The FDA announced the launch of the first vaping prevention television advertisement on July 22, 2019, mainly for the potential danger of the use of vapes among minors. The FDA also plans to provide high schools across the United States with the latest posters and educational materials as part of The Real Cost youth e-cigarette prevention Campaign.
Public education on e-cigarettes was first launched in September 2018. Persuasive advertisements were posted on digital media and social networking sites. Posters on e-cigarette prevention were spread in high schools all over the country among 10.7 million teenagers aged 12-17 who used or were willing to try e-cigarettes.
As the first anniversary of the e-cigarette prevention campaign approaches, new TV advertisements and school resources are being launched to keep young people informed about the hazard of e-cigarette use.
“The disturbing adolescent epidemic is likely to undermine our years of progress in preventing tobacco use among adolescents. We must work to address this serious trend and constantly alert young people that tobacco products are dangerous.
As part of the campaign, the new ads highlight social concerns about teenagers’use of electronic cigarettes – according to the survey, teenagers who use electronic cigarettes are more likely to start smoking cigarettes, which is likely to lead to related addictions and diseases, and has a serious negative impact on teenagers’ health.
Ned Sharpless, MD, FDA agency, said: “We said in the new advertisement,’This is not magic, this is statistics’. We cannot allow the next generation of young people to become addicted to nicotine. We will continue to work to keep American children away from electronic cigarettes through policies that limit teenagers’access to electronic cigarettes; continue to lead an initially successful public education campaign to warn young people about the dangers of all tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes; and enforce strong law enforcement to keep manufacturers and retailers from illicit marketing. The sellers will bear the corresponding legal liability.
The new TV advertisement, called “Magic”, is featured by Julius Dein, a popular street magician. In advertisements, the magician magically turned electronic cigarettes in the hands of teenagers into traditional cigarettes in front of them. With visual impact, teenagers who use electronic cigarettes are more likely to start smoking real cigarettes. These risks were published in JAMA Network Open, emphasizing that young people who use e-cigarettes are more likely to try traditional cigarettes in the future than non-users. This is also the conclusion of the 2018 National Academy of Sciences, College of Engineering and Medical Sciences study on electronic cigarettes. These new ads will run on national television networks, such as TeenNick, CW, ESPN and MTV, as well as music streaming websites, social media networks and other youth-oriented media channels.
Research on teenagers transfering to traditional smokers has aroused social concern. In the past few years, electronic cigarettes have been the most popular tobacco product among young Americans. In 2018, more than 3.6 million junior and high school students across the country were using e-cigarettes, an increase of 1.5 million over the previous year, according to a survey conducted by the FDA and the CDC. The data also show that younger users use it more frequently than in 2017, and the proportion of who choose more flavors of e-liquid has increased significantly has risen greatly.
The Real Cost campaign emphasizes that nicotine addicts the brain and make it crave more nicotine, especially for developing young brains. Other news highlighted that vape aerosol may contain dangerous chemicals, such as acrolein, which can cause irreversible lung damage, formaldehyde, a carcinogenic chemical, and toxic metal particles such as chromium, lead and nickel.
Since its launch, The Real Cost e-cigarette prevention campaign is showing its results. The campaign initially focused on teenagers’frequent use of social media, and in more than nine months it accumulated 2 billion teenagers’ viewings. On the social media platform, the FDA has attracted more than 578,000 teenage audiences, 89,000 shares and 31,000 comments. In addition, as the FDA began to drive teenagers who wanted to quit smoking to SmokeFree.gov, the overall interaction between all users and the National Cancer Institute’s cancer information telephone and online chat services increased by more than 250%.
Next month, the FDA plans to release new posters with e-cigarette prevention information that will be displayed in high school bathrooms, where many teenage vaper are. It works with Scholastic, a global children’s publishing house, education and media company, and distributes posters to all public and private high schools in the United States. These new posters complement the posters distributed in high schools across the country last year and provide new information. For teenagers, such as:
· “You are delivering toxic metal particles such as nickel, lead and chromium directly to the lungs.”
“When you know what vapes contain, you won’t be comfortable using them. Vaping can expose you to the same carcinogenic chemicals as cigarette smoking.”
In addition to the materials currently available for high school use, the FDA, together with Scholastic, plans to develop curricula and provide information for junior high school teachers, students and parents throughout the school year 2019-2020. In response to the high demand for potential health consequences of young people’s e-cigarette use, the agency has also developed posters and resources specifically for public health stakeholders, such as doctors, youth groups, churches, state public health institutions, etc.
In addition to the education campaign focusing on teenagers’electronic cigarette smoking, the FDA Youth Tobacco Prevention Program also takes targeted measures to combat the illegal sale of electronic cigarettes to teenagers. The agency is also working to further discuss how to help children who have become addicted to electronic cigarettes quit smoking.
The Real Cost e-cigarette prevention campaign cost nearly $60 million. The campaign is part of the FDA’s efforts to prevent tobacco-related diseases and deaths and complements the agency’s other youth tobacco prevention campaigns. The Youth E-Cigarette Prevention Campaign is an extension of the content launched for the first time in October 2017 and follows the same framework as the Real Cost cigarette prevention campaign, which has prevented nearly 350,000 adolescents from starting smoking, reduced expensive health care, wage losses, reduced productivity and increased disability-related societies. The Real Cost campaign saved more than $31 billion for many families and countries.
