# Public Perceptions and Discussions of the US Food and Drug Administration's JUUL Ban Policy on Twitter: Observational Study

## TL;DR

This study analyzed public reactions on Twitter to the FDA's JUUL ban policy, finding differing opinions based on age and other demographics.

## Contribution

A novel analysis of public sentiment and demographic associations with the JUUL ban policy using deep learning and topic modeling.

## Key findings

- Pro-policy and anti-policy tweets were nearly equally represented in the dataset.
- Older users (over 29) were more likely to support the JUUL ban than younger users.
- Key topics included health concerns, market trends, and comparisons to cigarette bans.

## Abstract

On June 23, 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration announced a JUUL ban policy, to ban all vaping and electronic cigarette products sold by Juul Labs.

This study aims to understand public perceptions and discussions of this policy using Twitter (subsequently rebranded as X) data.

Using the Twitter streaming application programming interface, 17,007 tweets potentially related to the JUUL ban policy were collected between June 22, 2022, and July 25, 2022. Based on 2600 hand-coded tweets, a deep learning model (RoBERTa) was trained to classify all tweets into propolicy, antipolicy, neutral, and irrelevant categories. A deep learning model (M3 model) was used to estimate basic demographics (such as age and gender) of Twitter users. Furthermore, major topics were identified using latent Dirichlet allocation modeling. A logistic regression model was used to examine the association of different Twitter users with their attitudes toward the policy.

Among 10,480 tweets related to the JUUL ban policy, there were similar proportions of propolicy and antipolicy tweets (n=2777, 26.5% vs n=2666, 25.44%). Major propolicy topics included “JUUL causes youth addition,” “market surge of JUUL,” and “health effects of JUUL.” In contrast, major antipolicy topics included “cigarette should be banned instead of JUUL,” “against the irrational policy,” and “emotional catharsis.” Twitter users older than 29 years were more likely to be propolicy (have a positive attitude toward the JUUL ban policy) than those younger than 29 years.

Our study showed that the public showed different responses to the JUUL ban policy, which varies depending on the demographic characteristics of Twitter users. Our findings could provide valuable information to the Food and Drug Administration for future electronic cigarette and other tobacco product regulations.