Throughout middle and high schools across the country, juuling has become an issue that is becoming difficult to crack down.

The United States Department of Health states there are an estimated 51.2% of teens that are underage juuling. The product is legal for adults 18 and older, but this is not stopping the underage juuling epidemic.

Many long-term effects are still unknown about juuling because of how new the product is. Juuls are mostly nicotine causing small affects on how kids participate, learn, and focus in schools. When you first start juuling the normal effects of nicotine could be felt but eventually juuling could become addicting.

“I think a lot more kids use juuls than smoke cigarettes, more people use them because they don’t have the tobacco product but they still have the nicotine addictive substances,” senior Sydney Adler said.

This epidemic may keep spreading and growing, or juuling may just be a fad and disappear over the rest of the year. Juuling started off slowly but quickly grew in popularity with 18 and 24-year-olds from 2017 to 2018.

Freshman Angel Means thinks that juuling will disappear by stating

“No I think it will fade away just like the vapes did,” Means said.

Senior Trent Nusz disagreed with Means.

“I think this will be a long-term problem just like cigarettes,” Nusz said. “A lot of kids think ‘oh they are not cigarettes, they are not making me smell bad, or they are not going to give me cancer’ but in all honesty juuls cause a lot of problems.”

The question is though why do kids start juuling when they know it’s bad for them? To popular belief it is usually because kids want to look cool or be popular.

“Well I think pure pressure is one of the causes and that this makes them look cool,” Nusz said. “Unfortunately, a lot of kids theses days will do anything to be popular and look cool.”

Juuling has now become a problem throughout the school day. Students will ask to use the restroom, but instead will actually juul.

“I think that it’s kind of hard (for the administration) to be everywhere, there isn’t enough administrators (for that),” Adler said. “We don’t have cameras so it’s not like they can be everywhere at once tracking everything down.”

Social Studies teacher, Josh Shirley, said it is the flavors and options that attract high school students to juuling more than a cigarette or e-cigarette.

“I think that part is potentially dangerous,” Shirley said. “I know it’s not just a Rose Hill problem, it’s a United States problem. Because of the availability and it’s easy to hide and the flavors that they are after make it a choice.”