using theirs, I’ve even seen people at Target and Walmart taking hits in the middle of the store.

The big pull towards e-cigs was that they were originally marketed to be safer than traditional cigarettes, although studies have come out within the past year suggesting that they may be just as bad. So now with a large number of college students addicted to Juul, I think we can all agree that it’s a problem.

It’s time to put the Juul down. I know how hard it is, I was an e-cig user for years and just recently quit cold turkey this past January. The hardest part about it for me was the habit of hitting my e-cig, not so much the addiction to nicotine itself. I started carrying around a water bottle to put something in my hand to replace the e-cig and chewed gum like a madwoman. I also did heavy research about the possible long-term effects of prolonged nicotine use which scared me straight.

I’m not going to sit here on my soapbox and say that I am better than others for quitting nicotine. Have I taken hits from my friends Juuls since throwing my own away? Absolutely. As I said, they’re everywhere. But throwing my device away reduced my nicotine use by a huge margin and I encourage others to do the same. I’ve noticed differences in my health, primarily, I don’t get out of breath anymore when I walk up a flight of stairs. Not to mention all of the money to be saved without having to buy liquid or pods every week or so.

I highly encourage current Juul users to do their research about the prolonged effects of nicotine use, calculate how much money you may spend on nicotine products every month, or even do something as small as lowering the amount of nicotine you put into your device.

It’s a new school year. Let’s make good habits, stop our bad ones, and take care of our bodies.

For more information I encourage you to check out this article written by the director of the Center for Tobacco Research Control & Education about the risks associated with Juul, Link can be found here:

https://tobacco.ucsf.edu/first-evidence-long-term-health-damage-ecigs-smoking-e-cigarettes-daily-doubles-risk-heart-attacks

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