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. 2022 Jan;31(1):7-10.
doi: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2020-055727. Epub 2020 Oct 13.

Online popularity of JUUL and Puff Bars in the USA: 2019-2020

Hongying Dai  1 , Jianqiang Hao  2
Affiliations

Online popularity of JUUL and Puff Bars in the USA: 2019-2020

Hongying Dai et al. Tob Control. 2022 Jan.

Abstract

Background: The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a flavour ban on cartridge-based e-cigarettes in January 2020. It is unclear whether e-cigarette users will switch to disposable vaping products with a variety of kids-appealing flavours available.

Methods: We performed piece-wise regression and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) algorithms to compare the relative search volume (RSV) of JUUL and Puff Bar (a disposable vaping product) using the 1-year Google Trends data from 24 February 2019 to 20 February 2020, separated by three events that may have spurred changes in RSV for each product.

Results: The RSV for JUUL was relatively stable before Trump Administration announced plans to ban flavoured e-cigarettes. After that, the RSV for JUUL dropped sharply (rate of change=-8.8 per week) from 11 September 2019 to 17 October 2019 when JUUL Labs announced to halt online sales of some flavoured products, and the RSV resumed the decreasing trend after FDA announced enforcement policy of cartridge-based e-cigarettes on 2 January 2020. In comparison, the RSV for Puff Bar started to increase after 11 September 2019 with a low rate of change (0.6) until 17 October 2019. After that, the increase in RSV for Puff Bar accelerated. The RSV of puff bars surpassed that of JUUL during the week of 2 February 2020.

Conclusion: The popularity of Puff Bar on Google Search suggests that users may replace cartridge-based vaping products with disposable e-cigarettes in the circumvention of the partial flavour ban. Continuous surveillance and further assessment are needed to prevent potential loopholes in tobacco regulation.

Keywords: JUUL; Puff Bar; disposable E-cigarettes; flavour ban.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Overall Google Trends in comparison of ‘Puff Bar’ vs ‘JUUL’, 24 February 2019–22 February 2020.* ARIMA, autoregressiveintegrated moving average; FDA, Food and Drug Administration; RSV, relativesearch volume. *The RSV was collected on a weekly basis from February 24, 2019 (week 1) to Februrary 22, 2020 (week 52). The solid curve is for actual Google RSV. The dotted curve stands for the expected values of RSV using the ARIMA algorithm.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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