HJBR Mar-Apr 2019

50 MAR / APR 2019 I  Healthcare Journal of BATON ROUGE column PEDIATRIC UP IN SMOKE The term e-cigarette encompasses a wide array of devices that can look like anything from a traditional cigarette to a sleek USB stick. These devices use a bat- tery powered heating coil that transforms a solution containing nicotine, flavoring chemicals, and other additives into an aerosol that is inhaled into the lungs. Cur- rently, the top selling e-cigarette brand in the United States is JUUL, which began selling their USB shaped devices in 2015. To give you an idea of its popularity, as of last year, the company’s revenue hit the $1 billion mark. So, what exactly is contained in these vaping liquids?Well, to start with, nicotine. Many of those liquids which are market- ed as nicotine free were found to, in fact, Do you remember 1964? If you need a jog down memory lane or if that’s ancient history to you, let me give you a quick rundown...the cost of a new house was $13,050, a gallon of gas was 30¢, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize, and the Beatles held the top five spots on the Billboard Top 40 singles. That was also the year that for the first time ever, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a warning that cigarette smoking could lead to cancer. In the 55 years since this first warning, additional research has shown just how harm- ful cigarette smoking can be, and ultimately led to a dramatic decline in the rates of cigarette smoking here in the United States. When the Truth Initiative youth anti-smoking campaign was launched in 1998, 23 percent of teens were smokers. By 2017, that number had declined to 2.1 percent of middle schoolers and 7.6 percent of high schoolers—a successful endeavor to be sure. However, a new rising epidemic of electronic cigarettes and vaping is poised to cause the gains of the prior five decades to go up in (vapor) smoke.