Include a correctly formatted bibliography for the article's resource. Hint: a few great places to look for psychology current events in addition to the daily newspaper are periodicals such as Time, Newsweek, U.S. World & News Report.  These magazines often contain articles which highlight discoveries in neurobiology. 

 
Requirements For Current Event #5:
 
Choose the article about sleep, dreaming, hypnosis, altered states of consciousness, etc. from below;
Is Juul Targeting You?
 
Write one paragraph briefly summarizing the article. 
Summary must include:
The psychological issue being discussed, exposed, studied, etc.
What scientific information is presented to support/contradict the assertions made in the article?
What potential holes/questions might exist that are not addressed in the article?
 
Write one paragraph sharing your opinions, thoughts, questions, etc. about the topic of your article. 


Is Juul Targeting You?


Caroline Tompkins/The New York Times/Redux

The Juul now accounts for three-quarters of e-cigarette sales in the U.S.

It’s as small as a flash drive but has as much nicotine as a pack of cigarettes. Did the company behind the popular electronic cigarette intentionally market its product to teens?

December 10, 2018 By Joe Bubar
When Brennan McDermott was a student at Simsbury High School in Connecticut, he found himself in a situation that seemed right out of a teen movie: “A couple of my buddies were like, ‘Hey, let’s go to the bathroom,’” says McDermott, who graduated last year. “I was like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on here?’ I got kind of uncomfortable  with it. They were all passing it around. I didn’t take it.”

The “it” that McDermott was offered was a small, rectangular electronic cigarette, or vape, called the Juul.

The Juul and other e-cigarettes have become increasingly common in high schools across the country. About 20 percent of high school students have tried vaping in the past 30 days, according to preliminary federal data—an increase from about 12 percent a year ago (see graph, below). And the Juul is by far the most popular brand, accounting for nearly three-quarters of e-cigarette sales, according to Nielsen, a global information and data company.

Many teens say they’re drawn to the Juul because of its different flavored liquids, such as cucumber, mint, fruit, and mango. Plus, the device’s sleek design (it resembles a flash drive) makes it easy to conceal from teachers and parents.

The F.D.A. (Food and Drug Administration) has called the spread of teen vaping an epidemic. And now the government agency says it’s investigating whether the company Juul Labs intentionally marketed its product to youth, which is illegal. The F.D.A. raided Juul Labs’ headquarters in San Francisco in late September, seizing more than a thousand pages of documents to evaluate Juul’s sales and marketing practices.

The agency also announced a plan last month to restrict the sale of most e-cigarette flavors to stores that prevent minors from entering or have a section that’s closed off to minors.  


Juulers Against Juul
Kids who Juul speak out against e-cigarettes.
Getting Teens Hooked?

Marketing cigarettes to teens is nothing new. Tobacco companies used to openly advertise their products to young people. By the early 1900s, some cigarette packs included baseball cards, and in the ’40s and ’50s, tobacco ads often featured actors and athletes—even Santa Claus and doctors—happily puffing away (see “A History of Cigarette Ads,” below).

“The tobacco industry has long known that in order to get smokers in the future to be lifelong customers, they have to start them in the teen years,” says Dr. Robert Jackler, an ear, nose, and throat specialist at Stanford University who heads a group studying tobacco advertising. “So the tobacco industry uses many devices to attract young kids. They use images and slogans that suggest that if you smoke, you’ll be socially popular.”

Jackler and others argue that Juul targeted teens the same way—but brought these marketing techniques into the 21st century. They point out that the Juul’s original 2015 ad campaign featured attractive, young-looking models and colorful designs (see “Glamorizing Addiction,” below).

 And many of these ads were posted on Instagram and Twitter, with hashtags like #juulvapor, #juulmoment, and #juulnation that attracted young people and allowed them to post using the same hashtags.

The ads seem to have done the job. An October study by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found that almost a quarter of Juul’s Twitter followers are under 18.

A former senior manager at Juul told The New York Times that although the ad campaign wasn’t specifically targeted at teens, he and others in the company were well aware it could appeal to them.

‘The tobacco industry uses many devices to attract young kids.’

Juul’s critics also note that the vape’s sweet flavors increase its appeal to teens.

“Young people say that flavors are the top reason they try e-cigarettes,” says Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University who has studied vaping. Experts say teens are also drawn to the Juul “skins” or “wraps” sold by other companies, which sport colorful designs, cartoon characters, and popular fashion brand labels like Supreme and Adidas.

Juul Labs denies that it ever sought to hook teens. The company says its mission since its founding in 2015 has been to get people who are addicted to tobacco cigarettes to switch to e-cigarettes, which have been touted as being less harmful.

“We are committed to deterring young people, as well as adults who do not currently smoke, from using our products,” Juul Labs C.E.O. Kevin Burns said in a statement.


U.S. Food and Drug Administration

The F.D.A. is placing these anti-vaping posters in thousands of school bathrooms, portraying nicotine crawling through teens’ bodies. Do you think this anti-vaping ad campaign is effective?


‘Rewiring’ Your Brain

But the attorney general of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, who is also investigating the company, doesn’t buy that explanation. She contends that Juul has been luring teens to try the product and has introduced many to nicotine, the highly addictive substance that’s in both traditional cigarettes and many e-cigarettes.

“From our perspective, this is not about getting adults to stop smoking,” says Healey. “This is about getting kids to start vaping, and make money, and have them as customers for life.”

