Heavy metals and pesticides. Friends run a cannabis compliance company in California, so they have access to mass spectrometers. After time spent on the shelves and in warehouses the pods and others like them tend to leach heavy metal from the atomizer. The atomizers (turns the liquid into vapor) are all made in china from the same cheap source. They test them when they leave the factory technically, but they don't account for time stored in those containers. The liquid is also entirely unregulated as well.
>Breja alleges that on March 12, 2019, in an executive team meeting, he learned that some batches of mint e-liquid had been found to be contaminated. Approximately 250,000 mint refill kits, the equivalent of one million pods, were manufactured with the contaminated e-liquid, shipped to retailers, and sold to customers.
I really wish the article detailed what exactly the contaminant is, especially considering the current hysteria over vaping.
>That same day, Breja “protested Juul’s refusal to issue a product recall for the contaminated pods, or at a minimum issue a public health and safety notice to consumers.” Then-chief finance officer Tim Danaher reportedly “questioned his financial acumen,” since these suggestions would lead to billions of dollars in lost sales and hurt Juul’s then-$38 billion valuation, according to the lawsuit. Danaher, whose departure was announced by the company on Tuesday, allegedly told Breja that he should remember his loyalty to Juul.
It's sad that there are so many people who would knowingly cause harm to others, just all for the opportunity to make just a little bit more money. They were already making money, and I'm pretty sure this debacle will cost them far more money in the long run than just doing a voluntary recall and coming clean. No better than the tobacco companies that came decades before.
That’s why these things should be regulated by the FDA and manufactured with validated systems with obligation to report any variance, etc, as any OTC drug company would have to (as well as Rx, of course).
The products they currently sell are not FDA approved. They have till May 2020 to comply.
I’m curious if their MFG line is cGMP compliant. It may be, but bad batches would say procedure Sops etc were either not in effect, not available or ignored.
Wow, are you surprised that a company those product does little more than addict you, whose buisness is primarily preying on children, would put profits over consumers?
> No better than the tobacco companies that came decades before.
I can’t believe people are this gullible. They are the tobacco companies. Juul is owned by Phillip Morris and all of that nicotine liquid comes from the same tobacco.
Juul might be big tobacco, but Juul or any tobacco company didn't invent vaping or make it popular. Juul jumped on after it was already popular and allegedly marketed it to kids.
For a long-time big tobacco saw vaping as a threat to their business, they worked and probably still work to have it banned.
> Juul jumped on after it was already popular and allegedly marketed it to kids.
this is sorta unfair, imo. their advertising practices may be sketchy but the product itself is quite innovative. even today, I don't know of any vape products on the market that give as good of a user experience in such a small form factor.
> For a long-time big tobacco saw vaping as a threat to their business, they worked and probably still work to have it banned.
When you vape you are using tobacco. Selling vape liquid is selling tobacco. It’s not competitive in any sense, it is a new brand for the same product. Why are the addicts so unwilling to recognize that?
The "addicts" (as you call them) wanted a safer way to ingest the active ingredient in tobacco. Nicotine on its own isn't much worse for your health than caffeine, but having to inhale burning tobacco leaves to ingest it leads to all sorts of health problems.
People figured out that you could heat up a solution of pure nicotine and glycerins to create a mist that is easily absorbed when inhaled (but didn't include the tars, carbon monoxide, or the host of other byproducts of combustion that lead to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases).
Obviously it's not as ideal as breathing nothing but pure, Spaceballs-style "Perri-air" but it's like telling someone not to bother with a massive harm reduction because it doesn't eliminate 100% of potential health risks.
So while the nicotine is likely derived from tobacco (just because it's the easiest source), using a nicotine mist inhaler is hardly the same as inhaling the smoke of burning tobacco.
What started out mainly in the realm of tinkerers and curious people looking for a better way to wean off nicotine or minimize the health risks of smoking has been co-opted (at least as far as the mainstream discussion goes) by cig companies and those who would seek to become their successors.
That’s what they are. I smoked from age 18 to 27 and I was fully aware that my physical and psychological reaction to withdrawal made me an addict.
The concept that vaping is safer is an assumption. Everyone assumed that smoking had no health risks until people started to study the effects of decades of use. The first vaporizers for nicotine arrived in 2006 so there is no possible way to know the full long-term effects of vaping. Assuming that it is safer is just as reasonable as assuming that it is less so.
> the nicotine is likely derived from tobacco
It absolutely is in 100% of vape liquids.
The delusion is palpable and the mental gymnastics that serve only the addiction are disturbing. As Dostoevsky said, ”The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him...”
TD;DR vaping as a quit method shouldn't be banned. Non-smokers should be discouraged from taking up both vaping and smoking.
It began as a safer alternative to smoking, which was an assumption. The science isn't concrete but there is some evidence vaping is safer than smoking. Note safer and not safe.
It's also easier to quit cigarettes by switching to vaping and then gradually lowing the nicotine until you're vaping liquids with no nicotine. Then it's just the habit you have to beat the addiction to and not the nicotine.
It is a little difficult to switch from smoking to vaping as cigarettes are engineered to be as addictive as possible. There are more addictive chemicals in cigarettes than just nicotine, and some added chemicals to make the nicotine in cigarettes more addictive than plain old nicotine. Cigarettes are engineered for an instant hit that fades quickly. The hit from vaping is slow and steady. It takes time to adjust to vaping and there are cravings until you do.
I think something has to be done about non-smokers taking up vaping without stopping smokers from switching to vaping, I don't know what. There's an argument the non-smokers who take up vaping would probably take up smoking if vaping didn't exist.
Altria bought their minority stake after Juul had already become the clear leader.
A lot of vapers were upset about this, but I hoped it would allow Juul to get some of that sweet regulatory capture. It’s a fantastic device for smokers who were disappointed by the vape pens that preceded it. (i.e. Me)
You should also compare the advertising Juul did before and after the Altria deal. Before they suspended all ads, it was nothing but 40- and 50-somethings talking about the switch use-case. Before, the ads were hip and trying to appeal to the younger crowd.
The company that sent out the bad batch of liquid is interesting. Alternative Ingredients, Inc., who's website is down at the moment, is also otherwise known as Mother Murphy's , who brands themselves as a food flavoring company. The president of the company is David Murphy who's linkedIn tells the whole story. Basically Mother Murphy's has been around for a while in the Winston/Salem area, doing flavoring for cigarette companies. I guess that shouldn't be surprising.
The article seems to stick to what it can state on the basis of fact, making it clear which claims came from whom. Your comment, on the other hand, begins with “interesting coincidence” and ends in an accusatory rhetorical question. Who is using FUD here?
I can't find any of the court filings publicly online - I'd probably have to spend money on PACER or something - but it seems possible to me that Buzzfeed had no access to the exact details of what contaminated the pods. Is it necessary to know precisely what it was if Juul employees are on record voicing concerns about product quality and being dismissed? Are some kinds of contaminants not bad enough to matter?
The article has plenty of detail. The person filing is a former employee making easily disproved accusations, what would be the point of suing and then having it immediately tossed out because he can't prove anything was contaminated? He even cites the supplier it came from.
PACER is free if you don't go over $15 in a quarter (occasionally interested nonlawyers won't) and cases in the news are often on RECAP (you can assist them by downloading their browser extension)
Why is this clickbait? The story is not what the contaminant was but that a senior executive at the company was alarmed enough with whatever defect there was to raise the issue, fully aware that recalling the product would have huge financial implications given his role in the finance org. That is newsworthy despite not yet knowing what the issue is yet.
The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect comes up so many times on HN that I'm surprised you don't already know the answer. Third-hand stories about what some executive said, from a news source famous for aggressive editorializing for clicks?
I have no bone in this fight, but I wouldn't get my blood pressure up over a story like this.
It's an article about allegations from a court filing, not a story based on something overheard in a diner. What exactly is editorialized about the article? It basically just summarizes the details of the case. They even reached out to the parties for comment so they could offer their side of the story.
Just because something is an allegation in a court filing doesn't mean much. The first time Trump tried his entry ban, I saw a court filing. It alleged that the state of Washington had defrauded the filer of, if I remember correctly, about $70 billion and the court should immediately dismiss the Washington v. Trump to focus on this more important matter.
A contaminant is just something that doesn't belong in the product, but this doesn't tell us if it's harmful or not. There's a big difference between the contaminant being trace amounts of a different flavor, or the the contaminant being lead. It's really weird to write a whole scary article and not mention what the actual contaminant was.
Nah dude, there's no way to deduce that the contaminant isn't serious based on a Buzzfeed report.
If the contaminant was serious, there's a media strategy where you suppress what it is for now to maximize the favorability of your settlement. After all you go to court, you'll publish what that contaminant is, it's as good as winning against Juul without actually winning.
The thing I'm more confused about is why you're being so generous to a nicotine manufacturer.
These kinds of comments are driving me crazy. I rarely see articles on HN anymore, good or bad, where people in the comments aren't fussing about "clickbait". Call it substanceless, call it sensational, call it fluff, but at this point clickbait is virtually an empty term, a thought-terminating cliche. Much like "fake news", it metastasized beyond the useful meaning it used to have to a cliche used to dismiss things people don't like.
More to your point, if I'm going to take the accusation of "clickbait" seriously, the article elaborates on what the headline says, and substantiates it. It doesn't mention the contaminant, but that doesn't make it "clickbait".
