Students walking around the University of Oregon campus may see a new type of ad on the sidewalks. It’s a yellow and green monster that might say something along the lines of “Still need another puff?”
This is part of the UO Health Center’s campaign to raise awareness of campus’ smoke- and tobacco-free policy, to let students know Juuls and other vapes fall under that policy, and that it can provide support to students looking to quit.
However, the national ban on Juul products has pushed students to use disposable vapes instead, and they’re more popular than ever.
The campaign began last fall, and Cate Clegg-Thorp, UO health promotion specialist, said that her team had been working hard to find the right message for the campaign.
“As a team, we came up with this idea and pulled from other campaigns we’ve seen be really effective among our age demographic,” Clegg-Thorp said.
Katy George, Student Services Enrollment Management strategic communications and marketing assistant director, said the campaign was meant to be surprising but not shameful. The signs were put in places students might think they could get away with hitting a Juul without being seen, to remind them that they aren’t that sneaky.
“We have three goals,” Clegg-Thorp said. “One is to increase awareness of the smoke- and tobacco-free policy — let students know that we have this policy, it exists. Two is that vaping and Juuls are covered under that policy. Lastly is to increase awareness that we do have support resources here on campus.”
Clegg-Thorp said that the lack of regulation means students are not informed about what they’re smoking. She said that they had found that 63% of Juul users and young adults don’t know there’s nicotine in the products.
However, while the university is trying to get students off Juuls, the e-cigarette market is already doing that on its own. As Karl Sundquist, manager of Hilyard Street Market said, people have become less interested in Juuls and their accessories since President Donald Trump banned some flavored e-cigarette products, which was announced Jan. 2, according to a press release from the FDA.
“When I started in November, we had Juul pod refills in four flavors, now we only have Juul in tobacco flavors or menthol, and that hurt sales. At the same time we brought Puffs in, and now Puffs dominate all of those sales,” Sundquist said.
Puff Bars are a new kind of vape that is a one-time-use, disposable e-cigarette. Each bar comes with 300 “puffs,” according to its website.
At the front counter of Hilyard Market, Sundquist has the guidelines of the ban printed on a piece of paper, the parts that allow the market to sell the bars are underlined.
“It just changed our business. It’s not a loss for us at this point because it’s more popular now. It looked like health issues with vaping products meant that people were going to be more timid to buy them, but it didn’t really affect our sales,” Sundquist said. However, he said he could see a future where Hilyard Street Market might discontinue the sale of Juul products altogether, in favor of local products such as Emerald Vapors.
Puff Bars exploit a loophole in the partial ban by being disposable, as Clegg-Thorp explained.
“[The ban is] only specifically targeting Juul and other specific closed-system, rechargeable reusable, refillable pods. So here enters the Puff Bar because it’s disposable and the regulation legislation does not regulate that device.”
Despite the shift away from Juul, Clegg-Thorp was confident that the campaign would still be just as effective on students.
“I think that Juul is so ubiquitous that it’s become a verb, and I think that our campaign will still apply to that behavior,” she said.