E-cigarettes were invented in China in 2003 as a healthier alternative to traditional cigarettes. But because e-cigarettes are so new, there isn’t much research yet on their long-term health effects, causing many scientists to question the safety of inhaling the chemicals in them.

Early studies on the effects of vaping paint a disturbing picture.

“At this point there’s not a lot of data to tell you how safe these products really are,” says Michael Ong, a professor of medicine and health policy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Ong believes that the F.D.A. should place stricter regulations on e-cigarettes. Otherwise, he says, we may “rue the day we allowed all this to happen.”

Some early studies on the effects of e-cigarettes do paint a disturbing picture. In August, scientists at the University of Birmingham, in the United Kingdom, found that vaporized e-cigarette fluid is toxic to cells in the lungs that are key to the immune system, inhibiting their ability to protect against harmful particles. These effects, the study says, are similar to those seen in smokers and people with chronic lung disease.

And while vapers don’t inhale the cancer-causing tar and chemicals in tobacco cigarettes, experts say the nicotine in e-cigarettes remains a serious health issue for teens, whose brains are still developing. Research has shown that nicotine may be as addictive as heroin or cocaine.

“The nicotine in these products can rewire an adolescent’s brain,” F.D.A. commissioner Scott Gottlieb wrote in a statement, “leading to years of addiction.”

Indeed, there are concerns that smoking e-cigarettes could be a gateway to smoking tobacco cigarettes. A 2017 study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago found that teens who vape are seven times more likely to try traditional cigarettes than teens who don’t. Studies have also shown that nicotine can increase the risk of high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.

Cracking Down on Juul

In September, the F.D.A. announced plans to place poster ads in 10,000 school bathrooms, explaining the dangers of e-cigarettes (see photos, above).

The agency also required Juul and four other popular e-cigarette companies to submit a proposal by mid-November detailing how they’ll keep their products away from teenagers.

The F.D.A. is cracking down on stores that sell e-cigarettes as well. It sent warning letters to more than 1,000 retailers, including 7-Elevens, Walgreens, and Shell gas stations, and issued 131 fines for selling the devices to minors.

In response to mounting criticism, Juul discontinued its social media promotions last month. It removed all posts from its Instagram account, which is now no longer active. And in anticipation of the F.D.A.’s planned restrictions on flavored e-cigarette sales, Juul announced last month that it would suspend the sale of most of its flavored e-cigarette pods in retail stores.

The company also plans to invest $30 million over the next three years in research and strategies to prevent young people from vaping.

But not everyone is convinced that a company that has been valued at $16 billion will really try to dissuade people from buying its product.

After all, Jackler, the specialist at Stanford argues, “this company got really rich by tricking you into doing something that you can’t stop.” 

With reporting by Amos Barshad, Matt Richtel, and Sheila Kaplan of The New York Times. Additional reporting by Lisa Lombardi.

Teens & Cigarettes

E-cigarettes are now more popular among teens than tobacco cigarettes


SOURCE: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

*2018 data for e-cigarettes is preliminary. 2018 data for tobacco cigarettes was not available at press time.


Glamorizing Addiction

Juul Labs is under fire from critics who say the company intentionally promoted an addictive and dangerous product to young people. They contend that the Juul’s original advertisements, like this 2015 magazine ad, featured young-looking models to attract teenagers.


Juul

A History of Cigarette Ads

How tobacco ads that target teens have evolved in the Instagram age

In 1964, the U.S. government released the results of a major scientific study on the health effects of smoking, leading to laws that banned cigarette advertising from TV and radio. But tobacco companies found new ways to market their products to young people.

“The base of our business is the high school student,” an official at Lorillard, a now-defunct tobacco company, stated in a memo in 1978. 

Perhaps the most infamous—and effective—of these advertising campaigns was the cartoon known as Joe Camel, which appeared on billboards and in magazines from 1988 to 1997. The camel became as recognizable to many kids as Mickey Mouse, and is credited with greatly boosting sales among teens.

In 1998, the Joe Camel ad was banned and cigarette manufacturers were prohibited from targeting youth. But critics contend that these companies still do so in subtler ways—for instance, on Instagram. 

A recent study by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and other public health groups found that tobacco companies are paying popular Instagrammers to post photos of themselves with cigarettes, so when their followers see the posts, they don’t know they’re actually viewing an ad.   

“What [tobacco companies] are doing is a really effective way to get around existing laws [that] restrict advertising to young people,” says Robert V. Kozinets, a public relations professor at the University of Southern California. “You get incredible campaigns, the likes of which I’ve never seen before.”


From the collection of Stanford University (tobacco.stanford.edu)


1930 Tobacco companies hired actors to portray doctors in magazine ads and, later, TV ads. The message: If doctors say smoking a particular brand of cigarettes is healthiest, then it must be true.


Image Capture/Youtube


1960-63 During commercial breaks or the closing credits of the popular cartoon The Flintstones, Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble could often be seen puffing away on Winston cigarettes. That’s because Winston was a sponsor of the show.


From the collection of Stanford University (tobacco.stanford.edu)


1988-97 Ads featuring the Joe Camel mascot were an obvious attempt to target youth. The advertisements led to new rules prohibiting tobacco companies from marketing to minors.


via Instagram


2018 A recent investigation by anti-smoking groups found that tobacco companies are paying Instagram influencers (users with a lot of followers) to post photos of themselves with cigarettes. These types of ads are effective because many people who see them don’t know they’re actually viewing ads.