One piece[1] on the meaning of "clickbait" described it as follows:
>When we talk about clickbait internally, we tend to focus on the idea of under-delivering on a misleading headline. The risk that a reader will feel she has been duped into clicking.
To your point, it also says:
>Others often seem to be using "clickbait" as a free-floating term of derision. There are many reasons one might dislike an article but calling it clickbait has become an all-purpose way of expressing that disapproval.
So which of those best describes this BuzzFeed article?
I don't think the headline is misleading, but BuzzFeed definitely under-delivered by not mentioning the contaminant. They showed their hand by not even acknowledging that they are missing that important detail.
Honestly, it's shameful. It's like they have so little respect for their readers that they think their readers won't notice that the most important detail in this story -- mentioned in the headline, no less -- is missing.
Well as someone who goes through a pod every few days, I appreciate having at least _some_ kind of heads up. The article's plenty useful to Juul smokers--knowing that the mint flavor is the contaminated one means that I can switch to a different flavor until more news comes out.
As I understand from the juulers I know, it gives you a fiendishly special kind of buzz, something to do with of the density of the hit and the miniscule size that compels you to suck on it 24/7. none of them are interested in other brands' products.
For some insight to this, if they are using the salt based nicotine, that stuff is 25 mg or 50 mg, which is extremely concentrated vs "traditional" pg/vg liquid which came about first.
The highest pg/vg liquid most people can tolerate is 18 mg. Typically if someone is using a smoking device that has the large clouds, they are only using 6 or 3 mg concentrate. The issue with high nicotine concentrate in the pg/vg liquid is the taste is very bad with high mg of nicotine.
Now the tiny pods people smoke out of, do not have as large of clouds, however with the new type of salt-based liquid, you can smoke 25-50 mg and still have a pleasant taste to it.
This is why anyone smoking the salt based liquid seems to have these fiendish kinds of buzz.
Me personally, I started 4 years ago on 18 mg, after one year went to 12 mg, then 6 mg, now I'm on 3 mg. I plan on ripping the band-aid off soon and quitting cold turkey now that I've weened myself down. I am waiting for this upcoming holiday season to take a few days off, isolate myself from work and be a crappy asshole to myself for a bit and then be free of this stupid habit I picked up. (I used to smoke a pack a day or more starting when I was 18 before I transitioned to vaping)
Tl:Dr - Salt based liquids are like a shot of nicotine vs a beer when you compare the concentration of the nicotine.
I quit vaping after 2 years and found the hardest part was the ritual aspect of it, not so much the nicotine. I used to sit at my computer, code, and blow big vape clouds into the air. It was extremely relaxing and took a bit of time to get over it. I used 0 mg liquid for a while to help, but I would recommend tossing out your vape & any oils you have when you feel you're ready. Having them around is just a temptation.
I agree. I got myself somewhat addicted to nicotine gum. I used it to help focus when coding. It got to the point where I was chewing it constantly, so I stopped. I had to switch to regular gum to successfully stop.
Apparently, there's evidence that nicotine reinforces habit formation, so that could be why.
This is great advice and somewhat correlated with a shower thought I had the other day when thinking about quitting for good.
2 weeks before I pull the trigger and throw everything into the garbage (that is the plan because I agree the temptation would be probably too great), I plan on trying to only vape outside like I would have to with normal cigarettes. This is to detach my habits of also sitting at the computer desk and taking vape hits whenever I want. This would force me to want it bad enough to put on a jacket and physically go outside to smoke it.
Where I live we just got our first snow yesterday, so going outside is not exactly pleasant, and I'm hoping that when I do pull the trigger and quit at the end of the month it will easier if I've already weened myself off of vaping at my desk or other areas inside of the house I've grown too comfortable vaping in.
Are you saying you actually get 25-50mg of nicotine in one vaping session?
That's sounds like a lot. My point of reference is nicotine gum, they are 2-4mg a piece, and the packaging says you are supposed to chew it slowly over 20-30 minutes.
If you have no resistance, 2mg can be enough to create a "buzz".
Cursory Google turns up a pretty wide range of nicotine content for a cigarette.
mass =/= moles. While it's stronger it's not 2x as strong. The nicotine salt which is either nicotine benzoate or (haven't seen it myself personally), nicotine salicylate, has, by nature of being a salt, more mass per mole of nicotine and these two salts are about 55% nicotine/45% salt by mass.
So 50mg/ml nicotine salt is 'equivalent' in concentration to ~27mg/ml nicotine freebase and likewise 25ml/ml is 'only' as strong as 13.5ml/ml nicotine freebase. You also inhale a LOT less from salt vapes typically compared to traditional vapes. Prior to the popularity of nicotine salts, I remember having friends who switch from cigarettes needing high concentrations; ~20mg/ml nicotine freebase which has a intense throat hit.
This explains a lot, for whatever reason I thought that the nicotine salt, was the same type of nicotine as the original juices, just put into a different salt based mixture.
I didn't realize the nicotine itself is what was different, and would explain how there are sub ohm salts now that only contain 3/6 mg/60 ml.
I did notice when I tried the Salt pods my friend had that were 25/50 that it did give me an intense head buzz, pretty much like smoking a cigarette for the first time. I think that inhaling less vapor is also beneficial in pods vs the sub ohm, and if I wasn't planning on quitting at the end of the month I probably would switch to the pods as it would be easier to smoke in public without annoying/drawing attention to yourself like with the sub ohm mods.
Yep, people get triggered by this, but I've found it personally true for me. Granted I haven't tried stuff like meth, but plain old nicotine and caffeine simply isn't "hard" for me to stop consuming.
I'm old enough to have been addicted to things and gotten off of them multiple times in my life, usually nicotine and caffeine. I'll go 3-5 years on then 2-5 years off. Each time I get off I have 2-3 weeks where I'm an absolutely miserable person to be around. The first time I didn't realize it and thought I was just moody or having bad days. The second and beyond times (this is over 3 decades) I was well aware that all of the road rage, short tempers, mood swings, etc I was experiencing were exactly the same as the first time I got off.
There's quite a few comments in here where people are planning to take time off over the holidays to get off nicotine. You may have bounced back with no ill effects but there are a lot of us that don't and are aware of how we act when coming off and don't want to put people we coexist with through that fun.
there's physiological addiction and there's psychological addiction. the former can be physically debilitating, but sometimes it's just annoying (technically anyone who ever gets a high from nicotine is physiologically addicted--the head rush is relief of withdrawal symptoms). but the latter means you're in a mental state where just quitting isn't so simple.
As someone who was addicted to nicotine, quit for 5 years and for personal reasons fell back into being addicted: no, it's not that easy.
It took me weeks of being depressed (about 2-3 weeks) when I first quit to start to feel normal again, took me another couple of months for the cravings to really subside and for the smell of cigarettes start to disgust me. And then another year to forget about cigarettes.
Now I quit cigarettes and keep with vaping because I don't fucking want to go through another 2-3 weeks of depression and being barely productive.
There is no choice, there is drive, there is self-motivation and there is a bit of suffering but it is definitely difficult.
Yeah the parent keys in on a very dated view of mental health ("it's just a state of mind") that ignores, I don't know, at least 70 years of knowledge. It's an empowering thing for some people, but it's nonetheless wrong, especially when they start pushing it on other people.
I've been on the on-again-off-again rollercoaster and made the switch to vaping myself. As to the withdrawal symptoms coming off cigarettes -- my personal opinion is that the MAOIs in tobacco cigarettes are a huge component in withdrawal effects, and coming off juul/etc. is a lot easier given that. But I'm not shaming by any means, and I'm still using the juul (need to stop yadda yadda), just in case that helps you with fears about quitting. Good luck :).
Agreed - I was on the same path, from cigarettes to juul, and never had the emotional attachment to the juul that I did to cigarettes. Cigarettes were cruising down the road with the windows down on a sunny day, the juul was just a nicotine delivery system.
On the other hand, because I could suckle the juul indoors I think I wound up way more fearsomely addicted to nicotine than I ever had been while smoking. I was constantly hand to mouth with it. Obviously your mileage may vary, but trying to quit the juul cold turkey drove me just as nuts as quitting cigarettes.
What’s worked for me so far is the patch. It tapers you off while totally eliminating the craving-hit-craving cycle that made me feel like I was always on edge and couldn’t do anything useful unless I had the juul (or a smoke) available.
If you can just say "I'm done" and walk away without feeling anything you weren't really addicted in the first place. That's literally the definition of addiction.
There's a lot of alternatives out there, and you can even make your own; there's nothing particularly secretive about the ingredients of generic vape liquid. Of course then you have to know your sources of the raw materials.
In what way? I mean Kalanick was shown to be a dickhead that fostered a sexist frat bro work culture, as far as I remember, but that doesn't have any immediate bearing on me as a customer.
From an egotistical customer perspective Juul knowingly selling tainted vials is relevant while Uber isn't.
Many people here are recommending switching off the juul which can be difficult when there aren't many similar devices out there, especially for people who don't want to carry a ~1lb box mod around. So I will highly recommend the Uwell Caliburn. It's entirely replaced my juul, its not much larger, the battery lasts longer and I like the flavors better. Plus the cost is significantly cheaper for me.
