Rapid proliferation of illegal pod-mod disposable e-cigarettes

Under pressure from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), JUUL Labs suspended sale of cucumber, creme, fruit and mango flavoured pods in US brick and mortar retail stores in November 2018 as part of the company’s plan to prevent youth e-cigarette use. Subsequently, mint flavour surged in popularity, against a backdrop of continued increases in youth e-cigarette prevalence.1 In October 2019, JUUL Labs halted sales of most of their flavoured pods, including mint, in retail stores and online, with the exception of menthol and tobacco. Other companies quickly capitalised on these actions and produced JUUL-compatible pods in a variety of flavours, including the most popular JUUL flavours (eg, mango, cucumber).2 In September 2019, we received anecdotal reports that a new vaping product—a disposable ‘pod-mod’, closely resembling JUUL—was popular among college students at a Kean university. We subsequently searched a sub-Reddit forum dedicated to JUUL to find mention of disposable ‘pod-mods’ which began appearing late Spring 2019. Brands mentioned in these threads included ‘Posh’, ‘Eon Stik’ and ‘Mr. Vapor,” and comments focused on tasting similar to JUUL flavours, lasting longer than …