E-Cigarette Maker Juul Labs Is Raising $1.2B(bloomberg.com) |
E-Cigarette Maker Juul Labs Is Raising $1.2B(bloomberg.com) |
I had no idea how pervasive Juul was for college students until my sister told me that multiple people were "Juul-ing" in all of her classes. Highly recommend this New Yorker article to understand the cultural phenomenon: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/14/the-promise-of...
People use them for starting to smoke just as much as stopping and they are also heavily used for non-nicotine products as well. I don't hold any moral judgements on the brand, or customers, but I was not going to spend my effort helping that become a bigger company.
You confused your personal morality, which seems more based on "would this rule benefit everyone applied universally" with the question you were asked, which is of the "does this provide the greatest good to the greatest amount of people" variety.
It's _possible_ that in the end, ecigs are not a net positive for humanity. But that is a belief without firm proof. They could be twice as addictive, but if they kill only 1/3 of us that cigs did, they'll be a net benefit. And 1/3 the lethality of cigarettes seems to be a drastic overestimation of their harm from the evidence we have right now.
Juul may help cigarette smokers get away from tobacco, but wow — stories about teens and young adults taking Juul hits every 10-15 minutes are something else. That’s just plain addiction, taking them far beyond the threshold of diminishing returns, even for caffeine-like self-medication.
There’s definitely a lot of money in creating addictions... this can’t be a long-term, net good to society the way it’s heading now.
These chemicals are approved as food additives, though.
If you're gonna be opposed to some fidget spinner infatuation on "think about the kids" public health concerns, start at what actually kills kids.
Juul is just the perfect intersection of portable, concealable, and apparently consequence-free. Kids will use it, and I don’t see a way around it. Good luck to the poor little bastards.
If these figures are well grounded in evidence then... probably yes.
It's possible to get unflavored e-cigarette juice, and when I was using an e-cigarette (i switched to gum) i tried to get it as often as I could. But it's really uncommon, most shops don't even have one, and the one i went to was often sold out.
I don't see how anyone gains from this, other than Juul's investors.
Aside from that, what bothers me with Juul and makes it possible for a competitor to potentially usurp them, even after the momentum they have behind them is how inconsistent the pod quality is. Let alone leaking, the pods degrade really quickly and juice sometimes seems to disappear. The liquid changes color and develops dark filaments even after less than a day passed since taking it out of its packaging.
I hope I'm wrong.
* [1] - https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/is-vaping-really...
Nicotine is highly addictive, but in itself does not kill you (at the amounts smokers/vapers are intaking it).
What kills you is the delivery mechanism. We have plenty of data for how the "burning up dried tobacco leaves" delivery mechanism kills you. However, currently, we have very little data regarding how propylene glycol does or does not kill you in the long term. That is the big open question when it comes to vaping.
2. Salt-based nicotine provides increased nicotine absorption and juul patented that. It's literally more addictive.
3. It blew the competition out if the water. The other ecig devices offered at convenience stores were underpowered, poor performing, and obviously low effort.
4. Distribution. Getting into convenience stores and gas stations was pivotal to their success but arguably the product quality drove distribution.
5. The device is sexy looking. It's a fashion statement.
A third party can't even tell their is anything special about your gum. So you would think it could be popular among high-school students and people on the air plane and the other situations that don't allow vapor clouds.
Quite frankly, the narrative to smokers who want to quit from vapers who have has been "it's different, but be patient"; if a closer analogue gets out there that closes the gap on attempts versus quits, I really think there's a no-lose situation.
All it took was self-prepared mixes, higher in nicotine, very low in aromas and those tobacco-like, vg/pg mix just as I like it.
Came out about fifteen times cheaper than the off-the-shelf juices. Compared to the cost of cigs, even not counting health effects, vape is about two orders of magnitude cheaper.
Now I dare someone tell me that 30+ 8mg cigs a day are somehow less harmful than ~8cc of vape.
I think this was the initial hope for e-cigs, but reality has turned out differently. These things are leading to a whole new generation of nicotine addicts at a time when smoking has fallen to all time lows in the US. Juul particularly is getting kids hooked that otherwise would have never touched tobacco, and they're getting a lot of heat over their advertising tactics now.
Do you have evidence of this? From what I've read (the report I saw last had data in 2016), e-cig use is way up but general tobacco use among youth hasn't significantly changed.
Is benzoic acid a carcinogen?
It is considered safe only at less than a .1% concentration in a finished product (Source) When benzoic acid and vitamin C (ascorbic acid) or citric acid are present, under the right conditions of heat and light, these two ingredients can combine to create the known carcinogen, benzene.
I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but I have to wonder if tobacco company PR agencies have anything to do with the proliferation of that particular talking point.
It doesn't seem like they're cannibalizing an existing market, as much as they are forging a new one.
[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22092035 [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/14/the-promise-of...
Sounds like you’re categorically ignoring whatever negative things don’t directly kill people... well-being encompasses a lot more than not dying.
As far as I remember, the vehicle is propylene glycol. It isn't biologically inert, and I'm not sure how much work has been done to study buildup within the lungs or combustion products. Combine that with dodgy sourcing allowing metal contamination.
It seems more or less the definition of trading the devil you know for one you don't.
But doea the harm reduction to pre-existing smokers outweigh the increased uptake in youth populations?
I think it’s normal to consider dependency and major withdrawals when stopping as pretty detrimental effects, whether or not any other symptoms are involved.
Not that everyone is bothered by that, but folks needing to vape every 10 minutes have a severely lowered quality of life (or the risk of having one), in my opinion — if only because their habit gets in the way of other things, or perhaps they forget their pod pack and have an incredibly bad day. I think that could be a whole lot worse than not having one’s morning cup of coffee.
