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Vaping Choices: Is Juul Bad for You?

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E-cigarette sensation Juul is arriving on our shores — but is it good or bad for you?

E-cigarette sensation Juul is arriving on our shores — but is it good or bad for you?

Juul has finally arrived in the United Kingdom, at a time when the American vaping startup is experiencing phenomenal growth and now has a valuation of an extraordinary $15 billion. Not bad for a company that only started life a few years ago.

For vapers around the UK and in Europe, there's now more choice than ever in terms of the vape gear you can get your hands on. And if the American public is anything to go by, it looks like Juul will also be a runaway success. Made by Juul Labs in San Francisco, the company's flagship product is a sleek vape pen that packs a powerful vaping punch, with its vape pods containing nicotine and available in a variety of flavours. It's simple, easy to use and has captured around 70% of the e-cigarette market.

That has Big Tobacco very worried indeed, because Juul users love the product for the sensation it gives them — closely resembling smoking tobacco cigarettes, but without all the thousands of toxic chemicals given off in burning tobacco, at least 70 of which are known to be carcinogenic. Up until now, Juul had only been available in the US and Israel and the company has been busy raising cash — $1.2 billion, to be precise — to fund its overseas expansion.

'Supportive UK Government'

Juul said it had decided to launch its European drive in Britain because of what it called the world’s “most supportive government” in terms of vaping. The product will be available in around 250 vape shops around the UK, including here, online, at Electric Tobacconist.

The UK has been at the forefront of efforts to back vaping as an effective smoking cessation method and is actively encouraging smokers to start using e-cigarettes. Earlier this year, Public Health England issued a renewed advisory, based on a study by independent tobacco experts. It found that "vaping poses only a small fraction of the risks of smoking and switching completely from smoking to vaping conveys substantial health benefits."

It said that if more smokers switched to vaping, there could be around 20,000 successful new quits every year and that, overall, vaping was associated with "an accelerated drop in smoking rates across the country." But the top health body noted that a lot of smokers still have incorrect information about e-cigarettes, wrongly believing they are as harmful as smoking.

Is Juul Bad for You?

There's a lot of information on the internet about Juul and whether it's good or bad for you. That's the internet for you, and there's certainly a lot of misleading information — and absolute fake news — out there. The truth is that Juul pods contain flavours ranging from mint, and mango, to cucumber and more and, while their nicotine level in the US is quite high, the company has had to lower the amount of nicotine in its pods to comply with European regulations, from 5% to 1.7%.  

The replacement pods also contain benzoic acid — a substance widely used as a preservative in food products — which allows nicotine to be delivered at a lower temperature, so that the vaping experience is not harsh on the throat.

So if you're a smoker and trying to give up and get healthier as a result, Juul is more or less the same as other vaping gear on the market — it’s certainly far better for you than continuing to smoke and damaging your health in the process.

Juul has taken the US by storm and created a verb along the way. Will you soon be Juuling too?

Looking for great vape gear with free e-liquid refills? Electric Tobacconist has just what you need — kits with three free liquids. 

By Pascal Culverhouse

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