Thanks I may give this a try. I desperately need to get off Juuls. I went from smoking a pack every 1-2 weeks to ecigs (20% down to 5% then quitting completely). Got hooked again at some point down the line (I still enjoy nicotine when my tolerance is low) and didn't want to deal with ecig drama (juice, batteries, etc) and tried a Juul. Loved it. Did zero research and didn't know that Juuls were nic-salt, I didn't even know nic-salt was a thing. I went from a pack a week smoker to practically one 5% pod a day. So now I'm basically a 5 pack a week smoker. Contrary to what every article I saw about it said "It's clearly labeled that a pod is a pack of smokes!" I have bought tons of Juul 4 packs that don't say that. It's my fault for not doing the research, of course. I honestly thought the 5% was equivalent to my ecig juice 5%.. Don't make my mistake. Now that I'm looking at this caliburn it's clearly 25mg-50mg. I never smoked anywhere near that.
I've been trying to use 0 nic pods but they don't hit your throat at all so it's really not got the effect I need. The flavors great but it's the equivalent of eating dessert and blowing sweet air out of your mouth afterwards.
To add even more pain to this I'm sitting here smoking mint pods which are what this articles about..
edit: I grabbed a Caliburn, if anyone is having a hard time finding lower mg nic salts I found that www.cloudberryvapors.com will make them to any of your specifications. I went with 12mg and got a sampler pack.
Glad to hear you were able to grab a Caliburn. I've been using it instead of my juul for around 3 months now and my wallet thanks me. I generally replace the caliburn pod once a week or so, and if it ever starts to "spit" juice I pull the pod out and blow into it, seems to help. Good luck
> It's sad that there are so many people who would knowingly cause harm to others, just all for the opportunity to make just a little bit more money.
People like Tim Danaher should be behind bars. It's amazing to me that you can kill, injure, or put at risk hundreds of thousands of lives in the name of profit, but so long as you do it while working for a large enough business you get to continue to live in the luxury those profits afford you no matter how much innocent blood you spilled to gain them. I don't know exactly when we decided that serial killers in suits are perfectly acceptable to us, but even the companies themselves who allow this sort thing to happen are rarely punished enough to offset the gains they made exploiting their customers.
I expect there to be people in this world who will do anything to satisfy their greed, I just don't understand why we continue to let it happen again and again in industry after industry without holding anyone meaningfully accountable for their part in it.
Assuming the allegations are substantial and true, Danaher should be very grateful that he's protected by the law. I can't imagine the urge for vengeance that would be felt by a parent of someone who died from this.
FTA: "A nationwide lung injury outbreak, now standing at 1,604 cases and 34 deaths, is being investigated by public health agencies, which have primarily linked the illnesses to vaping black-market THC."
The CDC findings were that black market THC pods are causing the deaths. It seems most of the current moral outrage and reactionary, emergency regulations on (nicotine) vaping have been because people have not been doing their research at all.
The Daily (the Times podcast) did an episode[1] this week on vaping and the death discussed in that story does not sound like it was related to black market THC. The majority of cases do seem to be THC related, but I don't think its clear yet that they all are.
> It seems most of the current moral outrage and reactionary, emergency regulations on (nicotine) vaping have been because people have not been doing their research at all.
The last thing I want to see is mobs of people, angry over the deaths of their loved ones, tracking down executives and dealing with the problem themselves, but I'll admit I'm very surprised it doesn't happen more often. I imagine most people are just struggling to keep their lives together through their grief and satisfying a vendetta takes a lot of time and effort. Also many people aren't as comfortable with hurting others as the executives of Juul are. Still, I am surprised.
This is easy. Rather than paying $16 for a pack of vape pods, I should pay 0.0001% of my earnings over the rest of my life.
Then the vape company has a direct incentive to help me be successful.
Such a payment system should be assisted by government (ie. Government should give out forms which prove your earnings), and banks (who would remember who is due what percentage of your earnings and distribute appropriately).
The basics of such a system already exists in the UK, where students commit to paying 9% of their future income to pay for university (with a time limit and money limit).
While the UK system (which does not last the rest of a person's life) is a better means of paying down student debt compared to the US (where most students will pay a higher percentage of income each month at significantly higher interest rates) that's not my ideal for handling educational costs and it's certainly not going to solve the problem with corporate greed. Companies like Juul would take your earnings and still poison/kill you if it would put more money into their pockets somehow. They've made a deliberate choice to cross the line from amoral to immoral.
At least in the US, we would also need extensive regulations and caps on the cost of products. As a commonly cited example, when Pell Grants (Federal student subsidies) were increased to adjust for inflation and costs of living somewhat recently, average costs of tuition went up by about the same amount across nearly all colleges.
This is a classic move in our economy: 1) product or service slowly becomes more expensive relative to income, 2) a subsidy that was supposed to go to the bottom tier to help even the playing field but is now used by more and more people due to 1 adjusts it's payout to return to it's planned effectiveness, then 3) product or service operator notices that consumers have more available money and adjusts their cost upwards.
Similar effects have been observed in more nuanced ways, like the costs of fresh fruits and vegetables being higher than boxed and processed foods, so low income food subsidy programs bump their monetary payouts to encourage purchasing of fresh foods, and some boxed or processed foods have a statistically unusual bump in retail prices in the area. This is the kind of bullshit that really starts to make me think that the USA needs a secondary monetary system (not bitcoin/blockchain, and not Dollar based) to be used for redemption of welfare and entitlement benefits which would make it impossible to track between something like an increase in food stamp benefits and monetary compensation for the use of those benefits. I'm cool with Kraft thinking that Velveeta cheese "product" needs to be more expensive in our magical capatalistic society, I'm just not cool with them thinking that only because the lowest income shoppers suddenly have 5 more cents in their account every month.
Just pointing out the obvious, people do crazy and harmful shit for money all the time (eg. Juul execs). Possibly more often than people with more “legitimate” reasons (eg. Vengeance).
"Mr. Breja brings this action after he was terminated in retaliation for whistleblowing and objecting to the contaminated pod shipment and other illegal and unsafe conduct that has jeopardized and continues to jeopardize public health and safety and the lives of millions of consumers, many of them children and teens."
I think it's safe to say this isn't about strawberry flavoured mint
Much like the founding father's rational behind impeachment, if this was ever to come about, this type of thing should be strictly limited to "high crimes" and only when it clearly benefits the individual.
Otherwise it opens up any executive to tons of personal risk by taking a leadership role in any major public company with any sort of consumer liability. Or worse getting punished for subordinates behaviour with some idealistic perspective on what the executives show be in control of.
That type of arrangement would likely result in worse executives who are more risk-friendly. While the ones who are careful and averse to risk would stay in a non-executive position with very low risk that kicks upstairs or only take the safe executive jobs (even if the cases are likely to fail in court).
This will create a booming workplace legal insurance industry that will cover downside risks of lawyer costs and loss of income going into prison. Which helps minimize the disincentives this sort of thing would need to create to be effective.
I'm open to these ideas but there really has to be some serious conditions thought out.
The effect of the death penalty as a deterrent has been studied and found lacking. It seems once you hit a certain threshold of "bad for me" worse punishments like capital punishment don't perform any better. Still, it's not often that I get to say that the Chinese government has the right idea even if in this case they take it too far which is more what I'd expect from them.
Death penalty as a deterrent may generally be true, but I do believe it would be more effective against white collar executives who often have an obsession with building their private legacies. The thought of an early death as consequence of cheating to reach the top would cause some to consider a slightly more legal/ethical path on their climb.
> Otherwise it opens up any executive to tons of personal risk by taking a leadership role in any major public company with any sort of consumer liability.
I think executives should be at major personal risk when their companies do things that cause injury or death to many people. It will force them to make sure that the people under them are following the rules and that their products are safe. Mistakes will surely happen and I don't think we should ignore it when a company who makes every reasonable effort to protect their customers still fails and people are hurt. That shouldn't necessarily get them off the hook entirely but it should matter. In cases where it's more obvious like in the case of the tobacco industry intentionally misleading customers about the risks of their product, or the auto industry selling cars they know are dangerous, or this one where the company was well aware of the problem but did nothing in order to protect their bottom line they should very clearly be held responsible.
I'm not sure that holding executives responsible for clear exploitation would make them more likely to take risks. It seems to me that as long they know they wont be held accountable for killing people they'll be more likely to do it. Companies would also be less likely to promote reckless people if they knew doing so could mean they might face a corporate death penalty.
I do agree however that the specifics of who to hold accountable and to what extent they are punished are complicated issues. We've had decades of examples showing it's far past time we put in the work to come up with something however.
100% agreed. The increasing attacks on whistleblowers from government down to private industries like agriculture show that there's a lot of sickness being covered up and allowed to grow in the dark. Keeping people from speaking out against the abuses they see certainly won't make anything better.
High risk, high reward; low risk, low reward is supposed to be how it goes. So what are the multi million dollar pay packets for if there is no risk?
We can't keep turning a blind eye to the hundreds of outrageous examples of ignoring health impacts and lying in public whilst the real facts are in a filing cabinet at head office.
Frankly the law should have changed dramatically after discovery of Thomas Midgley and tetra-ethyl lead, "the science on smoking and health isn't settled", or Bhopal etc. We have centuries of proof there aren't adequate consequences.
> getting punished for subordinates behaviour
That's what leadership is. Responsibility for those under you on your watch. If you fired or prosecuted them on first discovery, that forms a decent proportion of mitigating circumstance. Perhaps you'll still be found negligent for not having adequate checks and balances to prevent it happening in the first place...
But there's also been plenty of bogosity running around, about dangers of butter vs. margarine, eggs and cholesterol, trans fats, high-fructose corn syrup, GMO's, acid rain, vaccines, whole milk, small screens, video games, pornography, and certain kinds of radioactivity. Tons of companies would love to outlaw their competitors.
Do we want a chance of a working system, or just accept fraud all the way down?
At least some of those examples are tied up with one industry spinning up misleading studies to make money by known false messages of margarine over butter or sugar vs fat etc. Chances are Nestle, Kraft and Coke or whoever have dozens of studies they didn't reveal sitting in the filing cabinet before they got the couple that gave the misleading results they needed to make a ton more money.
It's nearly always the case that when we find out years or decades later, "they knew" and actually had extensive investigation on the topic - but chose not to care, or found a way to actively brief against the public interest, rather than it had simply never occurred to them to look or an innocent mistake was made. No, it generally turns out they have pretty extensive science and studies, just very very selective about what they let on about. Maybe there's a high profile spokes-PhD or two and everyone spends decades believing the problem is fat not sugars and apparently there are no consequences.
If the company and execs, and past execs were held accountable, and had a duty of care to customers and public, perhaps their past bullshit, PR lies, and talking bollocks under Congressional Committee oath (I believe one was "We don't believe tobacco is addictive" from assorted CEOs under oath) can come back to haunt them. What would match with 2 years CEO jail time for the corporate-personhood? 2 years delisting and forfeit of dividends or profit? That might focus investors and execs on appropriate board integrity a little more... :)
Is it really that old-fashioned to think there should be consequences for those who cheat even if they hide behind a corporation? Back when I was a director I actually gave a shit about us being honest, offering an honest service, and holding the staff to the same standard - especially when they were talking on the company's behalf.
No, if the weight of evidence was there I'd push to pivot to non-violent, or less violent games, or patch it family friendly as appropriate -- but I already think many US movies and some games are absurdly OTT with violence, to the point of spoiling them. Course if there was enough research to show harm, I would hope for regulation setting an appropriate limit so everyone is accountable to the same standard.
The TL;DR the customer is the other party to mutually benefit from our offering, not a cow to be industrially milked regardless. After 40 years I still haven't bought into "greed is good", we should aspire - and regulate - to a higher standard to everyone's benefit. :)
In a more general business context I would hope to show we a) thought about it and investigated it properly then b) took a considered view that we could stand by if it was later publicised or leaked, i.e. properly exercised our duty of care and reasonable ethics.
Knowing there's a problem and carefully keeping quiet about it, or pretending the opposite and spinning against - maybe even hiring a PR agency to sow doubt, or ignoring contaminated product -- well those all seem to tip easily into criminal negligence and should come with serious consequence for both directors and company.
As an aside, I've always found it most odd that US tv is frequently laissez-faire on violence, but will beep out or overdub minor-friendly trivial profanity or get all puritan about a hint of nipple or human relations. Mostly the opposite of the European perspective. I quite often fast forward through the boring over-long fight sequence or shoot outs in US TV and movies... If it's an 18 rated horror I've sat down to watch, sure, bring it - though I'll probably still skip the 5 minute OTT shoot out to save yawns... :)
I guess you forgot the whole "and misdemeanors" part of their opinion on impeachment. They never intended for Presidents to be above the law. Quite the opposite, to the point that Presidents had an entirely additional set of restrictions, from citizenship status to emoluments. They'd be shocked and disgusted that so few Presidents in the years since have been impeached.
> I don't know exactly when we decided that serial killers in suits are perfectly acceptable to us, but even the companies themselves who allow this sort thing to happen are rarely punished enough to offset the gains they made exploiting their customers.
I mean, that's how America's been since the very beginning. First we had slavery, then we had corporations getting away with killing workers through heinous workplace negligence, e.g. the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. I'm not saying it's good that this has always been so, or that citizens should be apathetic in the face of repeated sociopathy, merely that realizing that the country's always been like this is a necessary step for understanding why the serial killers in suits seem to have so much power.
Almost as if there's a group of people giving a huge amount of money to the pundits to criticize any progress that's a) not directly driven by profits or b) might negatively affect on their own profits.
I understand the pessimism. I feel it deeply myself these days. But people do care. Labor fought like hell in the second half of the 19th century & early 20th century. Sometimes literally fought with workers being beaten or gunned down or falsely imprisoned. But in the end, they won much of what they wanted. Ended child labor, got 8 hour days, two day weekends, workplace safety, fairer pay.
Other causes have had similar successes. The cause of abolition (or at least unease about slavery) was enough to elect Lincoln in 1860 despite Lincoln not appearing on the ballots of the entire South. Which, of course, started the process & war which ended slavery. Abolition won, albeit in a very bloody way.
I think it's not a case of people not caring. It's a case of people care enormously but they feel powerless and they feel alone in their caring. This goes on until that day when they realize they're not alone.
> It's a case of people care enormously but they feel powerless and they feel alone in their caring.
It's interesting that we live in the most connected age ever where creating, building, and coordinating social movements has never been easier or more possible yet the labor movement and unions are dying, consumer protections and regulations are inadequate, privacy protections are nonexistent and constitutionally protected freedoms are flagrantly ignored and bypassed. I'm not sure what the problem is, but it seems like every social movement and organization that fought for the rights of the average person up until around the time of the free speech movement got much more accomplished while overcoming much more than we'd have to deal with now.
> The lawsuit claims that then-CEO Kevin Burns shot down that idea, saying, “Half our customers are drunk and vaping like mo-fos, who the fuck is going to notice the quality of our pods.”
I mean, Zuck wasn't wrong though. People freely share everything with any app or website with zero thought whatsoever.
He didn't say anything that anyone who takes three seconds to think "wait, how is this free, what are they doing with this data" wasn't/isn't thinking.
That's way different than saying who cares if we poison people, they're alcoholic hipsters
There's a difference between "fools, they don't know giving that information to third parties is dangerous" and "fools, they gave that information to me, if you want me to exploit them just ask buddy".
And it's specially damning if that's a quote by a person that's now in charge of so much sensitive data.
>And it's specially damning if that's a quote by a person that's now in charge of so much sensitive data.
It's not damming at all. With no knowledge of where or when the quote is from, just looking at it I immediately go "likely a college student, with no business experience whatsoever, made a casual statement in conversation with a friend long before his product grew to the size it is today and now random people on the internet are vilifying for something he said in casual conversation probably a decade and and a half ago even though the comment shows no malice and is more a statement of disbelief in how little people think about their privacy"
...He's literally offering up their personal information on demand. "No malice"? That word doesn't mean what you think it means.
Contrary to what you seem to believe, people can have a good moral grounding in their late teens/early twenties. What evidence do you have which shows he's changed at all?
I see nothing malicious, and no 'bad morals', in that quote snippet. He created a service, people willingly signed up, people willingly gave their info, people probably clicked right past a user agreement if one existed at the time without even looking at it like they do NOW, and then they actively uploaded their content to a social virtual 'yearbook' networking site.
At that size of the site/database that's no different than going "here's my rolodex, who's info do you want".
If he had 4,000 users, he was probably thinking about monetization at that point. And whatever the excuse, most companies that call their customers dumbfucks before their inception probably won't enact much positive change in the world.
What you have linked to is the consolidated Facebook Ads platform, but they started running ads known as Facebook Flyers around April of 2004. Revenue was $382,000 in 2004.
While I agree that currying favor with upperclassmen with performance art that pranks all but ingratiator and the ingratiated is a common strategy of whelps, I do find that this example of providing social security numbers has gone too far: it is one thing to rig the water fountain to dispense beer, and quite another to invite identity theft of the entire student body. Only we may do that and only for the purpose of parking violation fine recovery, for which outstanding unpaid balances exceeding $1mm USD exist on certain accounts.
Why yes, this type of behavior is strictly limited to the US and US companies. No other business organizations or countries have ever made a decision like this.
When the current mantra of American capitalism is "shareholder value is our priority", then the only consideration is financial bottom line.
You see this time and time again, whether with tobacco, industrial pollution, oil and gas pollution, or this new vaping stuff. Oh and war; you see this perpetually with war and the military industrial complex.
For whatever reason, there are enough people willing to set aside concern for each other and humanity in general in order to make some cash for themselves. It almost doesn't matter what industry you look at - they all have moments or periods where finances trump (oh do pardon the unfortunate expression) humanity.
Oh, please stop turning HN into a political left quagmire.
With red tinted glasses, it is "industry" and "corporations" that set humanity aside. Take the glasses off, and remember how Stalin treated his people, how much humanity the Berlin Wall represented, how caring Pol Pot was to the people of Cambodia. Yeah, Cuba and Venezuela seems to fit in there too. Can't find much industry going on with Daesh, ISIS, Al Quaeda, Taliban and the lot. Yet they treat people bad.
People are sometimes bad to each other, right. The means are not the cause. Correlation vs causation, remember?
I don't remember people being treated all that well when the state is powerful either (see: the CCP, USSR and sadly its successor). The best times have not been the anti-capitalist ones, but the ones where people take care of themselves and hold people who get in the way of that to account within the law.
If society is unable to prosecute criminal negligence, that's another matter; it's not about a mantra or ethos or something, we just have to do our jobs, and things will get better like they have been.
I'm not suggesting that the alternative to unregulated capitalism is a powerful state, unless by powerful you mean a state that regulates businesses for the good of the people. I'm also not suggesting that capitalism should be entirely replaced. It just needs to be managed with proper boundaries and rules, else it devolves entirely into a financial-only scenario.
Take for example the recent deregulation that is undoing clean water and air protections to the benefit of a few industries. That obviously takes something (health) away from the people and gives it to a few companies as financial profits. Of course, those deregulations came because the companies had lobbyists and other agents who were providing financial benefit to a few politicians, and those politicians greedily placed themselves above the people.
When the government bodies that should be prosecuting criminal negligence (such as the 2007/8 banking crisis), the pharma-created opiod crisis, etc. have been gradually staffed by people from the industries doing the bad acting, that leaves society armless and unable to do anything other than protest (which they do, at times). But unless those protests become really violent (which I don't want), nothing can happen. Remember Occupy Wall Street? That was beginning to be an effective protest campaign, but eventually the cities began employing illegal tactics to break it up and shut it down. Since the people didn't turn violent, it was successfully put down.
I don't see a solution to the current situation other than waiting it out until the old corrupt people in power die off naturally. Younger generations are enough pissed that they might change some things once there are fewer kings of the political hills.
The differences in the causal chain that leads to death carried out by between serial killers vs. these guys is significant. We have criminal negligence laws to deal with them.
He shouldn't be behind bars. Freedom of speech; he was simply putting forward an idea, nothing illegal about that. He was the CFO, he wasn't ultimately responsible for the behavior and crimes of the company. The CEO should be behind bars!
Shareholders will pay dearly to continue incentivizing executives to keep pushing the standards of conduct to maximize return on investment. If they want them to go to jail, then other CEOs might not be willing to take such risks.
And the VCs who enable and amplify such behaviors. These are the real power players who give the Tim Danaher's the confidence to continue with their terrible actions.
If money is you main motivation for doing what you do, you’re way more likely ending up making these kind of bad decisions.
Money and greed goes hand in hand and it deludes your moral compass.
If you instead are driven by true happiness which can come in many forms such as doing good, impacting people in a positive way or just improving the world in general, money becomes less important.
I do understand this way of thinking is a luxury and I myself had been in situations where I just needed money to buy food, but the people sitting in these positions, making these decisions usually have no issue with money, they just want more.
I also heard, and I'm not aware of any proof, so this unsubstantiated. As well as the black market THC pods causing lung damage, there were black market Juul pods causing lung damage. The story was empty Juul pods were being snuck out of the factory and filled, packaged and sold to distributors, who then sold it to retailers for the same price as official Juul pods. It sounds a little suspect to me like maybe the rumour was started by Juul itself.
I haven't actually seen / heard many people claim that to be honest. HN at least can be quite cynical. Yeah they'll admit that Teslas and what SpaceX is doing is pretty cool, but at the same time they'll voice concerns about battery recycling, pollution caused by launches, and the threat of locking humanity out of space because of tens of thousands of micro sattelites starting a cascading destruction and debris shield aroudn the world.
I've been a social smoker for ~15 years; I attempted Juul-ing about a month ago -- had to stop it as I was immediately (from the 1st puff) feeling unwell, super dizzy and occasionally with a massive headache.
Even if this is not linked to any "contamination" of the pods, the amount of nicotine the put in those things is just insane.
Didn't even bother giving the vaper to somebody else, I just threw it away
I hope you tried (or with time will try) an alternative vape rather than continuing to smoke. Juul is extremely high strength nicotine salts liquid - there are plenty of more traditional suppliers of much weaker and more palatable liquids and devices.
Yep I find them to be suuuuper strong. I have a "normal" vape that takes the "juice" and use the lowest nicotine level of 3mg/mL. That is plenty for me!
Yes, the amount of nicotine in Juul pods is absurdly high, and has little variability. Somehow they became the market leader, and a lot of people assume their products to be representative of the industry as a whole. They aren't.
If you want something harmful to ban, why don't you start with products with a nicotine level above 24 mg/ml. Better yet, why don't you REQUIRE them to be made available in a variety of lower nicotine concentrations, including nicotine-free. Giving the user control over the nicotine content is the primary value of vaping for smoking cessation. There is a legitimate public health interest in requiring products to be useful for this purpose.
All this attention.... and yet billions of cigarettes are smoked every day, and one could say every single one of those cigarettes has been "contaminated" for 50+ years.
Why are we not stopping cigarettes from being shipped around the U.S. immediately under these exact same concerns?
Contaminated with what is the real question here, which the article doesn't even mention. I feel pretty confident the U.S. would have halted shipments cigarettes that contained substances like hydrogen cyanide, lead, etc.
Note: I'm not arguing that those specific chemicals were found in the vape liquid, just an example of something I would not expect to find in a traditional cigarette.
Nope, I had no idea that was actually in cigarettes. I heard it mentioned in the tainted THC cartridge articles, and it seemed like a good example of a thing that shouldn't be consumed.
It is easy to ban vape pods, it is impossible to ban cigarettes.
The problem isn't the vice itself, it is the demand for the vice.
There isn't yet a huge vape smuggling industry anywhere. Also, if banning vapes helps reduce the rate at which it is getting trendy among teenagers then I fully support it.
For one, cigarettes are not considered cool anymore, and will meet their inevitable death soon. Second, cigarettes can't be banned, because addicts will be forced into smuggling or moving to harder stuff. Third, Cigarettes have a ready smuggling industry that will take over, the second they are banned.
The analogy would be like leaving a bad marriage. It is a lot easier to divorce someone who will amiably accept than an extremely abusive partner where dissent puts your health at risk. Cigarettes are the abusive partner.
Banning cigarettes would be prohibition all over again. The vape ban has not been as bad of a disaster yet, so I can see why the govt. would want to continue with it.
Banning vape products will just lead to this happening again and again with black market vape products. It needs to be regulated and meet health & safety standards. The concept of vaping nicotine oil exists now, it is not going to go away. We get to choose whether people do it illegally, with greater health risk, or legally with less health risk (if we regulate it properly).
Just a nitpick: there is no "oil" in vape liquid. That would be very bad.
It's typically nicotine, VG/PG (essentially glycerines like you'd use in a fog machine, but medical/food grade), and often a small amount of food flavoring concentrate suspended in the same VG or PG base.
I quit smoking with this stuff and eventually dropped off the nicotine. I made my own liquid because I could source the ingredients myself, control how much nicotine I used, and knew exactly what I was puffing on...something I couldn't say when I still smoked.
>Also, if banning vapes helps reduce the rate at which it is getting trendy among teenagers then I fully support it.
Yes, because prohibitions have always worked out marvelously, the list of bad things kids get into is small, and won't someone please think of the children?!
If you're all for banning dangerous things that adults enjoy which we also prohibit children from doing, you're list is going to grow quite long.
Yeah, that was a big "IF". But, we will see. If it fails, reverse the ban...I guess.
In many countries cigarette companies are not allowed to advertise as trendy or cool. Their packages are forced to contain photos of people affected by lung cancer and big signs saying the same.
It really does help make smoking appear uncool.
Juul and vaping companies have gone around unchecked in this regard. Even if the ban is reserved I would be a huge supporter of such adversarial marketing restrictions.
> and won't someone please think of the children
Adults have way better impulse control. Thinking about the children is a legitimate concern, when talking about things with massive doses of nicotine.
> list is going to grow quite long.
If the world worked the way I wanted and laws had 100% efficacy, alcohol would be banned too. But, alas it is so deeply ingrained into our collective social psyche that it is going nowhere.
Apart from alcohol and pot, what adult thing can't minors enjoy ? That's the list.
>Yeah, that was a big "IF". But, we will see. If it fails, reverse the ban...I guess.
And in the meantime, how many adults have you harmed by taking away an effective smoking cessation device in some naive attempt to protect children from a threat that you can't even quantify?
Treat them like cigarette companies when it comes to advertising, I'm all for that, but don't take away flavors or ban them outright out of fear.
>when talking about things with massive doses of nicotine
No one is dying from nicotine.
>f the world worked the way I wanted and laws had 100% efficacy, alcohol would be banned too. But, alas it is so deeply ingrained into our collective social psyche that it is going nowhere.
FYI they've updated the article with this statement:
This story has been updated to include a response from Juul, a link to the lawsuit itself, and a clarification that the lawsuit did not specify which contaminant was allegedly in the pods.
The sad thing is that this is only an issue now, when the product is unexpectedly killing people in the short term. It's clear that killing people in the long term is part of their business model.
For example:
They created flavors clearly designed for non-smokers
They took major investment funds from big tobacco
The had to be forced to restrict certain marketing policies even though it was clear that vaping had become epidemic in high schools.
They pursue the same kinds of hyper aggressive promotion overseas the cigarette companies do, continuing with practices that are now prevented in the US
They happily ignore the evidence that many people in this new generation of addicts switch in-part or in-whole to cigarettes.
Lately I wonder if America's businesses have always been this corrupt and I just wasn't old enough to be tuned-in to it, or whether the current levels are a more recent phenomenon. Between Juul, WeWork, Boeing, PG&E, Equifax, the Sacklers. It's just mindblowing how rotten everything is. It's amazing society continues to function at all.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadhttps://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/04/e-cigarettes-may-be-conta...
The only reason to not call out brands is you're afraid of their lawyers or you have an agenda.
I really wish the article detailed what exactly the contaminant is, especially considering the current hysteria over vaping.
>That same day, Breja “protested Juul’s refusal to issue a product recall for the contaminated pods, or at a minimum issue a public health and safety notice to consumers.” Then-chief finance officer Tim Danaher reportedly “questioned his financial acumen,” since these suggestions would lead to billions of dollars in lost sales and hurt Juul’s then-$38 billion valuation, according to the lawsuit. Danaher, whose departure was announced by the company on Tuesday, allegedly told Breja that he should remember his loyalty to Juul.
It's sad that there are so many people who would knowingly cause harm to others, just all for the opportunity to make just a little bit more money. They were already making money, and I'm pretty sure this debacle will cost them far more money in the long run than just doing a voluntary recall and coming clean. No better than the tobacco companies that came decades before.
I’m curious if their MFG line is cGMP compliant. It may be, but bad batches would say procedure Sops etc were either not in effect, not available or ignored.
This is why we are where we are with the state of Earth's health.
> Danaher....allegedly told Breja that he should remember his loyalty to Juul
What's with all this cult behavior? I'll never understand it. It reminds of frat culture.
We are in many ways still tribal primitives with advanced technology.
I can’t believe people are this gullible. They are the tobacco companies. Juul is owned by Phillip Morris and all of that nicotine liquid comes from the same tobacco.
For a long-time big tobacco saw vaping as a threat to their business, they worked and probably still work to have it banned.
this is sorta unfair, imo. their advertising practices may be sketchy but the product itself is quite innovative. even today, I don't know of any vape products on the market that give as good of a user experience in such a small form factor.
When you vape you are using tobacco. Selling vape liquid is selling tobacco. It’s not competitive in any sense, it is a new brand for the same product. Why are the addicts so unwilling to recognize that?
People figured out that you could heat up a solution of pure nicotine and glycerins to create a mist that is easily absorbed when inhaled (but didn't include the tars, carbon monoxide, or the host of other byproducts of combustion that lead to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases).
Obviously it's not as ideal as breathing nothing but pure, Spaceballs-style "Perri-air" but it's like telling someone not to bother with a massive harm reduction because it doesn't eliminate 100% of potential health risks.
So while the nicotine is likely derived from tobacco (just because it's the easiest source), using a nicotine mist inhaler is hardly the same as inhaling the smoke of burning tobacco.
What started out mainly in the realm of tinkerers and curious people looking for a better way to wean off nicotine or minimize the health risks of smoking has been co-opted (at least as far as the mainstream discussion goes) by cig companies and those who would seek to become their successors.
That’s what they are. I smoked from age 18 to 27 and I was fully aware that my physical and psychological reaction to withdrawal made me an addict.
The concept that vaping is safer is an assumption. Everyone assumed that smoking had no health risks until people started to study the effects of decades of use. The first vaporizers for nicotine arrived in 2006 so there is no possible way to know the full long-term effects of vaping. Assuming that it is safer is just as reasonable as assuming that it is less so.
> the nicotine is likely derived from tobacco
It absolutely is in 100% of vape liquids.
The delusion is palpable and the mental gymnastics that serve only the addiction are disturbing. As Dostoevsky said, ”The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him...”
There are vape liquids without nicotine.
It began as a safer alternative to smoking, which was an assumption. The science isn't concrete but there is some evidence vaping is safer than smoking. Note safer and not safe.
It's also easier to quit cigarettes by switching to vaping and then gradually lowing the nicotine until you're vaping liquids with no nicotine. Then it's just the habit you have to beat the addiction to and not the nicotine.
It is a little difficult to switch from smoking to vaping as cigarettes are engineered to be as addictive as possible. There are more addictive chemicals in cigarettes than just nicotine, and some added chemicals to make the nicotine in cigarettes more addictive than plain old nicotine. Cigarettes are engineered for an instant hit that fades quickly. The hit from vaping is slow and steady. It takes time to adjust to vaping and there are cravings until you do.
I think something has to be done about non-smokers taking up vaping without stopping smokers from switching to vaping, I don't know what. There's an argument the non-smokers who take up vaping would probably take up smoking if vaping didn't exist.
A lot of vapers were upset about this, but I hoped it would allow Juul to get some of that sweet regulatory capture. It’s a fantastic device for smokers who were disappointed by the vape pens that preceded it. (i.e. Me)
You should also compare the advertising Juul did before and after the Altria deal. Before they suspended all ads, it was nothing but 40- and 50-somethings talking about the switch use-case. Before, the ads were hip and trying to appeal to the younger crowd.
This is a garbage clickbait article and Buzzfeed should be ashamed.
Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The article has plenty of detail. The person filing is a former employee making easily disproved accusations, what would be the point of suing and then having it immediately tossed out because he can't prove anything was contaminated? He even cites the supplier it came from.
I have no bone in this fight, but I wouldn't get my blood pressure up over a story like this.
https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/staff-buzzfeed-news
If the contaminant was serious, there's a media strategy where you suppress what it is for now to maximize the favorability of your settlement. After all you go to court, you'll publish what that contaminant is, it's as good as winning against Juul without actually winning.
The thing I'm more confused about is why you're being so generous to a nicotine manufacturer.
More to your point, if I'm going to take the accusation of "clickbait" seriously, the article elaborates on what the headline says, and substantiates it. It doesn't mention the contaminant, but that doesn't make it "clickbait".
>When we talk about clickbait internally, we tend to focus on the idea of under-delivering on a misleading headline. The risk that a reader will feel she has been duped into clicking.
To your point, it also says:
>Others often seem to be using "clickbait" as a free-floating term of derision. There are many reasons one might dislike an article but calling it clickbait has become an all-purpose way of expressing that disapproval.
So which of those best describes this BuzzFeed article?
I don't think the headline is misleading, but BuzzFeed definitely under-delivered by not mentioning the contaminant. They showed their hand by not even acknowledging that they are missing that important detail.
Honestly, it's shameful. It's like they have so little respect for their readers that they think their readers won't notice that the most important detail in this story -- mentioned in the headline, no less -- is missing.
[1]: https://www.vox.com/2015/2/13/8033937/clickbait-explained
I can't even understand why you wouldn't abandon all Juul products at this point.
The highest pg/vg liquid most people can tolerate is 18 mg. Typically if someone is using a smoking device that has the large clouds, they are only using 6 or 3 mg concentrate. The issue with high nicotine concentrate in the pg/vg liquid is the taste is very bad with high mg of nicotine.
Now the tiny pods people smoke out of, do not have as large of clouds, however with the new type of salt-based liquid, you can smoke 25-50 mg and still have a pleasant taste to it.
This is why anyone smoking the salt based liquid seems to have these fiendish kinds of buzz.
Me personally, I started 4 years ago on 18 mg, after one year went to 12 mg, then 6 mg, now I'm on 3 mg. I plan on ripping the band-aid off soon and quitting cold turkey now that I've weened myself down. I am waiting for this upcoming holiday season to take a few days off, isolate myself from work and be a crappy asshole to myself for a bit and then be free of this stupid habit I picked up. (I used to smoke a pack a day or more starting when I was 18 before I transitioned to vaping)
Tl:Dr - Salt based liquids are like a shot of nicotine vs a beer when you compare the concentration of the nicotine.
Apparently, there's evidence that nicotine reinforces habit formation, so that could be why.
https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine
2 weeks before I pull the trigger and throw everything into the garbage (that is the plan because I agree the temptation would be probably too great), I plan on trying to only vape outside like I would have to with normal cigarettes. This is to detach my habits of also sitting at the computer desk and taking vape hits whenever I want. This would force me to want it bad enough to put on a jacket and physically go outside to smoke it.
Where I live we just got our first snow yesterday, so going outside is not exactly pleasant, and I'm hoping that when I do pull the trigger and quit at the end of the month it will easier if I've already weened myself off of vaping at my desk or other areas inside of the house I've grown too comfortable vaping in.
That's sounds like a lot. My point of reference is nicotine gum, they are 2-4mg a piece, and the packaging says you are supposed to chew it slowly over 20-30 minutes.
If you have no resistance, 2mg can be enough to create a "buzz".
Cursory Google turns up a pretty wide range of nicotine content for a cigarette.
So 50mg/ml nicotine salt is 'equivalent' in concentration to ~27mg/ml nicotine freebase and likewise 25ml/ml is 'only' as strong as 13.5ml/ml nicotine freebase. You also inhale a LOT less from salt vapes typically compared to traditional vapes. Prior to the popularity of nicotine salts, I remember having friends who switch from cigarettes needing high concentrations; ~20mg/ml nicotine freebase which has a intense throat hit.
I didn't realize the nicotine itself is what was different, and would explain how there are sub ohm salts now that only contain 3/6 mg/60 ml.
I did notice when I tried the Salt pods my friend had that were 25/50 that it did give me an intense head buzz, pretty much like smoking a cigarette for the first time. I think that inhaling less vapor is also beneficial in pods vs the sub ohm, and if I wasn't planning on quitting at the end of the month I probably would switch to the pods as it would be easier to smoke in public without annoying/drawing attention to yourself like with the sub ohm mods.
The liquid in Juul pods is actually 59mg/ml. There's 0.7ml of the stuff in there, so the total pod nicotine content is about 41mg.
With roughly 200 puffs per pod, that comes out to 0.2mg per puff.
You either quit, or you don't care enough. (Truth hurts)
There's quite a few comments in here where people are planning to take time off over the holidays to get off nicotine. You may have bounced back with no ill effects but there are a lot of us that don't and are aware of how we act when coming off and don't want to put people we coexist with through that fun.
It took me weeks of being depressed (about 2-3 weeks) when I first quit to start to feel normal again, took me another couple of months for the cravings to really subside and for the smell of cigarettes start to disgust me. And then another year to forget about cigarettes.
Now I quit cigarettes and keep with vaping because I don't fucking want to go through another 2-3 weeks of depression and being barely productive.
There is no choice, there is drive, there is self-motivation and there is a bit of suffering but it is definitely difficult.
I've been on the on-again-off-again rollercoaster and made the switch to vaping myself. As to the withdrawal symptoms coming off cigarettes -- my personal opinion is that the MAOIs in tobacco cigarettes are a huge component in withdrawal effects, and coming off juul/etc. is a lot easier given that. But I'm not shaming by any means, and I'm still using the juul (need to stop yadda yadda), just in case that helps you with fears about quitting. Good luck :).
On the other hand, because I could suckle the juul indoors I think I wound up way more fearsomely addicted to nicotine than I ever had been while smoking. I was constantly hand to mouth with it. Obviously your mileage may vary, but trying to quit the juul cold turkey drove me just as nuts as quitting cigarettes.
What’s worked for me so far is the patch. It tapers you off while totally eliminating the craving-hit-craving cycle that made me feel like I was always on edge and couldn’t do anything useful unless I had the juul (or a smoke) available.
From an egotistical customer perspective Juul knowingly selling tainted vials is relevant while Uber isn't.
I've been trying to use 0 nic pods but they don't hit your throat at all so it's really not got the effect I need. The flavors great but it's the equivalent of eating dessert and blowing sweet air out of your mouth afterwards.
To add even more pain to this I'm sitting here smoking mint pods which are what this articles about..
edit: I grabbed a Caliburn, if anyone is having a hard time finding lower mg nic salts I found that www.cloudberryvapors.com will make them to any of your specifications. I went with 12mg and got a sampler pack.
People like Tim Danaher should be behind bars. It's amazing to me that you can kill, injure, or put at risk hundreds of thousands of lives in the name of profit, but so long as you do it while working for a large enough business you get to continue to live in the luxury those profits afford you no matter how much innocent blood you spilled to gain them. I don't know exactly when we decided that serial killers in suits are perfectly acceptable to us, but even the companies themselves who allow this sort thing to happen are rarely punished enough to offset the gains they made exploiting their customers.
I expect there to be people in this world who will do anything to satisfy their greed, I just don't understand why we continue to let it happen again and again in industry after industry without holding anyone meaningfully accountable for their part in it.
Assuming the allegations are substantial and true, Danaher should be very grateful that he's protected by the law. I can't imagine the urge for vengeance that would be felt by a parent of someone who died from this.
The CDC findings were that black market THC pods are causing the deaths. It seems most of the current moral outrage and reactionary, emergency regulations on (nicotine) vaping have been because people have not been doing their research at all.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/podcasts/the-daily/vaping...
It's called grandstanding
If we could work out a way to financially incentivise taking care of each other many of our problems would change swiftly and dramatically.
Then the vape company has a direct incentive to help me be successful.
Such a payment system should be assisted by government (ie. Government should give out forms which prove your earnings), and banks (who would remember who is due what percentage of your earnings and distribute appropriately).
The basics of such a system already exists in the UK, where students commit to paying 9% of their future income to pay for university (with a time limit and money limit).
This is a classic move in our economy: 1) product or service slowly becomes more expensive relative to income, 2) a subsidy that was supposed to go to the bottom tier to help even the playing field but is now used by more and more people due to 1 adjusts it's payout to return to it's planned effectiveness, then 3) product or service operator notices that consumers have more available money and adjusts their cost upwards.
Similar effects have been observed in more nuanced ways, like the costs of fresh fruits and vegetables being higher than boxed and processed foods, so low income food subsidy programs bump their monetary payouts to encourage purchasing of fresh foods, and some boxed or processed foods have a statistically unusual bump in retail prices in the area. This is the kind of bullshit that really starts to make me think that the USA needs a secondary monetary system (not bitcoin/blockchain, and not Dollar based) to be used for redemption of welfare and entitlement benefits which would make it impossible to track between something like an increase in food stamp benefits and monetary compensation for the use of those benefits. I'm cool with Kraft thinking that Velveeta cheese "product" needs to be more expensive in our magical capatalistic society, I'm just not cool with them thinking that only because the lowest income shoppers suddenly have 5 more cents in their account every month.
Just pointing out the obvious, people do crazy and harmful shit for money all the time (eg. Juul execs). Possibly more often than people with more “legitimate” reasons (eg. Vengeance).
So uh, do such people actually exist? The article doesn't suggest that anyone died.
For all we know Juul shipped 1M mint pods contaminated with strawberry flavour. The fact that the story completely avoids this is a bit suspicious.
"Mr. Breja brings this action after he was terminated in retaliation for whistleblowing and objecting to the contaminated pod shipment and other illegal and unsafe conduct that has jeopardized and continues to jeopardize public health and safety and the lives of millions of consumers, many of them children and teens."
I think it's safe to say this isn't about strawberry flavoured mint
I was simply reflecting on the factors at play in situations like this.
Otherwise it opens up any executive to tons of personal risk by taking a leadership role in any major public company with any sort of consumer liability. Or worse getting punished for subordinates behaviour with some idealistic perspective on what the executives show be in control of.
That type of arrangement would likely result in worse executives who are more risk-friendly. While the ones who are careful and averse to risk would stay in a non-executive position with very low risk that kicks upstairs or only take the safe executive jobs (even if the cases are likely to fail in court).
This will create a booming workplace legal insurance industry that will cover downside risks of lawyer costs and loss of income going into prison. Which helps minimize the disincentives this sort of thing would need to create to be effective.
I'm open to these ideas but there really has to be some serious conditions thought out.
The Opioid Pharma trials are the closest thing to justice I have seen in my lifetime.
I do hope this is a positive step towards corporate accountability. God knows we severely need it in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Xiaoyu
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-01/23/content_742298...
Seems to me that they wouldn't have it both ways...
This is a new conversation about adding risks never seen in the history of business outside of explicit fraud and criminal behaviour.
I think executives should be at major personal risk when their companies do things that cause injury or death to many people. It will force them to make sure that the people under them are following the rules and that their products are safe. Mistakes will surely happen and I don't think we should ignore it when a company who makes every reasonable effort to protect their customers still fails and people are hurt. That shouldn't necessarily get them off the hook entirely but it should matter. In cases where it's more obvious like in the case of the tobacco industry intentionally misleading customers about the risks of their product, or the auto industry selling cars they know are dangerous, or this one where the company was well aware of the problem but did nothing in order to protect their bottom line they should very clearly be held responsible.
I'm not sure that holding executives responsible for clear exploitation would make them more likely to take risks. It seems to me that as long they know they wont be held accountable for killing people they'll be more likely to do it. Companies would also be less likely to promote reckless people if they knew doing so could mean they might face a corporate death penalty.
I do agree however that the specifics of who to hold accountable and to what extent they are punished are complicated issues. We've had decades of examples showing it's far past time we put in the work to come up with something however.
We can't keep turning a blind eye to the hundreds of outrageous examples of ignoring health impacts and lying in public whilst the real facts are in a filing cabinet at head office.
Frankly the law should have changed dramatically after discovery of Thomas Midgley and tetra-ethyl lead, "the science on smoking and health isn't settled", or Bhopal etc. We have centuries of proof there aren't adequate consequences.
> getting punished for subordinates behaviour
That's what leadership is. Responsibility for those under you on your watch. If you fired or prosecuted them on first discovery, that forms a decent proportion of mitigating circumstance. Perhaps you'll still be found negligent for not having adequate checks and balances to prevent it happening in the first place...
At least some of those examples are tied up with one industry spinning up misleading studies to make money by known false messages of margarine over butter or sugar vs fat etc. Chances are Nestle, Kraft and Coke or whoever have dozens of studies they didn't reveal sitting in the filing cabinet before they got the couple that gave the misleading results they needed to make a ton more money.
It's nearly always the case that when we find out years or decades later, "they knew" and actually had extensive investigation on the topic - but chose not to care, or found a way to actively brief against the public interest, rather than it had simply never occurred to them to look or an innocent mistake was made. No, it generally turns out they have pretty extensive science and studies, just very very selective about what they let on about. Maybe there's a high profile spokes-PhD or two and everyone spends decades believing the problem is fat not sugars and apparently there are no consequences.
If the company and execs, and past execs were held accountable, and had a duty of care to customers and public, perhaps their past bullshit, PR lies, and talking bollocks under Congressional Committee oath (I believe one was "We don't believe tobacco is addictive" from assorted CEOs under oath) can come back to haunt them. What would match with 2 years CEO jail time for the corporate-personhood? 2 years delisting and forfeit of dividends or profit? That might focus investors and execs on appropriate board integrity a little more... :)
Is it really that old-fashioned to think there should be consequences for those who cheat even if they hide behind a corporation? Back when I was a director I actually gave a shit about us being honest, offering an honest service, and holding the staff to the same standard - especially when they were talking on the company's behalf.
It's all publication bias, but maybe in a post-Columbine witch hunt you'd end up in jail.
The TL;DR the customer is the other party to mutually benefit from our offering, not a cow to be industrially milked regardless. After 40 years I still haven't bought into "greed is good", we should aspire - and regulate - to a higher standard to everyone's benefit. :)
In a more general business context I would hope to show we a) thought about it and investigated it properly then b) took a considered view that we could stand by if it was later publicised or leaked, i.e. properly exercised our duty of care and reasonable ethics.
Knowing there's a problem and carefully keeping quiet about it, or pretending the opposite and spinning against - maybe even hiring a PR agency to sow doubt, or ignoring contaminated product -- well those all seem to tip easily into criminal negligence and should come with serious consequence for both directors and company.
As an aside, I've always found it most odd that US tv is frequently laissez-faire on violence, but will beep out or overdub minor-friendly trivial profanity or get all puritan about a hint of nipple or human relations. Mostly the opposite of the European perspective. I quite often fast forward through the boring over-long fight sequence or shoot outs in US TV and movies... If it's an 18 rated horror I've sat down to watch, sure, bring it - though I'll probably still skip the 5 minute OTT shoot out to save yawns... :)
I mean, that's how America's been since the very beginning. First we had slavery, then we had corporations getting away with killing workers through heinous workplace negligence, e.g. the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. I'm not saying it's good that this has always been so, or that citizens should be apathetic in the face of repeated sociopathy, merely that realizing that the country's always been like this is a necessary step for understanding why the serial killers in suits seem to have so much power.
Protesting slavery was extremely difficult. Protesting the workplace got you labeled a communist or socialist.
And now when we protest against climate change or ask for more workers rights or BLM people are generally against it.
Other causes have had similar successes. The cause of abolition (or at least unease about slavery) was enough to elect Lincoln in 1860 despite Lincoln not appearing on the ballots of the entire South. Which, of course, started the process & war which ended slavery. Abolition won, albeit in a very bloody way.
I think it's not a case of people not caring. It's a case of people care enormously but they feel powerless and they feel alone in their caring. This goes on until that day when they realize they're not alone.
It's interesting that we live in the most connected age ever where creating, building, and coordinating social movements has never been easier or more possible yet the labor movement and unions are dying, consumer protections and regulations are inadequate, privacy protections are nonexistent and constitutionally protected freedoms are flagrantly ignored and bypassed. I'm not sure what the problem is, but it seems like every social movement and organization that fought for the rights of the average person up until around the time of the free speech movement got much more accomplished while overcoming much more than we'd have to deal with now.
> The lawsuit claims that then-CEO Kevin Burns shot down that idea, saying, “Half our customers are drunk and vaping like mo-fos, who the fuck is going to notice the quality of our pods.”
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
He didn't say anything that anyone who takes three seconds to think "wait, how is this free, what are they doing with this data" wasn't/isn't thinking.
That's way different than saying who cares if we poison people, they're alcoholic hipsters
And it's specially damning if that's a quote by a person that's now in charge of so much sensitive data.
It's not damming at all. With no knowledge of where or when the quote is from, just looking at it I immediately go "likely a college student, with no business experience whatsoever, made a casual statement in conversation with a friend long before his product grew to the size it is today and now random people on the internet are vilifying for something he said in casual conversation probably a decade and and a half ago even though the comment shows no malice and is more a statement of disbelief in how little people think about their privacy"
...He's literally offering up their personal information on demand. "No malice"? That word doesn't mean what you think it means.
Contrary to what you seem to believe, people can have a good moral grounding in their late teens/early twenties. What evidence do you have which shows he's changed at all?
At that size of the site/database that's no different than going "here's my rolodex, who's info do you want".
[0]: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2007/11/facebook-unveils-facebo...
You see this time and time again, whether with tobacco, industrial pollution, oil and gas pollution, or this new vaping stuff. Oh and war; you see this perpetually with war and the military industrial complex.
For whatever reason, there are enough people willing to set aside concern for each other and humanity in general in order to make some cash for themselves. It almost doesn't matter what industry you look at - they all have moments or periods where finances trump (oh do pardon the unfortunate expression) humanity.
With red tinted glasses, it is "industry" and "corporations" that set humanity aside. Take the glasses off, and remember how Stalin treated his people, how much humanity the Berlin Wall represented, how caring Pol Pot was to the people of Cambodia. Yeah, Cuba and Venezuela seems to fit in there too. Can't find much industry going on with Daesh, ISIS, Al Quaeda, Taliban and the lot. Yet they treat people bad.
People are sometimes bad to each other, right. The means are not the cause. Correlation vs causation, remember?
If society is unable to prosecute criminal negligence, that's another matter; it's not about a mantra or ethos or something, we just have to do our jobs, and things will get better like they have been.
Take for example the recent deregulation that is undoing clean water and air protections to the benefit of a few industries. That obviously takes something (health) away from the people and gives it to a few companies as financial profits. Of course, those deregulations came because the companies had lobbyists and other agents who were providing financial benefit to a few politicians, and those politicians greedily placed themselves above the people.
When the government bodies that should be prosecuting criminal negligence (such as the 2007/8 banking crisis), the pharma-created opiod crisis, etc. have been gradually staffed by people from the industries doing the bad acting, that leaves society armless and unable to do anything other than protest (which they do, at times). But unless those protests become really violent (which I don't want), nothing can happen. Remember Occupy Wall Street? That was beginning to be an effective protest campaign, but eventually the cities began employing illegal tactics to break it up and shut it down. Since the people didn't turn violent, it was successfully put down.
I don't see a solution to the current situation other than waiting it out until the old corrupt people in power die off naturally. Younger generations are enough pissed that they might change some things once there are fewer kings of the political hills.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
And the VCs who enable and amplify such behaviors. These are the real power players who give the Tim Danaher's the confidence to continue with their terrible actions.
Money and greed goes hand in hand and it deludes your moral compass.
If you instead are driven by true happiness which can come in many forms such as doing good, impacting people in a positive way or just improving the world in general, money becomes less important.
I do understand this way of thinking is a luxury and I myself had been in situations where I just needed money to buy food, but the people sitting in these positions, making these decisions usually have no issue with money, they just want more.
If you want something harmful to ban, why don't you start with products with a nicotine level above 24 mg/ml. Better yet, why don't you REQUIRE them to be made available in a variety of lower nicotine concentrations, including nicotine-free. Giving the user control over the nicotine content is the primary value of vaping for smoking cessation. There is a legitimate public health interest in requiring products to be useful for this purpose.
Why are we not stopping cigarettes from being shipped around the U.S. immediately under these exact same concerns?
Note: I'm not arguing that those specific chemicals were found in the vape liquid, just an example of something I would not expect to find in a traditional cigarette.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4518591/
The problem isn't the vice itself, it is the demand for the vice.
There isn't yet a huge vape smuggling industry anywhere. Also, if banning vapes helps reduce the rate at which it is getting trendy among teenagers then I fully support it.
For one, cigarettes are not considered cool anymore, and will meet their inevitable death soon. Second, cigarettes can't be banned, because addicts will be forced into smuggling or moving to harder stuff. Third, Cigarettes have a ready smuggling industry that will take over, the second they are banned.
The analogy would be like leaving a bad marriage. It is a lot easier to divorce someone who will amiably accept than an extremely abusive partner where dissent puts your health at risk. Cigarettes are the abusive partner.
Banning cigarettes would be prohibition all over again. The vape ban has not been as bad of a disaster yet, so I can see why the govt. would want to continue with it.
It's typically nicotine, VG/PG (essentially glycerines like you'd use in a fog machine, but medical/food grade), and often a small amount of food flavoring concentrate suspended in the same VG or PG base.
I quit smoking with this stuff and eventually dropped off the nicotine. I made my own liquid because I could source the ingredients myself, control how much nicotine I used, and knew exactly what I was puffing on...something I couldn't say when I still smoked.
Yes, because prohibitions have always worked out marvelously, the list of bad things kids get into is small, and won't someone please think of the children?!
If you're all for banning dangerous things that adults enjoy which we also prohibit children from doing, you're list is going to grow quite long.
In many countries cigarette companies are not allowed to advertise as trendy or cool. Their packages are forced to contain photos of people affected by lung cancer and big signs saying the same. It really does help make smoking appear uncool.
Juul and vaping companies have gone around unchecked in this regard. Even if the ban is reserved I would be a huge supporter of such adversarial marketing restrictions.
> and won't someone please think of the children
Adults have way better impulse control. Thinking about the children is a legitimate concern, when talking about things with massive doses of nicotine.
> list is going to grow quite long.
If the world worked the way I wanted and laws had 100% efficacy, alcohol would be banned too. But, alas it is so deeply ingrained into our collective social psyche that it is going nowhere.
Apart from alcohol and pot, what adult thing can't minors enjoy ? That's the list.
And in the meantime, how many adults have you harmed by taking away an effective smoking cessation device in some naive attempt to protect children from a threat that you can't even quantify?
Treat them like cigarette companies when it comes to advertising, I'm all for that, but don't take away flavors or ban them outright out of fear.
>when talking about things with massive doses of nicotine
No one is dying from nicotine.
>f the world worked the way I wanted and laws had 100% efficacy, alcohol would be banned too. But, alas it is so deeply ingrained into our collective social psyche that it is going nowhere.
Jesus.
This story has been updated to include a response from Juul, a link to the lawsuit itself, and a clarification that the lawsuit did not specify which contaminant was allegedly in the pods.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YWJcqISKJQ
For example:
They created flavors clearly designed for non-smokers
They took major investment funds from big tobacco
The had to be forced to restrict certain marketing policies even though it was clear that vaping had become epidemic in high schools.
They pursue the same kinds of hyper aggressive promotion overseas the cigarette companies do, continuing with practices that are now prevented in the US
They happily ignore the evidence that many people in this new generation of addicts switch in-part or in-whole to cigarettes.