However, there is quite a bit of research available [0, 1] that suggests that an addiction to one substance can prime the brain's neurological pathways to more easily become addicted to a second, unrelated substance.
By reducing the use of addictive substances overall, it might produce some decrease in addictions to more damaging substances (i.e. meth, heroin, etc).
Of course, the same argument could be said about alcohol or caffeine, and I don't think we're likely to see those go away any time soon. However, I think that's a false dilemma fallacy, as we're much closer (in % of population, at least) to reducing the use of nicotine than either of those.
[0]: https://harvardmagazine.com/2000/03/deep-cravings.html [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn1578
Got any evidence for that assertion? Just saying it doesn't make it true, and the big problem with this research area is there are two different powerful groups (tobacco copmanies and public health policy makers). So the entire literature needs to be treated with great care. David Nutt, the british addiction specialist is a sober, sensible guy, and I'd go to what he has to say about it as a first port of call.
The negative health effects from smoking are from inhaling burning plant matter, overwhelmingly. If we go from the current rate of smoking to 100% of adults vaping the health effects on a population level would still look good. Smoking is really bad, vaping is new, stupid and may in the long run have some negative effects on your health but we don’t have any strong evidence it does.
I've always stopped vaping after not too long due to issues with the ejuice tanks or just not feeling like doing it anymore.. but I actually picked up juul a couple days ago because I do enjoy that occasional 'nicotine rush', so trying this again =p
I may be an idiot, but I'm also a stat. =)
So, we worked for decades to eliminate cigarette dependency, made huge progress, and now kids largely don't smoke. And then vaping came along, and a company is receiving billions from investors to get kids addicted to nicotine.
Vaping is healthier, but I can't think of a conceivable reason why this is a good idea.
If a kid picks up a nagging but ultimately harmless nicotine habit, is that really the end of the world? Given what we know so far about vaping and its safety, I'd say you could make an argument for the pleasure of flavored nicotine outweighing the annoyance of addiction.
Even if there was, traditional cigarettes are on their way out, and what we are left with is something as dangerous as coffee and a bit more expensive.
In fact, there are some methods of quitting an addictive substance that work by actually stopping the ingestion of the addictive substance in the first place.
Nicotene alternatives are akin to advertisers recommending you to take a break from Facebook when it's too overwhelming, instead of just deleting your account entirely, like a person with self control and agency might do when products and services continually make you regret ever starting to use them in the first place.
Getting rid of the burning tar is a HUGE win for smokers, healthwise.
(2) you chose to overlook his point that vapes are also an on-ramp to smoking, not just an off-ramp.
(3) people really oversell the whole “vape isn’t combustion” bs. Both the solvent and the flavors form toxic aldehydes when vaped, and their long term safety has not been assessed.
Of course tar is bad for lungs. It turns out that products such as tobacco can have multiple health hazards. I do not besmirch people for improving the health of others. I simply detest marketing that acts as if addiction is something to strive for.
I guess we will find out in 30 years.
Either way, the bulk of health damage from smoking was from the complimentary products of burning. You ain't getting lung cancer from nicotine.
But as these are not in any way analagous to the current situation, it seems silly to talk about them.
Vaporization of juice is better on your lungs compared to inhaling smoke and tar. Less to get clogged. Nicotine itself has been shown to be significantly less addictive combared to Tobacco. Theories for this typically involve the fact that there's more than just nicotine in tobacco. There's a chemical in tobacco smoke, the name escapes me at the moment, that acts as an MAOI, reinforcing the effects of nicotine.
This isn't to say that nicotine is harmless. Rather that the consumption of nicotine via vaporization is Less Harmful compared to smoking tobacco.
From Bing:
Is benzoic acid a carcinogen?
It is considered safe only at less than a .1% concentration in a finished product (Source) When benzoic acid and vitamin C (ascorbic acid) or citric acid are present, under the right conditions of heat and light, these two ingredients can combine to create the known carcinogen, benzene.
Back here in the land of analog spectra, there are people who are concerned that an addictive product wildly successful with teenagers is generally problematic, regardless of what it is displacing. Astroturfing with crocodile tears exacerbates these concerns.
It is possible to acknowledge a problem, and, at the same time, criticize suboptimal solutions as kicking the can down the road, while maintaining the general goal of solving the problem.
Stop foisting binary propositions upon your interlocutors.
Nor did I lie; nor did you have a single lie to point to.
And suggesting that I'm a paid shill - or worse than that, an unwitting shill - without even having grounds on which to criticize what I said is both a value-less contribution to this discussion, and well below the HN standard.
I actually think ecigs are worse than normal cigarettes for this reason. It's now socially acceptable to smoke them, easier to smoke them (you can just hop into a bathroom stall and take a hit).
When I was a smoker, running out of tobacco would induce panic attacks. Every minute spent on an airplane or at the movies I'd devote most of my thoughts to longing for the moment I could have a smoke again. When short on cash, I'd prioritize tobacco over food.
As a vaper, I have on multiple occassions forgot to bring my vaporizer (or charger, or e-juice) when travelling and gone without for days with no problems at all. A bit annoying perhaps, but no more than forgetting to bring my headphones before a flight or something like that, certainly not even close to the cravings I'd get when I couldn't get hold of my precious tobacco during my smoking days.
There's obviously individual differences at play here, but if someone came to me complaining about their horrible vaping addiction I'd have to restrain myself from not going all Bob Saget in Half Baked on that poor vape junkie... ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEberTUvrsE )