Nicotine is harmful and physically addictive. Consuming tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death in the world. It's apples and oranges, and yes, the oranges are less harmful and should be allowed and the apples are addictive and kill more people than any other preventable cause.
It's an interesting argument and something I struggle with. I don't generally support prohibition. I do think Juul (along with all tobacco and liquor companies) is monetizing suffering in a way that's unacceptable. I don't think making them illegal is the answer. But there is no amount of regulation which will stop these companies from doing harm, nor any that will be particularly effective at containing it, since their mission is to harm.
Those were cannabis cartridges. This is the exact misinformation that gets vapes banned unfortunately.
Vitamin A is far too thick to vape in a Juul type pod system. The only use it has is as a thickener for concentrates which use a whole different type of wicking system.
If the Vitamin A Acetate were in a Juul pod, you'd be just as dead. I'm not particularly interested in the mechanics of Juul pods that stop this particular chemical from being used - it probably isn't going to be the only chemical we thought was safe and turns out to be deadly in this new context. Vaping is, in fact, dangerous, and framing it as distinct and safer is, in my view, the misinformation.
Juuls use a silica wick which, while possible to absorb something as thick as Vit A the vaporization process would happen too quickly for the pod to perform properly. You'd have to wait 10+ minutes between puffs and the vapor production would suffer greatly. You would immediately know something was wrong.
Concentrate cartridges use a ceramic stone with a heating element inside or encased. This ceramic greatly reduces the flow rate and allows slower vaporization of the concentrate.
I ran a vape shop for years I am more than happy to discuss safety of vaping but won't participate in whataboutism.
What if you let me choose the risks I take? I'm not hurting you by doing so (no matter if you agree, disagree or if, like most moral crusaders, you are literally unable to comprehend someone making choices different than your own), so what's the problem?
also, vitamin e acetate was used to cut black/grey market cannabis vape products, not nicotine. nic juice is so cheap to produce that there's no reason to cut, vitamin e acetate is probably more expensive.
i quit an 8 year smoking habit the first day i purchased a vape. it's depressing and frustrating to see this option removed for others.
Chiming in as another person who switched entirely from smoking ~1 pack per day for 10ish years to juul. I never intended to quit nicotine, but e-cigarettes got me off combustion and I consider that a good thing.
1000 deaths (which briefly googling suggests is less than the number that die from lighting strikes annually), is in no way comparable to the nearly half a million from cigarette related health issues[0].
To be clear that was a black-market additive in unregulated cannabis vape cartridges, nothing to do with nicotine vapes and definitely not relevant to a company as regulated as Juul.
This would be like saying Coors Light is dangerous because your cousin's moonshine had methanol in it.
It's even less-related than that. At least Coors Light and moonshine are both intended to be an ethanol beverage. It's more like saying scuba tanks are dangerous because some black-market BB gun CO2 cartridges were poisonous to inhale.
> National and state data from patient reports and product sample testing show tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-containing e-cigarette, or vaping, products, particularly from informal sources like friends, family, or in-person or online dealers, are linked to most EVALI cases and play a major role in the outbreak.
What does people dying from poisonous additives have anything to do with making a distinction between two different things? People also die in car accidents, but we maintain a distinction between car accidents and smoking.
Incidentally, smoking has been a pretty significant cause of car accidents. People drop them while driving and panic.
I think it would be wise to retain the pretty significant distinction that those people (really sadly) died from vaping Vitamin A Acetate. But it's kind of like talking about moonshine deaths in a discussion about how non-alcoholic beers might still make your tummy hurt.
I think there is nobody in this comments section who would disagree with banning the use of Vitamin A Acetate as an additive to vape products, and also nobody who wouldn't want those responsible for the deaths to be held accountable.
This is a classic logical of error. Just because A implies B doesn't mean B implies A. Smoking tobacco is a form of nicotine consumption, but that doesn't mean you can substitute "nicotine consumption" any place you see "smoking tobacco."
It's not that A implies B. It's that B is contained within B. It's simple statistics.
It's like when we talk about alcohol consumption. Yes there are negative effects from the calories and other stuff in beer, but the main negative health effects come from the alcohol in the beer, so we talk in terms of alcohol consumption not beer (without the alcohol) consumption.
Nicotine is the same thing, it's far worse than the simple act of smoking. It changes the brain chemistry to be dependent on it, it hardens your vessels and leads to long term systemic hypertension (high blood pressure) that can cause tons of other issues.
Smoking is a form of nicotine consumption. If cigarettes didnt have nicotine we wouldn't smoke them.
Smoking causes X number of preventable deaths per year, which is the most preventable deaths in any one bucket. There are other forms of nicotine consumption, which also cause preventable deaths which add to that number. So Y number of additional deaths due to chewing tobacco, Z additional due to vaping nicotine and the systemic circulatory issues that come with that. It's a simple fact that X < X + Y + Z
Sorry, but you're making the same logical error of assuming that A implies B means B implies A. Let me help you understand:
> It's not that A implies B. It's that B [did you mean A?] is contained within B.
"A implies B" and "A is contained within B" are equivalent statements. For example, if you are Catholic, you are a Christian. Being Catholic implies being Christian. Catholicism is contained within Christianity. However, you can't go the other way. Being a Christian doesn't imply that you are a Catholic.
Regarding alcohol consumption, we talk about about consumption, compared to beer consumption, because we know that alcohol consumption has the same general risk profile whether or not you're drinking beer, wine, or spirits. The important part is that alcohol has been shown to have negative effects. Because alcohol has been shown to have negative effects, we can extrapolate that beer has the negative effects associated with alcohol, However, if only beer had been shown to have negative effects, we couldn't automatically assume alcohol was the cause because there is a lot of other stuff in beer that distinguishes it from wine and spirits.
Now the same thing applies to smoking. Smoking is known to produce over 9000 chemical compounds, 70 of which are known to cause cancer. At least part of the causal link to cancer is specifically tied to the compounds from combustion specific to smoking. Therefore, we can't automatically assume that nicotine is harmful just because its present in smoke and we know smoke to cause cancer.
> Nicotine is the chemical that makes cigarettes addictive. But it is not responsible for the harmful effects of smoking. Nicotine does not cause cancer, and people have used nicotine replacement therapy safely for many years. Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) is safe enough to be prescribed by doctors.
So, in short, just because smoking is known to cause cancer, doesn't mean you can assume that nicotine would be responsible for the same number of deaths if you replaced smoking with some other form of nicotine consumption.
That's the thing. I'm not saying "if you replaced smoking".
I'm not talking about a hypothetical comparison between smoking and vaping.
I'm talking about my original statement, and your misunderstanding of it.
My original statement was not to say that if you replace smoking with vaping. Of course vaping is less bad than smoking.
My original statement was to say that smoking nicotine is the leading cause of preventable death, so if we add in deaths by chewing and vaping thats even more deaths. That's all my original comment and subsequent replies are referring to - not a comparison of vaping vs smoking.
> My original statement was to say that smoking nicotine is the leading cause of preventable death.
See, you've assumed that A implies B means B implies A again. Smoking tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death. Nicotine is in tobacco, but that doesn't mean you can replace "Smoking nicotine" anywhere you see "Smoking tobacco." Hope that clears it up.
That's why I specified "physically addictive". Yes, weed can be and is addictive, but it's not chemically physically addictive in the same way nicotine or opiates are.
I think we're going to see this view change quite a bit with legalization. Consuming large amounts of THC (regardless of delta 8 or 9) on a daily basis is not well understood.
If you're eating 100+mg a day you will have physical withdrawal symptoms. This kind of consumption just hasn't been possible, or more likely affordable, for a large swath of the population until a few years ago.
>If you're eating 100+mg a day you will have physical withdrawal symptoms
I think your bigger concerns at 100+mg a day will be paying for your habit, and having a life outside of melting onto the couch and watching dumb YouTube videos
You can get 100mg of TCH gummies for like 10-15 bucks from most dispensaries. Price per mg only drops from there if you're willing to use concentrates.
I've actually heard the opposite anecdotally so i looked it up.
In this study 57% out of 1000 persons seeking treatment for drug and alcohol dependencies said that quitting smoking was harder than their problem substance.
I dont have personal experience with opiates, but do with nicotine and I can say it took 10-15 years before I didn't have a regular desire to consume nicotine. It was the hardest thing I've ever done.
You can die from opiate withdrawal. It may seem easier to give up, but it is an objectively more addictive substance. Not to mention much more dangerous once becoming addicted.
FWIW nicotine in cigarettes is only as addictive as it is because tobacco also contains short acting MAOIs (monoamine oxidase inhibitors - harmane and harmaline, the same ones combined with DMT) and other additives that relax the airways and increase nicotine absorption.
Smoking a cigarette is like taking a fast acting but short duration antidepressant along with a mild/moderate stimulant simultaneously, which has been specifically engineered to go from lungs to brain in the shortest time possible.
Switching to vaping from smoking has a transition period ranging from a few days to just over a week while the brain adjusts to receiving the nicotine much more slowly. Vaping relieves nicotine cravings, but at normal doses in an ex-smoker barely scratches the surface of the instant relief/rush delivered by a cigarette.
Nicotine itself and on its own is relatively harmless to an ex-smoker. But should still be avoided by non-smokers.
Most of the harm caused by cigarettes are related to the tobacco-specific nitrosamines found naturally in tobacco which are carcinogenic, combined with additional carcinogens and harmful compounds created when tobacco combusts.
That said many of the flavourings used in e-cigarettes are harmful to health, especially when heated. Most notably sucralose, which itself partially decomposes into carcinogenic compounds when heated to temperatures reached by vaping. But that's another problem, my main point is that nicotine is only about as harmful as caffeine when consumed alone outside the context of a cigarette.
>Nicotine itself and on its own is relatively harmless to an ex-smoker.
Why is this meme so popular on HN? There's nothing 'harmless' about it, and a few minutes of Googling makes that incredibly clear. Even in the absence of tobacco compounds, nicotine unquestionably wreaks havoc on pulmonary and cardiovascular function, and promotes vascular calcification and arteriosclerosis. It's also implicated as a cause with a plethora of other horrible medical issues.
However for nicotine addicts the e-cigarette is certainly a better method of delivery than the cigarette, as you're not getting exposure to known carcinogens like benzo[a]pyrene etc.
> "Benzo[a]pyrene is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon and the result of incomplete combustion of organic matter at temperatures between 300 °C (572 °F) and 600 °C (1,112 °F). The ubiquitous compound can be found in coal tar, tobacco smoke and many foods, especially grilled meats. The substance with the formula C20H12 is one of the benzopyrenes, formed by a benzene ring fused to pyrene. Its diol epoxide metabolites (more commonly known as BPDE) react with and bind to DNA, resulting in mutations and eventually cancer."
> Smoking a cigarette is like taking a fast acting but short duration antidepressant along with a mild/moderate stimulant simultaneously, which has been specifically engineered to go from lungs to brain in the shortest time possible.
Chewing tobacco is about just as fast without I assume engineering or maoi.
This is not a "study". There's nothing observational or even experimental in this paper to demonstrate a measurable effect (much less calculate the effect size) in people.
This is literally just looking at pathways and saying "yeah that seems possible".
There is an epidemics of people who argue on bad faith on the internet and just google links from pubmed to add to their ""argument"" without ever reading or understanding the articles they link to, expecting others to not go past the title (because most people aren't going to read full articles linked by randoms on comments), giving their ""argument"" credibility and weight solely based on the fact that "it's on pubmed, it's research". It has grown incredibly tiresome.
Not to mention there are tons of published papers that are worth less than toilet paper. This is a huge problem and pubmed is a central database that doesn't exert anywhere near enough curation, it is meant to be used by professionals of targeted interests who can exert proper critical judgement, not by random people.
>Recent reports that PubMed, one of the world’s leading biomedical databases, includes predatory journals and their publications1,2 is cause for concern. PubMed handles millions of queries daily and represents a key source of knowledge for health researchers worldwide. Much medical research that underpins clinical practice relies on the findings generated by peer-reviewed studies that are retrieved via biomedical databases, in particular, those that are free to search such as MEDLINE and PubMed. Thus, it is imperative that these databases are free of contamination by the outputs of predatory journals with their critically flawed peer review procedures.3 We analyze why this is happening and identify some possible solutions to stop the penetration of predatory journals and publishers into biomedical databases.
>Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent paper linking the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine to inflammation of the colon and to autism, and upon whose illusory foundation the modern anti-vaccine movement rests, is listed on PubMed (though it is marked as “retracted”). There is a journal called Medical Hypotheses whose articles are also discoverable through PubMed. The journal’s purpose is to publish theoretical papers, and its editors will consider “radical, speculative and non-mainstream scientific ideas” as long as they are written in a way that makes some kind of sense. One such paper proposes that ejaculation might be a potential treatment for a congested nose. Another argues that this handy intervention is “inconvenient, unreliable and potentially hazardous.” Both are, you guessed it, found on PubMed.
Just because it's on pubmed doesn't mean anything. There are so many terrible studies published and listed there that only a researcher of the studied field can tell whether it's any good or bad.
>Nicotine itself and on its own is relatively harmless to an ex-smoker.
Why is this meme so popular on HN? There's nothing 'harmless' about it, and a few minutes of Googling makes that incredibly clear. Even in the absence of tobacco compounds, nicotine unquestionably wreaks havoc on pulmonary and cardiovascular function, and promotes vascular calcification and arteriosclerosis. It's also implicated as a cause with a plethora of other horrible medical issues.
If this is the kind of thing where smoking shaves 8 years off your life and you die at 67 instead of 75 it could be a net benefit to society because you aren’t collecting any social security. I’d be interested in what the leading cause of preventable death is for people under retirement age. Otherwise, is there any reason to force people to live as long as possible?
That'd be because as a replacement for nicotine cigarette consumption, vaping is a net gain to public health, but as a new addiction for people not yet addicted to any chronic respiratory chemical intake, it's a net loss.
... but in this specific case, if you're already vaping, the FDA doesn't care if you switch to Vuse. It's Juul specifically that isn't getting the nod, it seems.
At least in some cases, the anti-vaping ads are funded by settlements with the tobacco companies under the guise of preventing "tobacco use". Its genius on the part of the tobacco companies, managing to pay a settlement and direct it toward advertising against your own competition.
Federal government is not ok with marijuana. Only some states. I presume that because of some legal precedent, individual states can legalize the Devil's Lettuce, while the federal government keeps considering it illegal. The benefits of federalism!
Individual states cannot legalize it, they can only decriminalize it- at least, until a court case makes its way to the supreme court that removes marijuana from the federal government's ability to regulate drugs via the DEA.
The fact that the federal government has chosen to not interfere in states that have decriminalized it is merely a policy position- it continues to have the authority to go after people in any state for the production, distribution and (I think) consumption of any Schedule 1 drug, which marijuana is currently listed as.
> Individual states cannot legalize it, they can only decriminalize it- at least, until a court case makes its way to the supreme court that removes marijuana from the federal government's ability to regulate drugs via the DEA.
"Decriminalization" is a specific term with a specific meaning in the context of drugs.
When states decriminalize a drug, they reduce/eliminate enforcement of the existing laws.
When states legalize a drug, they actually remove the laws prohibiting the drug. When most states legalize marijuana, they also create regulatory regimes to dictate how when the drug can be created, sold and used.
So while you are correct that Marijuana is illegal under federal law and that there are good precedents for their ability to enforce those laws, you attempt to get this point across by nitpicking the use of "legalize" is pedantically wrong. The correct explanation is that there are many states that have legalized marijuana under state law and the federal government has a policy of decriminalization for intrastate marijuana commerce in those states.
I think that part of the reason why that approach is taken by the DEA is to avoid creating opportunity for legal challenges that might undermine the existing precedents that give them power to regulate even intrastate commerce.
> I think that part of the reason why that approach is taken by the DEA is to avoid creating opportunity for legal challenges that might undermine the existing precedents that give them power to regulate even intrastate commerce.
Is definitely correct.
> When states legalize a drug, they actually remove the laws prohibiting the drug. When most states legalize marijuana, they also create regulatory regimes to dictate how when the drug can be created, sold and used.
This does not mean that it has been made legal in the state- the state does not have the authority to make it legal, as that power is reserved by the federal government.
I will concede that "decriminalize" may not be the best word to use, but "legalize" implies that it is legal under state law, which it cannot be.
In truth, I'm suspect of the legality of states imposing criminal punishment on drug use as well. States which have passed laws on immigration mirroring the federal government's laws (in an effort to step up what they viewed as lax enforcement) were taken to court and shot down under the Supremacy Clause: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/11-182 and similar cases. I think the same logic would apply to drug laws, if any politician were foolhardy enough to challenge the states on it (as it would be far less popular to do so).
> This does not mean that it has been made legal in the state- the state does not have the authority to make it legal, as that power is reserved by the federal government.
> I will concede that "decriminalize" may not be the best word to use, but "legalize" implies that it is legal under state law, which it cannot be.
Not true, most states have laws making marijuana illegal and when state courts prosecute people for marijuana it is under state laws. Only federal courts can prosecute you for violations of federal law. (Edit: not completely true, there are complications and exceptions.)
So when a state legalizes marijuana, it is indeed now legal under the law of that state and state prosecutors and judges can't just switch to applying the federal laws.
The supremacy clause absolutely does not say that states can't pass laws that cover the same subject matter as federal laws. There are a huge number of acts that are illegal under both state and federal law.
The supremacy clause says that federal can pass laws that supercede state laws, either explicitly or implicitly. Given the long history of cooperation between state and federal law enforcement in the war on drugs, combined with the now fairly long standing policy of the decriminalization of intrastate drug commerce in where legal at the state level, would make it really hard to argue that there is any implict intent for our current drug legislation to supercede all state law.
The supremacy clause just means that congress could pass new drug regulations that did supercede state drug laws. That would probably end up getting challenged in the supreme court and set some new precedents so this seems pretty unlikely.
The key term here is "commandeering" - basically, US courts have ruled that, under our structure of government as outlined in the constitution, it is illegal for the federal government to force the state governments to enforce federal laws on behalf of the feds. This includes requiring states to pass laws that match federal laws.
This provides a convenient upper boundary on the actual power of the federal level - they can ban all they want under the modern expansive implementation of the Commerce Clause, but to get effective enforcement, they either need to allocate enough money on the federal level to cover the entire country, or they need to convince the states to help them enforce.
Thanks, I wasn't familiar with that term. Being able to reference commandeering will help with explaining why preemption isn't too widely applied on the federal level.
A state legalizing marijuana refers to repealing that state's laws against marijuana. In California, you would not be breaking any state laws by smoking marijuana. You would be breaking federal laws.
A state can repeal state laws against it. This is what we refer to as "legalization". Decriminalization refers to reducing the penalties. A state can either legalize or decriminalize. In either case this does nothing to change federal law.
"In October, the FDA allowed Juul rival British American Tobacco Plc (BATS.L) to market its Vuse Solo e-cigarettes and tobacco-flavored pods, making it the first-ever vapor product to get clearance from the health regulator."
We won't know for sure until the FDA actually releases their report, but one could infer that Juul as a provider of human-consumable vapor products was unsalvageably bad, to the point of being a danger to public health (in a way that their market competition was not).
Most of our government is not ok with marijuana. This is also the result of a poorly run company, not an indictment of nicotine. As the headline states, only Juul is being forced off the market, not nicotine products in general.
Juul is 35% owned by Altria (formerly known as Philip Morris, Inc.). Vuse, another large ecig company, is wholly owned by Reynolds American, the second-largest tobacco company in the US and a subsidiary of British American Tobacco, the largest tobacco company in the world. At this point, the ecig industry is big tobacco.
These are the mainstream e-cigs. Vape shops pushing disposables is still a big market. There will be no new cigarette companies. As long as you continue the whack-a-mole against new entrants your customer base is protected.
Altria surely didn’t want Juul to get regulated out of existence. But the rest of the majors did.
I can't decide if you're expecting people to answer yes, as if Big Tobacco is nobbling the competition, or no (because Big Tobacco owns huge stakes in the e-cig companies).
Important to remember that combustible cigarettes are terrible and e-cigarettes are a slightly less terrible alternative to those. In a world where cigarettes are so terrible however, e-cigarettes end up saving billions in health care dollars and quality of life.
Of all the e-cig players, Juul (which is now majority owned by Altria) is the most reputable one — by far - they have by far the best technology, quality controls, compliance and regulation teams, etc.
Unfortunately before Altria acquired Juul it was a terribly ran company. People spend a lot of time discussing the chronic youth issues but the reality is that Juul never wanted to sell to youths or anything of the sort — they were just _so_ incompetent at operations that they couldn't do anything.
They set fire to hundreds of millions of dollars on totally ridiculous projects plainly stupid ideas:
* A modular supply chain project with the idea that they could use manufacturing as a carrot for regulatory laws — this team was 50-100 people and had tens of millions of dollars in budget. Never did anything.
* All manner of vanity innovation projects: new battery technology, next and next and next generation projects, dozens of flavours, absurd marketing campaigns, rebrands, a $250k custom typeface, the list goes on.
* Hired McKinsey and Bain because the executive team (who were all ex-management consultants) wanted the company to move fast ....
* My personal favourite Juul story (ok I have a bunch) was that the company was so incompetent they didn't do headcount planning — You could just hire as many people as you wanted if your random (often incompetent) VP was okay with it. Juul had 50-100 VPs so it was sheer chaos.
It got so bad that Altria had to step in and install their own CEO and axe all of the existing executive team (and lay off thousands of random employees) to try and right the ship. Altria are a very legit operational business — you may not like them but they know how to work with the FDA within strict regulation guidelines. If Juul is removed from the market despite Altria taking over they're truly fucked.
In my time at Juul I have never worked with so many incompetent people.
It was quite impressive but also incredibly depressing as someone that joined because the idea of creating a connected device vaping product to help switch Americans off combustible cigarettes was very compelling.
> however, e-cigarettes end up saving billions in health care dollars
I believe the jury is still out on whether or not smokers have more expensive health care requirements than non-smokers. Smokers tend to die younger and quicker than non-smokers, so their health care needs may actually be less than most non-smokers. They've also voluntarily paid a huge amount of additional taxes throughout their lifetime.
Dying younger is a huge cost-savings, especially if it known non-treatable and quick.
And once you're retired you're providing less tax than you're consuming (for most people) so there's a double benefit! Die at 65 and help balance the budget today!
But you also receive social security and Medicare, which are the two of the largest government expenditures. You’re not making a convincing argument that living longer is a revenue positive for the government.
Smoking-related issues kill and quickly. Most everyone will get lingering cancer at some point later and (can) consume large amounts of healthcare at that point.
It's been studied, and those past income-earning age may pay few if any taxes in the US (food is not taxed, there are ways to get pension income untaxed, and the standard deduction is in play, mainly property tax is the one still collected).
Not really. Only if by "dying younger" you mean being instantly killed in a car crash or by a falling piano.
But someone dying at 80 of a heart attack is less costly than someone dying at 40 after being treated for a decade for several cancers caused by smoking.
This is a spurious comparison. Someone dying at 40 after being treated for a decade for several cancers caused by smoking is not going to end up dying at 80 after being treated for a decade for several cancers caused by living long enough.
But why compare a cancer patient to a heart attack patient? What about smokers that die of heart disease, which they are more likely to get? What about non-smokers that die of cancer at 80 after a decade of chemo? Or the elderly that die at 95 after a 20 year battle with dementia?
I think this was like the ancap version of concern trolling where you pretend not to know what simple words mean in a specific context to try to make some obtuse political point.
In the choices between concern trolling and someone literally not being able to parse what "health care dollars" means in this context, the bad faith is a horse and the lack of reading comprehension is a zebra. Possible, sure. But probably not.
I assumed the poster was unfamiliar with the American health care system, or only familiar with vagueries and stereotypes. The phrase "health care dollars" probably didn't translate very well, since health care programs such as VA, medicare and medicaid are poorly understood in the US, let alone the rest of the world.
> Important to remember that combustible cigarettes are _terrible_ and e-cigarettes are a slightly less terrible alternative to those.
They're not « slightly » less terrible. They're not even comparable. Vaporizing glycerin and glycol is in no way comparable to burning plants. Implying it is is specious.
Are you implying they're much less terrible? I am not sure your point. Ultimately not consuming nicotine is good and any form of nicotine consumption is very bad, with combustible cigarettes being far worse than vaping.
I like to say that vaping is slightly less terrible than combustible cigarettes because it is very clear that you. should. not vape. unless. you. smoke. cigarettes.
Because with public health policy all nuance gets lost. If you say "well actually nicotine doesnt harm you but the tar in combustible cigarettes does so if you vape you're really doing no harm" people will render that as "nicotine does not harm you thus cigarettes are fine" this is literally how we got into this situation. There can be no grey area: if you do not smoke combustible cigarettes do not vape.
Btw all addictive substances are bad for you by definition.
Which makes it insanely hard to change things for the better, normal cancersticks (now without menthol!) will continue to be made and sold at extreme tax rates whereas something that isn't perfect but is better will get banned.
I would suggest that loss of nuance is true in some societies and not others.
We can and should be working to increase the fidelity of communication as well as make policy less of a blunt instrument. Education can work wonders as can honest, real, considerate conversations. All of these things benefit all of us.
Things are different today when compared to our young experiences. Younger people have far more information than anyone making these policy decisions does.
People did make that poor leap. Yes.
Will they do it again? I doubt many of them will, and the ones who might are likely to be using pot and will combust and inhale.
Society has far different norms and can handle nuance far better today. We need to recognize these changes and treat people better.
They can and will respond. They have tech and the body of common knowledge continues beyond what it was two decades ago.
This kind of "we know better for you" communication packs a lackluster punch and may do more harm than good.
What's your stance on nicotine gum or pills/lozenges? As far as my understanding went, it wasn't clear those things were exceptionally unhealthy, although I'd love to update my stance if someone can provide me with evidence.
They're very good (I initially said wonderful but I want to be clear that you shouldn't use these products unless you smoke combustible cigarettes because they're comically addictive) products because underage people do not want to use them!
There is some regulatory nuance I believe that makes them harder to buy than regular vaping products but I forget what it is — a simple fact though is that the social aspect of smoking breaks, smoking at bars, the habit of smoking is a huge draw and it's hard to replicate that with gum.
The best product to solve the nicotine crisis is a smart device that gradually lowers the nicotine invisibly to the user over a 3-6-12 month period. This isn't a super hard problem, the FDA and the market is just too non technical to execute.
> a smart device that gradually lowers the nicotine invisibly to the user
People who want to taper off nicotine using vapes can do this manually, and many do. I find this proposed solution overengineered.
Of course it could be enforced. "Smart" vapes could be regulated as medical devices, available only by prescription and used under the supervision of doctors. I think that would greatly reduce their appeal as a smoking replacement with a low barrier to entry though; other nicotine delivery systems to aid in quitting smoking were available decades before vaping.
Is it, though? The psychology of knowing vs not knowing that your nicotine concentration is being ramped down over time could be significant. For instance, I can easily imagine being far more willing to vape more on a hard day of work because "my nicotine is being ramped down anyway, so it's not as bad".
> The best product to solve the nicotine crisis is a smart device that gradually lowers the nicotine invisibly to the user over a 3-6-12 month period.
We already had that in Swedish snus and Obama chose to tax it to death to help the domestic tobacco industry out. Not only is snus not dangerous, but you can quit by just leaving the sachet in your mouth for longer and longer periods. That's how I quit, and I haven't had a cigarette in 11 years or a snus in 8.
The problem with medicalized nicotine gums, etc. is their absurdly high pricing.
Anecdotally, most snus users here in Sweden seem to be chronic abusers (taking it at a consistent or increasing rate with no plans to phase it out).
It also has the same flavouring problem as vapes (anecdotal paraphrasing from a friend: "I could never smoke but I use Snus because I think it tastes nice").
It's outright benine. No need to frame it in a negative way (« much less terrible »).
> I like to say that vaping is slightly less terrible than combustible cigarettes because it is very clear that you. should. not vape. unless. you. smoke. cigarettes.
Sure. And vaping shouldn't be made to look dubious or suspicious to smokers who would otherwise wildly profit from switching off cigarettes. Drawing an equivalency relationship between smoking and vaping is really bad from a public health perspective.
I'm sure it happens. But I'm not sure it's statistically relevant and deserves tailoring public discourse around. It just sounds like « think of the children » nonsense to me. I've certainly never seen it happen. In fact I've never seen anybody vape who wasn't previously a smoker, that just doesn't exist in my area. That's anecdotal, but I doubt you're basing your opinion off broad empirical data either.
I am basing my opinion on data. The nicotine industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars per year on studies discussing the incrementality of "years of life saved from switching to vaping from combustible cigarettes minus the years of life cost from net new people starting to consume nicotine"
What are we doing to address the nation's ongoing caffeine crisis?
You seem to have a particular fixation on nicotine and haven't taken an opportunity to look at any of the counter-evidence a dozen different people in this thread have tried to show you. The primary enemy here is inhalation of combusted materials, followed by inhalation of just about anything, followed by nicotine.
Cigarette smoking is a crisis. People applying nicotine patches will almost certainly never be a crisis. Trying to conflate the two, as you're doing, doesn't make sense. Trying to conflate tobacco smoking and nicotine vaping is slightly less senseless, but still irresponsible.
There absolutely is a massive risk of people who've never smoked starting with vaping and then moving to cigarettes, but you're only falling back to that as a motte to your "nicotine is a harmful molecule" bailey and aren't making it the center of your argument.
Good grief — for one thing, teenagers vaping is a crisis.
That alone appears to render your entire comment moot, but I'll add that all of my comments today have been incredibly consistent: smoking cigarettes is really really really bad and vaping nicotine is really bad (because its addictive, there are longterm implications of inhaling nicotine, ...) - to put it another way, if you smoke combustible cigarettes then you should switch to vaping ASAP. But if you do not smoke combustible cigarettes do not start vaping because nicotine is highly addictive!
PS: equating nicotine to caffeine is incredibly stupid and offensive towards the millions of people that battle nicotine addiction every day.
I mean caffeine and nicotine are roughly comparable, sure caffeine is less bad but it's still an addictive substance that's incredibly hard to quit, gives you crippling withdrawal, and has long term negative health effects, and is really easy to OD on if you ever stray from natural sources and commercial drinks with measured doses. People would be battling quitting caffeine everyday too if there was a huge push to do it.
You're allowed to acknowledge the odd double standard the world seems to have where because the most popular delivery methods for nicotine are extremely harmful that we treat nicotine itself as more harmful than it really is and say that we would still be better off simply banning nicotine. If it was an established cultural norm that gum just had nicotine in it and you had to buy "denic" gum like decaf there would never have been a massive push for people to quit.
Also, I think you're overestimating how many young people vape. I promise you it's not that cool.
Respectfully, it feels as if you're not reading my or anyone else's posts in this thread. Yes, I do not advise someone start vaping nicotine if they're non-smokers. From everything I understand, there really isn't more harm in applying a nicotine patch a day compared to drinking a cup of coffee a day, assuming average/recommended doses.
Yes, nicotine can be addictive. Caffeine can also be addictive. Yes, nicotine can cause certain health problems - as can caffeine. I'm surprised you worked at a company that sold nicotine products and yet have such a moral panic mentality around a fairly mundane, mild cholinergic stimulant out there.
Smoking is terrible for one's health, but smoking cannabis is possibly not much healthier than smoking tobacco; people just smoke tobacco far more frequently per day than cannabis, typically. At least one study shows cannabis smoke is actually more likely to cause lung cancer than tobacco smoke when taking that into consideration. Odds are burning and inhaling the leaves of many other kinds of plants will have similar risks. This is not a defense of tobacco smoke on my part but rather an attack against any kind of combustion-based smoking period.
I have. And besides the anecdotes, you can just look at the fact that vaping became a super hype amongst kids, kids that at least in my country were not smokers and couldn't have been because cigarettes are taxed to be totally unaffordable for kids, and even if they can afford them they're hard to buy because it's illegal to sell them to kids.
Everybody knows that some teenagers vape. The question is whether vaping (which has minor health affects) is leading people into smoking (which has severe health effects.)
I live in NYC and pre-pandemic I would see many high school age children vaping on the street and on the train platforms. I can't recall seeing any high school age children smoking cigarettes. I'm sure it happens but vaping is starting in middle and high schools prior to cigarettes.
So we've both seen different things and both are anecdotal. I don't think it should be banned BTW.
The statement was about whether some vapers graduate to cigarettes, which seems completely unrelated to whether some high school kids vape (what you stated) which is trivial to verify is true.
I can confirm there are tons of young folks <20 who are strong vape smokers. I can guarantee you most if not all are not on it due to weaning from long term cigarette addiction.
Cigarettes here are not cool anymore to young (great), vaping unfortunately is.
That is a truly miniscule group of the population, to the point where I would wager that those people would have eventually ended up smoking even in a world where vaping didn't exist.
The benefits of vaping over smoking even ignoring health concerns are simply massive. It doesn't smell nearly as offensive, it's vastly more palatable, you don't need to litter or look for an ever-dissapearing batch of ashtrays, there's vastly less social stigma, and if you're so inclined you can get much heavier nicotine hit.
Nicotine has been so vilified, it's never been properly studied.
I do know people with certain psychological disorders (I believe Schizophrenics) crave nicotine, and Psychiatrists don't have a clue why, like most of there art.
Nicotine appears to calm them down?
I had a friend who smoked 4-5 packs of cigarettes a day. If he was vaping, I bet he would still be around today?
(To those that cannot stop smoking cigarettes. I got down to 3 packs a year. Instead of just stopping, I use a tiny amount of tobacco daily, or when ever the urge hits hard. In my case 2x weekly. I buy a rolling papers, and roll tiny cigarettes. In one cigarette I can roll five tiny cigarettes. I would buy loose tobacco, but the taxes are worse than filtered cigarettes.
My point is use your vice in moderation. Most of you can. This black/white attitude towards drugs in America is troubling.)
I don't believe in conflating academic debates about the alleged complicated unproven merits of nicotine with the chronic public health policy failure of how the world has regulated cigarettes, vaping and wider nicotine products.
Sorry, I don't want my parent comment to be construed as being pro nicotine. If you don't smoke combustible cigarettes don't vape or touch nicotine. I feel a moral burden to be really clear about these topics as someone that briefly worked in this industry.
Minor nootropic effect aside, nicotine is absolutely terrible for the human body. Most people don't realize this because public health campaigns highlighting issues with tobacco products include statements about negative health outcomes caused by nicotine, but neglect to separate these issues from those that are linked to tobacco specifically.
to really get a concise view, we would want to look at studies of people who only use nicotine gum, or studies of people who use vapes. just be careful blindly posting papers you found from googling "nicotine bad paper" and dig more than 2 seconds into a paper, you can spread a lot of misinformation that way. we all know smoking and cigarettes are bad for you, but are the outside effects primarily from nicotine or from everything surrounding the delivery mechanism of it?
Ok, ex smoker here. Been itching to talk about this some, and now is the time!
I got started in the military. Flat out, smokers got more breaks and some considerations that others didn't, and so yeah. Light 'em up! And I was in during the late 80's when smoking was basically everywhere.
Smoked for many years, and was on strong cigarettes. Very hard to quit, and I tried a few times.
The impact was noticable later in life, I was easily winded and had some minor league emphysema beginning. Not good.
I had by chance mostly tried a vape. And it sort of worked, but did not deliver the levels I needed. Nicotine salt does. I did one vape on that formulation, and that was it. No more smokes.
Some years later, my recovery has been dramatic! Some basic damage is not going to heal, but most everything else has and I feel great! Can do what I should be doing too. And the benefits continue to accrue.
Coughed up bits of tar for a long time. On another whim, I did inversion, and gakked out a ton of the stuff. Recommended, if you've got clogged up lungs. Just make sure you've got a spotter and someone to assist you in the process. I needed that due to the exertion.
Moving on...
Vapes are seriously good harm reduction, assuming someone is using gear that isn't damaging somehow. There is a lot of crap out there. Sadly, rather than regulate it all and maximize the benefit, the pressure to get rid of vaping altogether is winning out here in the US.
Too bad JUUL was run so badly. Their core mission is a good one, and tons of people are going to benefit very significantly.
Nicotine itself isn't that big of a deal. It's a stimulant and is addictive like similar compounds are. What really maxxes out it's addictive nature is the inhalation delivery method. Taking it orally, for example, isn't quite the same thing, unless the method is intended to pass through the skin, like chew does.
Nicotine is not cancerous.
The real danger in smoking is tar & particulates damaging the lungs, and cancer caused by the tons of byproducts of the combustion chemistry. The nicotine comes along for the ride and again, by itself isn't such a big deal.
I am doing that, but given the controversy surrounding JUUL, and the braindead US banning flavors, I moved off the platform quickly.
Today, I use a nicotine salt formulation on par with the best of JUUL, minus the accellerants.
On those:
The good part is those actually do matter when it comes to smokers switching off combustion. Psychologically, the impact is there and similar enough to not trigger anxieties that inhibit quitting. Fair enough.
The bad part is those make a JUUL absolutely fucking great to a non smoker and particularly younger smoker. Young people will grab one and drain the pod in an hour copping a major league buzz on par with what they can get with combustion cigarettes!
In my view, this should have been partitioned in some way, harder to get and easier to keep out of young hands.
Once someone is vaping, the accellerants are unnecessary given reputable gear and a salt formulation.
JUUL vapes contain (a) chemical(s) that increase the bioavailability of nicotine over what a nicotine salt compound already does when compared to free base nicotine. Basically, small amounts of this additive increase the amount of nicotine absorbed as well as reduce the time to absorb, which brings a vape closer to what a combustible cigarette can deliver.
I am struggling to remember my source for that info. If it comes to me, I will drop it here.
Took a minute to recall and see if I could link you to some stuff. Here it is:
All I found was the common additive, which is Benzoic Acid. Honestly, that is the heavy hitter, so close enough for this discussion. At one point, I know I saw a more complete list and should have saved it...
The acid increases bioavailability. And it is significant, as in test some people and they will notice. Can't miss it. For all but the nic-whales, adding it makes a big difference. For JUUL, this all means a little bit of vapor can pack a big punch.
The other important thing is the ratio of propoline glycol and glycerin and temp control. Too hot and toxic compounds get made and other bits may be inhaled. Metals. Too cool, and the experience sucks, gear clogs, total mess.
The glycerin has a sweet smell and taste, but it is thick and that property inhibits absorption as well as how well it atomized. (Poorly, in general without using heavy components with moving parts. Makes a good cloud too.
Propoline glycol atomizes very well, but has a harsh feel and taste, but also has better absorption. I do not recall the cloud performance with the fidelity I want, but I think you can take it from here.
Basically, JUUL packaged up a good ratio, used the nicotine salt form, and added the acid and a sprinkle of other things and hit a home run!
Other vendors followed, but few have flavors that make sense. Early on, others were harsh, or very seriously overdoing it. Flavors can be a major league irritant too.
Today, one can get good juice and reasonable gear that has the temperature right and have few worries. The US is making a major league mistake here because this path we are on will favor the hucksters selling shit to people. Not good.
Edit: On things like super long flights, I take a little juice and just rub it on the inside of my arm and let it soak in like a patch.
Slowly, given how things look, Mrs and I need to taper down faster and just get away from this all. And frankly, that pisses me off because the cognitive bump I get from nicotine is hard to give up.
Stupid people, who don't care about people, who do care more about money more should not be running things. The problem is chronic in the US and something I do not look forward to.
Hard times ahead for many. Unnecessary hard times.
I quit smoking years ago and have always felt some residual effects. After a few months of breathing exercises with a muscle oxygen trainer, I've noticed a night and day difference. I spent a few weeks coughing stuff up, my blood pressure has improved, as has my cardio performance on measured performance equipment like the Peloton.
Again, this is just my personal experience, but it might be worth a look if you're working towards a long term recovery.
It’s probably the best <$50 purchase I have spent. It has made a noticeable improvement to my health with less than 10 minutes invested per day. I would think of it as a supplementary regimen that will improve a core part of your fitness (vascular health), but not a substitute for high intensity exercise.
> The real danger in smoking is tar & particulates damaging the lungs, and cancer caused by the tons of byproducts of the combustion chemistry. The nicotine comes along for the ride and again, by itself isn't such a big deal.
With no combustion, tobacco causes mouth cancer all the time. It is simply cancerous (though nicotine isn't). I'm sure tar etc. makes it worse, but something else is bad in tobacco.
Then have someone whack on my back while I cough out crap.
It was basic, and a bit of a whim. Came up during discussion, and the gear to do it was right there, so... we did it. Some crap came out, and I felt better.
Maybe doing that is bad. I don't know and can't edit now that I think more about it. But, it worked great for me.
I bet it is similar in the basic idea of getting the gunk out. How it gets out is likely best left up to experts.
What I noted was that feeling when one takes a deep breath did not extend down as far as it normally would. And repeated ones would dislodge some gunk, and often I would gak that up.
When I inverted, I had someone lightly pummel my back, open heel of the hand, just thump, thump, thadathump! Just a rapid rhythm while I took my lungs to their extremes, full inhale, full exhale, then cough and gak it out. And I used a cycle.
Get rested, feeling good, then invert, work the process and when something shakes loose, there is a lot of coughing, and one can't really do that upside down without getting a major league headache, so I had my spotter rotate me head up and I would work the gunk, until it came out, or I reached a steady state where it's just not happening. Rest, repeat.
Took about an hour.
And the aftermath was a few days of sudden gakking stuff up too. It's like everything got shook loose, and often hunks of tar and other mucus would come up and out. Other times it would just be a fit of coughing and then nothing.
What I did notice near immediately after doing all this was a deep breath triggered that feeling much lower. There were areas doing air exchange without so much crap in the way.
Combustible cigarettes near immediately inflame lung tissue, blood pressure goes up and a whole lot of other things happen. Over time, our response to all that becomes more aggrevated and our ability to recover is reduced due to wear and tear with no effective rest. Like say someone gets too much smoke during some fire or other.
It's bad, but when they are away from all that, they are getting normal air and the body processes can do what they do and they heal. Some damage is done of course, and the healing is less than perfect, but the outcome is often good, unless someone crosses some line or other, like near death type crossing.
After I quit, I noticed improvements in a week. And sometimes little regressions, like after intense exercise. Coughing up chunks of this and that got me to thinking the body is probably responding in those areas and maybe that strain on it all inhibits the healing that would otherwise happen.
In the end, all I know is an hour spent working the problem got a bunch of crap out of my lungs that really didn't need to be there. Perhaps the body would absorb it, or it ends up coming out over time, or I think the more likely scenario is it's just there and the body deals with it.
Nothing hurt, and there was no blood. It honestly felt like clearing out like what might happen after a particularly bad flu or pneumonia.
It has been years now, and I still feel improvement every summer. Some of that is just our normal healing and re-invigoration that happens when one gets outdoors for an extended time. And that's most of it. But, each year the peak lasts longer. I get through more of a less active winter before feeling like I really need some sun, good air, and exercise.
Speaking of which... There is a lot of rain where I live and our outings are delayed. Mrs and I both feel it big time! Hoping for more of a summer to happen soon, or we might just have to take a bigger trip and go somewhere we can get after all this anyway.
We just love our spot. Have been going since we were married.
Vaping has wiped out 20 years of reductions in teen smoking so that plan isn't working. Juul's marketing was never about a healthier cigarette replacement.
If your desire is to destroy tobacco products and to prevent people from consuming nicotine, that's one thing (and Mormons are perfectly happy to sign on to that.) If your desire is to improve public health, there's nothing to do but celebrate. It's impossible for vaping to have wiped out reductions in teen smoking with a rise in vaping, because vaping is not smoking.
I speak as someone who doesn't vape, doesn't like vaping, and will never vape. What I want is for people who want to quit smoking to be able to, and the way you enable that for the most people is to give them a far less dangerous alternative that involves the fewest lifestyle changes.
The antismoking industry long ago became a self-sustaining, self-protecting bureaucracy who cares less about health and more about civil suits and fundraising on new legislation.
“Very bad” is too strong. Nicotine is a drug that does not have therapeutic value. It does not cause cancer. It is addictive. It has mild nootropic effects, as well as other effects like appetite suppression. Here’s a good, easy to read rundown:
> Nicotine is a drug that does not have therapeutic value.
That is false.
> Nicotine in tobacco brings illness and death to millions of people. Yet nicotine in its pure form has the potential to be a valuable pharmaceutical agent. Nicotine fairly specifically binds to the cholinergic nicotinic gating site on cationic ion channels in receptors throughout the body. This action stimulates the release of a variety of neurotransmitters including especially catecholamines and serotonin. When chronically taken, nicotine may result in: (1) positive reinforcement, (2) negative reinforcement, (3) reduction of body weight, (4) enhancement of performance, and protection against; (5) Parkinson's disease (6) Tourette's disease (7) Alzheimers disease, (8) ulcerative colitis and (9) sleep apnea. The reliability of these effects varies greatly but justifies the search for more therapeutic applications for this interesting compound.[1]
Plus, you even said it yourself: "It has mild nootropic effects, as well as other effects like appetite suppression". Sounds like it could pretty much be therapeutic for cognition and weight loss.
"should not be" covers a ton of activities medical people would prefer we don't do.
What you are doing here is attempting to put additional weight behind your moral assessment of vaping by implying it's more dangerous than it actually is.
I suggest your opinion would carry far more weight when bolstered with the many potent, rational arguments against vaping, all of which I personally agree with. Those are all true, do not require manipulation in the form of misrepresentation; namely, overstating risk either.
Misrepresenting things is how we get bad law and bad norms. People do not respect bad law and tend to reject bad norms. Look at the whole theft argument used for media works. What actually happens is people infringe, and had we actually discussed all that word means, we would likely have better law today and people with a far better understanding of the issue. But theft sells, and is a sexy, if untrue argument very similar to the one you are making about vaping right now.
This means you may actually do more harm than good, despite obviously well meaning and in your view, considerate intent!
And no judgement here. I am not going to tell you what to do or say. Nor should I.
That is all, just wanted to put a different take here and ask you to think about all that some.
I don't think anyone is making a moral assessment of vaping, just a quantitative one. Vaping is bad for you. It is less bad for you than smoking cigarettes.
That's not a quantitative assessment, that's a qualitative assessment, and that's what the other commenter is objecting to.
If you quantify the risk associated with one activity as 100, and you quantify the risk of another activity as 5, and you then describe the first activity as bad, and the second as less bad, while that might be perfectly true, you've lost a lot of information in the assessment.
Clearly you shouldn’t vape unless you are trying to quit smoking. But yes, vaping is much less terrible than smoking. Also, Nicotine is not at all the part of the cigarette that is bad for you, it’s just the addictive chemical that keeps you hooked. Nicotine is just bad for your gums and is similar to caffeine as a stimulant.
The UK assessment on vaping said it probably is about 5% as bad as cigarettes. (Cigarettes are really bad for you, more than 3x as bad being obese)
So an entire day of heavy vaping probably takes about 9 minutes off your life, a little less time than eating a piece of bacon, a hot dog, or driving for half an hour.
With full knowledge that nicotine is is a poison; widely used in pesticides; that if you swallow one cigarette it'll make you sick, two and they will make you sick and kill all of your internal parasites, and swallowing three might kill you; and that nicotine addiction is harder to break than heroin addiction: is there any actual evidence that smoking nicotine (alone) is physically harmful?
to be fair, caffeine is also a pesticide. their effects are to destroy the vascular systems of bugs that eat the plants - hence why the two evolved as plant defense mechanisms to begin with.
Actually, this is inaccurate[0] and I think it's rather incredible that it was accepted uncritically. It seems that you particularly dislike vaping, but aren't very familiar with the science. Personally I would not be telling people what they "should. not. be" doing without even a basic understanding of the subject.
Sorry I thought the reason we didn't like smoking was the cancer, I didn't realize it was some moral thing about nicotine. I actually thought everyone was on the same page on this one.
Still a massively irritating addiction though, so I'm perfectly happy to have both be villianized. Also seems embarrassing for a grown man to emit a cloud of strawberry mango scented smoke, but to each their own.
>e-cigarettes end up saving billions in health care dollars
Does the american government not spend money on retirement? In my country smoking saves like 30 times more in retirement expenses than spend on smoking-related diseases. IIRC, that's not even accounting savings on healthcare that earlier deaths cause.
> Unfortunately before Altria acquired Juul it was a terribly ran company
Altria is a terribly run company. I was part of their previous attempt at entering the e-cig market (Green Smoke and Mark Ten). Everything they touch turns to dust, so this news about Juul is not surprising. I've never seen a company with so much dysfunction, in-fighting, and ineffectiveness.
When they shut us down in favor of the stake in Juul, we joked that they only took a minority stake in order to save Juul from them.
My guess is that Altria doesn’t know technology at all? They have the regulatory side locked in though. Juul understand technology but unfortunately wasn’t a technology led company. (and obviously didn’t understand regulatory side)
At the time I was there, Altria's entire business model was basically "let's lobby for the regulators to ban everyone but us."
It also seemed like they also didn't really want e-cigs to cannibalize trad-cigs, but they wanted it in their back pocket in case it started to take off. They were not interested in increasing sales at all and sometimes seemed to be actively working against it.
Ha, that is funny. I can see why they bought Juul — explosive growth and an alleged culture of technology — a perfect compliment to Altria.
Honestly, I feel slightly bad that Altria were hoodwinked into investing in Juul and having it implode like it did, all the Altria executives I interacted with were remarkably precise and lucid. BTW I think the FDA deserves 75% of the blame for their poor vaping policies (and total lack of enforcement.)
If you smoke cigarettes, then yes they’re less terrible. But e-cigarettes are expanding the market by marketing to teens and adding flavors like bubble gum. You can say Juul didn’t mean to market to kids, but the reality is that e-cigarettes appeal to kids and it’s a growing market with kids. Intentions are irrelevant.
E-cigarettes are not better than not smoking anything.
>E-cigarettes are not better than not smoking anything
Technically true but there's barely any health risks from vaped nicotine. The number of serious injuries are in the low thousands (total, not per year) and are mostly associated with THC vapes of questionable origin.
There are potential risks to inhaling any gaseous substance, but in terms of the molecule itself, nicotine probably isn't riskier than caffeine. Nicotine patches are likely safe, for example.
Source? "I am best known for work on the darknet markets & Bitcoin , blinded self-experiments , dual n-back & spaced repetition , and anime neural networks ."
>Another example is a breathless media article “Children Exposed to Nicotine in Utero Have Lower Reading Scores” on Cho et al 2012: here we can’t blame the media or Wikipedia editors because the paper itself (a longitudinal correlational study) has “nicotine” in its title and abstract (a total of 8 times), though the abstract quietly mentions it is actually a study of “maternal smoking”
Respectfully, he includes at least a hundred different sources in this post. Asking "Source?" when each claim he makes is accompanied with sources is a little confusing.
I wouldn’t suggest nicotine is safe, but patches are likely safer than vaping excluding risks associated acute nicotine poisoning.
The non nicotine components of vaping are also harmful. Smoke machines operating on similar principles are a known workplace safety hazard. It’s likely decades of inflammation from vaping would present it’s own unique hazards.
Yes, there are lots of other things to consider in tobacco and nicotine vapor solution. Just in terms of the single molecule itself, nicotine doesn't appear to be more harmful than caffeine. Acute caffeine poisoning can be fatal.
That’s another consideration, in pill form people do OD on caffeine. It’s rare, but so is consumption of canine pills. Generally caffeine consumption is in food or drinks at levels which limit consumption.
From that perspective patches and vaping are probably closer to a pill than coffee and as such represent increased risks over the nicotine it’s self.
I'm an adult with moderate ADHD and use nicotine gum as my treatment. I've been on Concerta and Adderall and find the gum works just as well but with no side-effects at all. I also don't have to request a refill every 30 days and it's MUCH cheaper.
I've never smoked a cigarette or vaped in my life. The dose required to alleviate my symptoms is so low (6~8mg a day) that addiction is basically non-existent. I don't take it on weekend unless I'm working and am totally fine.
I get salty when people demonize nicotine, it's made my life tolerable.
I can definitely see how there could be some overlap, although I've never actually had nicotine sober. Still, seems hard to believe it could be as effective for significant ADHD considering the standard suite of amphetamines is a bazooka by comparison.
Still, the symptoms that get grouped together as ADHD are so diverse that I could see it helping people. Biggest issue is probably relative addictiveness, since after 15 years of adderall use I feel absolutely no desire to take it on weekends or vacation, and that's probably not totally the same for nicotine.
Not the op, but nicotine seems to reduce my tendency to be involuntarily distracted at random noises and other stimuli. However, I don't have a diagnosed ADHD (never bothered to, I have only very mild signs of it).
That doesn't sound like a very low dose for a non-smoker? While addiction to gum is very unlikely, the probability of developing tolerance is high. How long have you been using this dosage?
That's a pretty low dose for a daily basis. A single cigarette varies a lot on how much nicotine it has but on average it's around ~12mg and most smokers probably don't smoke a single cigarette a day so 6-8mg is quite low.
The absorbed dose from a cigarette is closer to 2mg, so 6–8mg is 3–4 cigarettes per day. That's an order of magnitude down from the dosage of heavy smokers, who smoke multiple packs (of 20 cigarettes) per day. But it's not the half-cigarette's worth you're suggesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine
Nicotine patches are probably a less addictive option than gum, but gum itself is much less addictive than smoking.
> There is one study looking at the potential to use PG as a carrier for an inhaled medicine (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18158714) and another which mentions that PG or ethanol may be used as a cosolvent (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12425745) in nebulizers, but no evidence presented of an asthma inhaler or nebulizer that is actually used today containing PG.
There's also a huge difference between 3-4 puffs a day of a smaller amount, than chronic hundreds of puffs a day with vapes.
Then why only ban Juul and not all e-cigarette products? The article points out that the company is no longer the most widely used among children (Juul is now fourth in market share among high-school-aged users), and I can assure you that Puff Bars are inferior in quality and probably less healthy.
There are no carcinogenic chemicals in vape liquid. So how are they so bad? Yes nicotine is addictive but the only serious health effects come if you consume insane amounts of it daily (usually cardiovascular, it basically just raises your blood pressure).
This is just false. Go read the literature on nicotine. It helps create artery disease, both in terms of blockages and having them explode (hardening of the arteries) later.
So does sugar. So what's exactly the argument? If we forbid everything that might be dangerous the world would look very different. Half our food would vanish. Cars get banned...
To have a fair discussion I think we should compare to other substances we legally consume.
The difference between sugar and nicotine is that sugar isn't addictive (at least, no where near as addictive as nicotine) and is naturally present (in many forms) in lots of nutritive foods.
Re: cars, cars have upsides. What's the upside of nicotine?
re sugar not being addictive.... i smiled at naivety... it took me years to get off sugar in my tea :)
regarding upsides of nicotine - one may improve mood, alertness, calm down anxiety. These are acute results. Long-term - I believe there are quite a few papers on nicotine usage being associated with decreased chances of alzheimer's. (just one off top of my head, there might be more.)
Yes, that might be a real difference. (But I, personally, find sugar very addictive. YMMV) But what happens if we compare the health implications? Obesity, and sugar as one of many parts of this problem, might be more deadly than nicotine. The thing is... I don't know! But it is startling how different the discussion in the UK is compared to the US. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/e-cigarettes-an-e...
There is so much politics and misinformation in this discussion. That's not good.
ps: For me the upside of nicotine is fun. The same with alcohol. (I say this as someone who is vaping once a month and uses nicotine as a drug but does not want the downsides of cigarettes.)
Yeah sugar is very bad for you, almost certainly worse than non-tobacco nicotine. We badly need to regulate it.
> For me the upside of nicotine is fun. The same with alcohol.
I'm with you 100% on this one; I love to drink haha. But alcohol is pretty tightly regulated most places, both culturally and legally. I guess I'm fine if vaping/smoking/drinking/sugar are in the category of "we know they're bad for us but we like it, so we'll have some kind of regime where we can enjoy them in moderation"?
Nicotine is not intrinsically addictive. The form in which it is consumed has a significant impact. Nicotine in the form of patches, gum or lozenges is not addictive.
Sugar is absolutely addictive, and if you've ever used just nicotine (not tobacco, which contains a range of drugs that synergize to make the product significantly more addictive) you'd probably find that it is less addictive than sugar.
Nicotine is naturally present in at least as many foods as sugar is, albeit in very low concentrations.
Nicotine on it's own has a nootropic effect in normal doses, and a sedative effect in larger doses and is a very useful compound. It is at least as useful as alcohol, and the vast majority of the downsides of using nicotine come from using tobacco, not nicotine itself.
Maybe in some sense of the word [0], but definitely not like nicotine [1]. [1] also addresses nicotine replacement therapies, finding that nicotine on its own is still addictive.
> Nicotine is naturally present in at least as many foods as sugar is...
Definitely untrue, it's like eggplant, potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, and a couple others.
> ...albeit in very low concentrations.
The amounts are comically low:
> ...you need to eat 5 kilograms of eggplant, 12 kilograms of fresh potatoes or drink 9.5 liters of tomato juice to get [a cigarette's worth of nicotine, or 3mg]. [2]
I don't really think there's an equivalency between 30kg of eggplant and 20mg of nicotine in a vape pack.
> Nicotine on it's own has a nootropic effect in normal doses, and a sedative effect in larger doses and is a very useful compound.
We have other things for this. Is there a need for nicotine as a sedative? Do we need to satisfy that need with bubblegum Juul?
> The difference between sugar and nicotine is that sugar isn't addictive
~40% of our population is obese and another 35% or so are overweight and we don't regulate it at all in any capacity (marketing to kids, packaging, etc).
The argument is that after weighing the costs and benefits, they think nicotine products should be more strictly regulated or banned or whatever. Not that everything dangerous should be banned. That calculation would look different for sugar or cars; you can’t just substitute the word sugar for nicotine and have the same discussion.
I mean, it is the same discussion right? It's just the costs and benefits are different. Obviously some people feel more strongly about some of the costs, and some people feel more strongly that the government should allow people to make their own decisions.
It just seems oddly specific and too "big government", why is one specific vaping product being banned when the science has shown that they're less harmful than cigarettes, you can still buy cigarettes, and there are almost certainly other more harmful substances (like alcohol) that have a bigger impact on the health of the USA that are not banned.
I don't feel like anyone would argue against more regulations, but an outright ban of sale feels super weird.
>To have a fair discussion I think we should compare to other substances we legally consume.
To have a fair discussion you should compare both the costs and benefits of an item, not just a simplistic downside that is not even at that simplicity equivalent. Comparing damage from nicotine to the damage of sugar while ignoring that sugar is also necessary for human life shows the problem with your line of reasoning.
I don't think this is the argument you want to be making. Sugar comes out on top for overall healthcare costs incurred over a more or less nootropic a notch above caffeine.
I swear we could cut down on 80% of the comments in this thread if people took a minute to learn that essentially all the health risks from smoking are the result of combusting plant material and not the effect of nicotine.
Moving the goalposts to costs and smoke doesn't change sugar is required for life, nicotine is not. It doesn't change that unrequired nicotine does have significant bad health effects.
There might not be any human carcinogens in cold vape liquid, unless it was produced by organized criminals and introduced into the bootleg market, which is quite common. But once heated, which is how an e-cigarette works, even the non-carcinogenic solvents react to form probable human carcinogens.
There's a sibling comment outlining the negative health effects of nicotine, but there are also significant financial effects: maintaining a nicotine addiction is expensive. Should we really be a society that allows products whose only role in the market is to get consumers addicted to them, providing a profit stream in perpetuity? What's the upside to that?
Its only expensive because the regulations made it that way. I was buying a litre of unflavored pg+VG with the nicotine already mixed in (I got to pick my own flavors to mix in) and it coat me pennies on the dollar compared to buying a 100ml bottle of shitty premixed juice at the store. They put an end to that when they made shipping nicotine to consumers through the mail illegal.
You have no way to know that there are no carcinogenic compounds in vape fluid, unless you make it yourself.
If you're serious about ensuring that you know what goes into your body, just mix nicotine with USP food grade vegetable glycerin at desired concentrations and vape that, no flavors.
The idea that a flavor like bubble gum is ~only~ attractive to minors seems wildly off-the-mark to me. Adults enjoy bubble gum, and also enjoy flavors that are not tobacco-like.
I've never paid attention to Juul marketing, so perhaps they were committing faux pas in their targeting, but the existence of a bubble gum (or other enjoyable flavors) should probably not meet the threshold as readily as we allow it.
Exactly, it's so weird to see people talk about fruit flavors as if they're designed to appeal to children. I'd say most of the vape liquids on the market in Germany have some kind of sweet flavor, because guess what, adults like them.
Not to mention commercial availability of flavorings.
Juice companies, for the most part, are just throwing together vegetable glycerin, propylene glycol, and a couple of commercially available food/candy flavorings.
People love to bring up the "Adult flavors" argument like it's as simple as deciding to make juice that tastes like coffee, like they've forgotten that some companies have trouble producing coffee that tastes like coffee.
Some of the criticism against Juul were that they marketed directly to kids because their ads used colors. That's it. Colors.
I abhor the tobacco industry. I wish their execs had been thrown behind bars decades ago. They've proven that they'll put profit over human life and that they're willing to lie to our faces while they do it. They've earned all the skepticism and scrutiny they get, but I can't get over how baseless and absurd that argument against them was. Ads with colors and young adults in them aren't targeting children. There is plenty of evil to point at without getting ridiculous.
‘Bubble gum flavour’ is just a less common variant of mint. We have some of it growing in our garden - wintergreen. There’s nothing inherently childish about mint.
>Adults enjoy bubble gum, and also enjoy flavors that are not tobacco-like.
If the public benefit is that current tobacco-smokers will switch, then the experience only needs to be better than cigarettes - broad appeal beyond that is only a net negative for society.
Smoking, and thus e-cigarettes, seems to have become a culture war issue. The plausible post-hoc rationalized reason that people didn't like cigarettes is because they are extremey unhealthy - now that the topic of discussion is e-cigarettes, which have little evidence of being significantly unhealthy, and people still seem to despise them suggests that there is something much more interesting going on sub-perceptually.
Wild theory: perhaps some people for their own reasons don’t like being around people vaping.
I put up with it like I accept that people fart. Being around “vape smoke’ is something between discomfort and disgust (smell, smoke, etcetera), Ugggh. Yes: I have close friends that vape. No: I don’t complain to them or make faces or anything.
Even if I were hypothetically shown it was a purely nonsensical psychological dislike, that doesn’t mean I could stop disliking it.
> Even if I were hypothetically shown it was a purely nonsensical psychological dislike, that doesn’t mean I could stop disliking it.
I think there is great value in considering this possibility, and all others. The problem I am trying to get at is that people have a tendency to not be terribly interested in what is true.
Yea, the flavor thing is weird to me too. When I was in the Navy, a lot of the people I worked with swapped over to vaping and even 45 year old Senior Chiefs were vaping some dragon fruit passion shit.
The funny part is that JUUL discontinued their "fruity / sweet" flavors years ago. Meanwhile, that market has been taken over by dozens of competitors that have every dessert flavor you could imagine at every gas station in the country. These devices are single-use which means you throw away the entire device (including the battery) when it's empty. This is worse for the environment, easier for high schoolers to use discreetly and, importantly, enables evasion of regulations that were written specifically to target pod + rechargeable battery systems like JUUL.
Tobacco-flavored JUUL pods are mainly used by former smokers as an alternative to cigarettes. High schoolers are vaping hot pink, mint bubblegum flavored, one-time-use Puff Bars now. They won't even notice when JUUL is banned.
This is spot on. There’s an abundance of disposable e-cigarette brands here in Canada that resemble something I could manufacture in my garage. It’s scary. When I was using them — to quit smoking — some clearly had a worse and almost immediate impact on my lungs than others. There’s no consistency. How did banning Juul help us here?
There’s other rechargeable vapes available now like Stlth, which seem far better than the disposables, but it’s still madness.
Cigarettes are directly marketed to kids and have been for decades. I still remember the DARE posters from high school THAT WERE MADE BY THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY, and were specifically designed to have the opposite effect.
I also remember that a solid quarter of the student population smoked. So good luck with your abstinence policies, they have such a strong track record.
Speaking of which, does abstinence only education result in less teen pregnancy, or more? I can't quite remember.
Smoking prevention has been going well for decades. This graph[1] shows a consistent year-over-year decline in adult per capita cigarette consumption since about 1970, bringing it to around a quarter of its peak level in the 1960s. I had more trouble finding good graphs for teenagers, but it looks like teen smoking had a resurgence in the 1990s and has been in decline since then, with a sharp rise in vaping in recent years. (See Figure 2 here[2].)
Before e-cigarettes came along, it sure looked like the United States was well on its way to eliminating tobacco smoking altogether.
Oh, give me a break. It's nicotine, it's inhaled, it's made by corporations who market it to children so they'll become addicted before their brains finish developing. Vaping might do less damage to the lungs, but aside from that the problematic parts are the same.
Why eliminate smoking entirely? Some people want to smoke and that should be their business. The risks of smoking have been known for decades and some people accept those risks because they enjoy it. Instead of harassing them, how about we accept that personal freedom means that some people won't always make the choices you would like.
Smoking, at anything like the scale it currently happens, is not in any way a deliberate, rational acceptance of risk vs. reward. Almost all smokers start smoking when they are teenagers (i.e. children), when their brains are not fully developed. Nicotine is highly addictive, which makes it very difficult to later make a rational decision to stop. And teenagers who do start smoking do not do so as individuals in a vacuum, they do so with other teenagers due to peer pressure and other social factors.
Marketing a highly-addictive carcinogen to children is not about "personal freedom".
Your argument boils down to "think of the children" which I do not find compelling. I can rationalize taking all kinds of things away from people with that logic.
You're setting up a straw man for yourself to knock down; the points they're making are more nuanced than just 'think of the children' and you're being excessively reductive when you frame it that way.
So tell that to my stepmom that made me sit in a car when I was 13 years old with the windows rolled up while she chain smoked on a 2 hour drive because she was on the phone and couldn't hear with the windows down. Despite my protests...
Your freedoms end where mine begin. If you want to smoke, fine. Do it in a location where I NEVER have to breathe it in.
My point is that "consenting adults" aren't really involved here. A "think of the children argument" is when you argue for banning something that adults do because a child might be exposed to it and might suffer harm as a result. An example would be wanting to ban porn (something for adults) because a little kid might see it and warp their fragile young mind, or whatever. The key part of this scenario is that the little kid's exposure to porn is neither intentional nor desired (on the part of porn producers) or common.
Starting smoking, on the other hand, is something that, for the most part, only children do. The entire goal of tobacco companies is to get children addicted so they'll keep buying nicotine for the rest of their lives, without any adult decision-making involved. Here are some numbers for you:
Almost 90% of people in the US who smoke tried their first cigarette before they were 18[1]. Effectively all of the rest did before they were 26 (most by 22), which is around the age where the human brain's capacity for risk assessment and long-term decision-making is fully developed. Two thirds of daily smokers started doing that by the time they were 18, and over 95% did by the time they were 26. Over a quarter of daily smokers started before they were 15. Furthermore, people who start smoking are most likely to do so with the help of their peers (i.e. other children), not adults.
The concept of rational free choice is a bit murky even under the best circumstances. When you add in addiction, it gets a lot more complicated. And when you're talking about children getting addicted, I don't think it's a helpful framework. Children are not capable of consenting to a destructive long-term addiction, and in practice, almost nobody else does.
Your “personal freedoms” end when they cause you to become a burden on the state. If you want to smoke I’m totally fine with that as long as you agree to be banned from using any public health services ever, no Medicaid no Medicare no social security. As you said, the dangers have been known for decades, so everyone involved can make a rational decision.
When your choices cause others problems they’re no longer just “yours” and you need to consider how you’re affecting the wider society.
>Your “personal freedoms” end when they cause you to become a burden on the state.
Orwell, is that you?
>If you want to smoke I’m totally fine with that as long as you agree to be banned from using any public health services ever, no Medicaid no Medicare no social security.
This is something that people who harass and spit homeless people would say.
>As you said, the dangers have been known for decades, so everyone involved can make a rational decision.
You think drug addition is in any way rational? Wake up.
Governments only really started to care about vaping when teen smoking started to plummet. Those teens were going to become a valuable revenue stream!
Also, governments have a perverse incentive to maintain tobacco sales. There are 10x as many enforcement checks for tobacco taxes being paid as there are for underage tobacco purchases.
The less people smoke cigarettes (vapes are not part of the deal), the less the states get from the Tobacco master settlement case in 1998. There is a significant financial incentive for governments to keep people smoking.
E-cigarettes can't get in the way of eliminating tobacco smoking, because they aren't tobacco and they aren't smoking.
It's the smoking that's deleterious to health. Nicotine is an addictive stimulant but if it's otherwise harmful it's very difficult to demonstrate this.
That depends where. Here in the UK, cigarettes cannot be marketed at all. To kids or adults. That seems like a sensible middle ground to me. Allow the product to be sold, but don't allow advertising that pushes people into buying it.
I feel like abstinence campaigns work somewhat better with cigarettes than sex/alcohol because cigarettes are legitimately bad for you, and many users of cigarettes genuinely regret taking up smoking (whereas barely anyone will tell you they regret drinking or having sex).
Drinking significantly increases your risk of certain cancers. While smoking is more of a cancer risk, drinking inhibits judgement and can lead to all sort of issues in addition to cancer risk - drunk driving, violence, etc. In short, alcohol is legitimatly bad for you.
I don't think anyone can say, in good faith, that Juul didn't mean to market to kids. That doesn't even pass the laugh test. Every single facet of their brand design, products, and marketing were clearly and obviously intended to appeal to kids from the very beginning. Let's just be honest about that, at the very beginning of the debate, and move forward from there.
Adults like candy and different flavors too. Back when e-cigs had to be imported from China, people were on forums and Twitter sharing DIY e-juice recipes that usually used candy flavoring. Flavored e-cigs used to be marketed as electronic hookahs. It doesn't make sense to me that the government goes after flavored nicotine products but they're seemingly ok with a huge variety of fruity alcoholic beverages.
I credit vaping to helping me quit cigarettes and nicotine entirely. The flavors were amazing and were a great alternative to cigarettes. Vaping allowed me to wean myself from nicotine over the course of about a year. Once I worked down to a 0% solution, I quit vaping easily - and I'm not the type of person that gives up habits easily.
Taking these tools away from consenting adults is morally criminal. If your main argument is "think of the children" I'm going to doubt your sincerity.
I completely agree. I don't like the company, but see always saw it as a viable cheap alternative to pricy nicotine gum/patches.
I've always felt the reason why most people fail quitting any drug America deems unsafe, is because of this all or nothing approach they have to quitting. American black and white thinking.
I've seen so many people quit a drug (Alcohol, nicotine, benzos, opoids, and even meth) by going cold turkey. It has dismal failure rates. Yes there are people whom have one cigarette, and they are up to 4 pack a day. Yes--there are people whom have one beer, and are buying 1.75 L of Jack daily. Those addicts are not typicical.
Tapering down over a long period of time seems to make more sence. And then allow the recovering patient access to a very low dose of their drug of choice forever.
Sorry about my speech. Personally, I have found cutting way back on a dangerous substance has been successful. And the way our government handled this opioid crisis has me seeing red. Yea--just make it impossible to get any regulated opioid, and then wonder why we have people dying by the hundreds daily due to street fentanyl.
I used to have a philosophy of, "what happens if my kid screws up worse than me?"
What world would they find themselves in?
I don't smoke regularly, but if my kids did, could they get a healthier alternative?
What if they fell into heroin?
It would be terrifying, but could they be safe?
I no longer can make that argument. I'm susceptible to the taxation attack. Ten years ago I would have gladly paid all the taxes for my kids and a dozen others. But as some have pointed out, I don't make enough money.
It's a good conservative argument, I can't pay for that.
So, I'm sorry, I can no longer take part in this discussion.
You're right, abstinence is better, because unlike the responsible conservatives who are paying for necessary services like education, I can't help as much.
I'm so sorry. I wanted to pay more. We could have had scientific discussions on risks of food grade propylene glycol or something. Would it make a good hair gel? Sorry, some light-hearted kidding.
My new dream is to not ever have to engage in this discussion again. Because the idea of others wasting time in this divisive acidic discussion is sadder. Thank you.
Exactly, that statement would only be valid if e-cigarette had zero net impact in smoking adoption. The reality is that Juul made smoking "cool" again, just as it was going out of style. You can look at any graph of tobacco use, it was starting to go downwards and then shot up again.
> that statement would only be valid if e-cigarette had zero net impact in smoking adoption
As a minor point, it could still apply with a slight overall increase of use. The required scale is far closer to zero than what it actually was, but of how many new people vaping would you accept if it suddenly caused all smokers to never smoke. It's an interesting question of which is the best for public health.
It isn't a choice between one or the other. We were on track to literally eliminate smoking in the US before Juul came along and started aggressively marketing to teens. Most Juul users are first time smokers. So that "lesser of two evils" doesn't really apply. The best alternative is neither.
> Of all the e-cig players, Juul (which is now majority owned by Altria) is the most reputable one — by far - they have by far the best technology, quality controls, compliance and regulation teams, etc.
My memory may be faulty, but wasn't Juul the e-cigarette company that was launching school programs to more or less directly market e-cigarettes to students during school hours and on school property?
> In April 2017, a Juul representative visited the Dwight School in New York City to meet with students — with no teachers present — and told them the company’s e-cigarettes were “totally safe.”
I don't think its a given that e-cigs are better than regular cigarettes. I was a smoker for 8+ years and an e-cig user for a short while. E-cigs remove several of the stigmas and limitations attached to cigarettes, thus leading to greater use. The chemicals in e-cig fluid have unknown long-term effect on the lungs, the byproducts of vaporizing those chemicals are even less understood.
Odds are we'll find out some unfortunate truths about e-cigs in 10-20 years, meanwhile many of the consumers of e-cig products will have believed they were avoiding the worst effects.
I think you are deluding yourself by saying that e-cigs are better than cigarettes. Its like saying cocaine is better than heroin, they are both addictive and destructive to a persons body, just one is more so. Another thing I don't like about Juul and other e-cigs is that when smoking was really on a downhill slope among youth, e-cigs came along and enticed a whole new generation to inhale carcinogens under the guise of it being more healthy.
And I say this as an ex-smoker, I don't mind if you worked at Juul, I believe its a free country and I have no judgements against a person's profession, just be honest and say the money is good and I don't care that I am selling a product that is poisoning people.
"hat is its legal status in the United States?
Cocaine is a Schedule II drug under the
Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has a high
potential for abuse and has an accepted medical
use for treatment in the United States. Cocaine
hydrochloride solution (4 percent and 10 percent)
is used primarily as a topical local anesthetic
for the upper respiratory tract. It also is used to
reduce bleeding of the mucous membranes in
the mouth, throat, and nasal cavities."
Heroin is a Schedule I substance under the
Controlled Substances Act meaning that it has a
high potential for abuse, no currently accepted
medical use in treatment in the United States, and
a lack of accepted safety for use under medical
supervision.
"Its like saying cocaine is better than heroin..."
Using US scheduling laws is a horrible comparison on which is 'better.' What about MJ, shrooms, lsd then?
If we're talking about which is healthier, in a controlled context of pure and knowable doses, I'd bet cocaine is worse for you.
The stress it puts on your heart and body are awful. Especially combined with alcohol (which who does a line without drinking) cocaethylene i believe it's called
Opiates cause far more overdoses, but that's mostly because of adulteration and non controlled dosing.
In this ideal world of legal and safe drugs that's my bet.
A safe dose of opiates is way less likely to cause an OD. Long term WDs and dose escalation are dangerous. And mental health issues with long term use are dangerous. But coke is just awful for you, and even worse mental health issues (mania and worse).
Heroin is more often injected versus snorted, dirty needles should also factor in. But then you also have poor quality coke with who knows what cut in. Heroin is cheaper by volume/dose, coke is much more expensive.
The examples are poor, but OPs analogy still stands. If e-cigs are to MJ/shrooms and regular cigs are to Heroin, thinking that e-cigs are less harmful is probably not 'deluded'
You missed the point, which is that it doesn't matter which is better when they're both bad. Framing it as "I'd rather kids vape instead of smoke" is the real false dichotomy here, since those are not the only two option. Again, smoking was in a downward trend until e-cig came along.
It must've been quite the fun ship and experience. I wonder if there's a way to measure afar similar companies that are this unguided - or if it was just an 10's thing, much like an 00's thing - right place, right product, right time.
> Juul (which is now majority owned by Altria) is the most reputable one
> Altria are a very legit operational business
Worth noting that Altria used be known as Philip Morris - a company that has decades of history of marketing cigarettes to children and covering up the dangers of tobacco.
They are in no way, shape, or form a "good" company.
> Worth noting that Altria used be known as Philip Morris
It's quite confusing, as there is also another S&P500 component called Philip Morris International. I believe they export Marlboro branded cigarettes to all countries outside the US.
The way we talk about companies is kind of weird, in my opinion. "Phillip Morris" didn't make those decisions; individual human beings did. And those individual human beings are dead or retired. You see kind of a similar thing with Monsanto (now Bayer) where someone drops into a conversation about GM crops to remind everyone about Agent Orange and it's just, like, what in the world does that have to do with the debate about GM crops?
It can both be the case that the people who ran PM in the 1950s lied about the dangers of cigarettes and that Altria today is, "a very legit operational business."
In the very least it important to punish companies that do shitty things by boycotting them or fining them out of existence if only as a warning to prevent other companies from doing similar things.
Otherwise it's as simple as everyone standing up from they job and taking one step to the left for an identical position at a other company for us to all just absolve them of responsibility and corrective punishment.
If that’s your goal, surely it’s better to make board members personally liable for certain things? Or even investors, though perhaps at a different level and probably only the major ones. “Limited liability” doesn’t have to mean “absolutely never liable”.
We should reconsider the entire notion of the limited liability entity. Everyone who profits from the tobacco industry should be potentially liable for their actions.
I am amused every time I hear concerns about AI alignment and the threat of the paperclip optimizer. We already have malevolent entities working towards goals antagonistic to humans: corporations. Soon we will have AI running them entirely.
You wouldn't be the first to make that comparison. But while the similarities are clear, AI may optimise bad outcomes much faster and much more ruthlessly than a corporation.
I agree with your general point about companies, but not all those people are "dead or retired". Go to Asia or Africa and you will see advertisements you had in the West a few decades ago everywhere, including ads targetted at children.
My favourite is "winners don't quit". That was about two years ago.
Company culture outlives individuals and propagates by means of hiring, training, documentation, internal policy and incentive structures. Not to mention oral and written tradition. aka just like any other culture propagates.
As with many things, there's a strong form of the argument and a weak form. I wouldn't deny the importance of culture, entirely, but I still don't think Agent Orange has anything to do with the debate about GM crops and at some point individual policies should be debated on their merits.
That surely depends on the specifics. It's perfectly relevant if one side wishes to point out that Monsanto has lied in the past about the safety of its chemicals, or whether the company has prioritized human safety, etc. Obviously, if the point is a technical one about specific GMO crops, it's not relevant. Context, right?
This is true, but cultures can experience shame, as the Germans (and to the lesser extent the Japanese) did after WWII.
I work for a company with a 30-year-old felony conviction (as a company). Pretty much the first thing that happens on new hire orientation day is that they tell you what happened, not to ever do it again, and all of the many ways available to rat out anyone who is doing it or letting it happen.
>And those individual human beings are dead or retired.
A company's culture doesn't necessarily change just because some folk are dead or retired.
>In 2006, a United States court found that Philip Morris "publicly ... disputed scientific findings linking smoking and disease knowing their assertions were false."[11] In a 2006 ruling, a federal court found that Altria, along with R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard and Philip Morris were found guilty of misleading the public about the dangers of smoking.[12] Within this ruling, it was noted that "defendants altered the chemical form of nicotine delivered in mainstream cigarette smoke for the purpose of improving nicotine transfer efficiency and increasing the speed with which nicotine is absorbed by smokers."[13] This was done by manipulating smoke pH with ammonia. Adding ammonia increases the smoke pH, in a process called "freebasing" which causes smokers to be "exposed to higher internal nicotine doses and become more addicted to the product."
>In 2010, the FDA banned the use of “Light” for ventilated cigarettes because it misrepresented the products as a healthier cigarette, and Philip Morris switched to using colors to brand them to circumvent the rule.
> You see kind of a similar thing with Monsanto (now Bayer) where someone drops into a conversation about GM crops
But Monsanto are doing the same thing. You've been sold the story about "cow farts are killing the planet" and "being vegan is healthier", but where does all the plant-based food come from? GM soya by Monsanto. And to grow GM soya you need to blast every trace of life out of the soil with herbicides and pesticides from Monsanto, and you need to obliterate all the beasties that might attack it with insecticides from Monsanto.
Follow the money. Monsanto is paying people to tell you to buy their stuff because it's supposed to be good for the planet. It's not, it's good for Monsanto.
Can you elaborate on how this theory would help Monsanto more than the status quo? Much more soy is processed into animal feed (~75%) than is eaten by humans directly as plant-based foods (~7%). Given that the soy -> animal -> human pipeline is less efficient calorically than soy -> human, it seems to me that the status quo sells more soy.
Also, this part:
> where does all the plant-based food come from? GM soya by Monsanto.
is plainly false. There are many more plant-based protein sources other than soy.
However, I do agree with you that relying heavily on Monsanto for (any of) these uses is not good, and overusing their products is likely damaging our soils and ecosystem.
Clearly we're off topic now, but if you actually look at what farmers have to say about Monsanto almost all the complaints boil down to, "Monsanto has some rules we don't like, but what can we do? Their seeds produce the greatest yields, so we're forced to buy them!"
Obviously farmers wish they could get a better deal on their seeds, but nobody is forcing them to use Monsanto. They use Monsanto crops because the technology works.
You've got it backwards. Farmers want to make more money from what they grow, but supermarkets push the price down. Look at milk, for example - big supermarket chains pay farmers just barely above cost for milk at the farm gate and sell it at barely above cost as a kind of loss leader. What option do farmers have but to sell it, make fuck all off it, and try to work as cost-effectively as possible?
If you buy food from the supermarket, you're contributing to the decline of the planet's ecology, because it's the profitable thing to do.
This is a fully general criticism of competitive markets and is not limited to supermarkets. It applies with equal force to farmers, grain elevators, shippers, fertilizer makers, and (as you do note) the supermarkets' customers. You might argue that it applies with greater force to Monsanto (because they have government-granted monopolies on particular seeds) and to supermarket consumers (because they are not buying supplies for a product they are selling and can therefore choose to pay more).
It can but you'd be an absolute sucker to assume it.
What's really odd is for people to believe that companies doing bad things requires a continued supply of bad individuals. It doesn't, humans and systems are good at rationalizing bad behavior.
Pretty sure Bayer is arguing a case before SCOTUS in this session trying to dodge product liability because Roundup causes non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Not sure why you think Altria, Bayer, Nestle, etc. would suddenly change their ways.
In April 2017, a Juul representative visited the Dwight School in New York City to meet with students — with no teachers present — and told them the company’s e-cigarettes were “totally safe.”
Other schools across the country were offered $10,000 from the e-cigarette company for the right to talk to students in classrooms or after school.
I wanted to reply since that NYT article is so damming and it's absurd for me to be parent comment about Juul and not reply (since obviously I saw your comment and have thoughts) and was thinking about how best to, I am not sure of the details of this but:
* I cannot reiterate enough just how incompetent Juul was in 2017. Everyone was running around with their hair on fire and had zero of the skills or experience to deal with these issues
* I believe that Juul did a lot of really really really stupid things like going into schools and trying to hamfistedly state that vaping was bad but safe — again, Juul had a lot of very inexperienced executives who were obsessed with doing things they thought were really smart but were just plain stupid
* It's worth noting that these actions didn't actually contribute to making youths vape. Vaping was exploding amongst teens because of social media and being a meme — in what world would going to a school and talking about Juul make youths want to use that product? that is what makes all this so hilarious - Juul did a stupid thing, has to live with the consequences, and the underlying thesis of why they did it in the first place was totally ridiculous.
Again, I was a Juul employee - I do not believe Juul consciously or explicitly wanted youths to use Juul, but I am sure that their incompetence meant that their communication and actions blurred their dreadful attempts at dealing with the issues.
The very fact this NYT article exists without a clear rebuttal and explanation from Juul says it all, really.
I am confused. They didn't want children to vape but they were in schools saying it is safe? This makes zero sense and I am not sure how your reply is coherent. Does the Sinclair quote apply here?
Juul the brand does not want to market to kids because laws, FDA, etc. Some incompetent VP of marketing wanted to quickly boost numbers, ethics be damned.
I don't mean to stick up for Juul, but it's not out of the realm of possibility considering how incompetent the company sounds from the above.
If I had to guess it would have been some nebulous 'youth prevention' team thinking it was wise to go into schools and explain why cigarettes were bad and vaping wasn't encouraged yada yada.
Inexcusable but Juul was a quintessential "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" company. (I don't expect people to believe me on that.)
Now I am waiting for the conspiracy theorists to twist your words and imply that you must be a company shill.
Or to tell you how evil you were working, and how they only produce using ethically sourced curly braces, with fairtrade electricity, an organic compiler, on their own hand-carved recyclable wooden laptop.
>"never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
and that for the execs and the likes means "never do malice as malice, do it under the guise of stupidity". The VW diesel-gate comes to mind - they skillfully spun it like it wasn't VW malice as a company, and instead like it was some rogue employees.
May be you believe that you're saying. Yet giving the MBA types in charge of the company, my bet would be that they intentionally targeted youth while blaming it on whatever incompetence and chaos you're describing.
But then why would they intentionally target a group who has little to no money and can’t legally buy their product? And somewhere juuls advertising style got twisted and any ad not showing an adult (read over 30) is targeting youths?
> This makes zero sense and I am not sure how your reply is coherent.
> * I cannot reiterate enough just how incompetent Juul was in 2017.
Pretty sure that's how they think the reply is coherent. My understanding so far is that someone in some decision-making capacity at Juul decided that it would be a good idea for company representatives to go to schools with the intent to tell students that vaping is bad mm'kay (but it's totally not as bad as cigarettes). This was done specifically because they did not want to sell to youths.
I've worked around other people long enough for that to be appropriately stupid. Yes, it makes zero sense, and that is, in part, why it's so believable.
Juuls are not the most popular device by far. Most vaper I know use some custom or larger device. I’ve seen maybe 2 juuls in the wild and as a juul user myself as well as a heavy traveler, if they were the most popular vape then finding the pods would be easy yet many trips i switch to vuse as it’s easier to find their pods.
You keep saying Juul was "incompetent" and "stupid" when it's neither. Marketing to children is a very calculated and well-tested means of peddling drugs. A better way to describe it is malicious, diabolical or downright evil.
"We just wanted to offer candy flavored highly addictive vaporizers to the market in every store that young people shop at. We weren't TRYING to get young people addicted!"
> People spend a lot of time discussing the chronic youth issues but the reality is that Juul never wanted to sell to youths or anything of the sort — they were just _so_ incompetent at operations that they couldn't do anything.
> I do not believe Juul consciously or explicitly wanted youths to use Juul
This... is not incompetence or a side effect.
They fucking paid schools to tell kids that Vaping was safe. You can try to say "oh, they didn't realllllly want to sell to kids, they just weren't good at their job".
They gave ad agencies specific briefs saying that their target market for a campaign was '13-17 year olds'.
"They didn't realllllly want to sell to kids".
No. They knew exactly what the fuck they were doing.
When your corporate intent is not to fire VPs who go "off the reservation", but continue to employ, reward them with bonuses, there's a plausible argument that you're absolutely defining that as your corporate intent.
Per parent's description, there was no reservation. It was just everyone doing their own thing.
And having worked at a few companies that suddenly fell into orders-of-magnitude more revenue, it rings plausible.
When the money hose is spewing, nobody spends much time asking "Why?" anyone is doing anything, as long as it's just shy (or sometime inclusive) of embezzlement.
> Again, I was a Juul employee - I do not believe Juul consciously or explicitly wanted youths to use Juul.
Juul is not conscious and cannot want anything.
I think it's pretty clear that there were some Juul employees who wanted children to use their company's product. Company representatives did not just wander into schools by chance; someone reached out and struck that deal. Clearly not you, and maybe no one on your team, but certainly someone.
And incompetent or not, Juul the organization is responsible for its actions.
It seems like pclark is suggesting Juul's attempts to market to kids were so incompetent and doomed to failure that they arguably don't even qualify as worthy of serious moral condemnation. Like if I attempted to kill you with a wet noodle believing it was a knife.
Not sure I buy this but it's amusing at the very least.
Whether or not it is conscious and whether or not it wants anything is fundamentally unprovable (even for you, assuming you are human) and thus this statement can only be founded on nothing but faith and assumptions.
In a practical sense Juul has legal personhood and can be seen to respond to impulses and plan. It is reasonable to treat it as an entity: if it is harmful it must be punished. If elements of it are exceptionally harmful, they must be punished extra (just as we do for cancer). None of that has anything at all to do with whether or not it has consciousness or wants things.
> I think it's pretty clear that there were some Juul employees who wanted children to use their company's product. Company representatives did not just wander into schools by chance; someone reached out and struck that deal. Clearly not you, and maybe no one on your team, but certainly someone.
Straw man. Here's an equally clear (ie, not clear) steel man: someone wanted to get brand equity with adults from telling kids not to vape.
They were paying $10,000 for the ability to talk to students with no teachers present?
I know GP said Juul employees were largely incompetent, but I just can't believe anyone was that stupid. If the goal is "to get brand equity with adults", you want the adults to be watching.
what school allows for anyone to sit with kids at the school unsupervised? I feel like people keep glossing over that.
Juul arranged to be there, but I find ithard to believe they did anything to explicitly prevent other adults from being in the room. No one at the school had enough common sense to be like "someone should chaperon this" ?
I kind of agree that it was probably entirely inconsequential to the popularity of juul though.
Your rationalizing that it was Juul's "incompetence" that led them to market to children comes off as nonsense. A perfect example of the "banality of evil" - it's easy to blame incompetence because it's harder to come to terms that seemingly good people barely batted an eye while getting an entire generation hooked on nicotine.
"I do not believe Juul consciously or explicitly wanted youths to use Juul."
I do, and their actions prove it. Individuals who worked at the company were simply reacting to the obvious economic incentives of "growth at all costs", and it was clear they were allowed to market using whatever means necessary.
If I grant your premise that Juul's actions were the result of incompetence then I still don't think it's much better.
Accidentally promoting their product to minors has 1) The same impact as if it was done on purpose and 2) demonstrates criminal negligence.
I also don't regard Altria's operational professionalism and discipline as a net positive in this situation. A company with a historical track record of deliberately marketing to children and a current track record of continuing to do so (IQOS) is no improvement merely because they control headcount and limit vanity projects.
Note that a Corporation can do things without anyone who works there wanting to do those things. No employee of Union Carbide wanted to poision 2.5k people in Bhopal [1]. Yet it still happened, and there is no question about who caused the disaster.
How is this the top comment? This attempt to whitewash juul is complete nonsense considering that juul is known to have gone into schools (!) to promote their products. Trying to pass that off as simple incompetence is absurd.
There was the free business class trips for everyone (not just higher management), the frenetic office building (at one point we had offices in over 100 countries), and hundreds of millions in WIP/inventory. Definitely not a well run but a blast to work for.
E-cigarettes aren’t slightly less terrible. They are much less terrible / much better than traditional cigarettes in that they do not cause lung cancer.
Lung cancer is the main problem with cigarettes and e-cigarettes don’t do this. So that’s a huge improvement.
Of course they have other problems but none of them are as bad as a 15x chance of lung cancer [0]
> Important to remember that combustible cigarettes are terrible and e-cigarettes are a slightly less terrible alternative to those. In a world where cigarettes are so terrible however, e-cigarettes end up saving billions in health care dollars and quality of life.
Nicely done. Rollies are worse. Think of the lives filtered cigarettes are saving.
Was this supposed to be sarcasm? Filters did save a ton of lives. Are you suggesting cigarette smoking would've went away if no one created filtered cigarettes?
There is a ton of evidence that they targeted kids. Including lawsuits which they settled.
Just focused on advertising alone here is NyTimes summary with link to MA lawsuit.
They fired the first ad company who suggested reasonable adult oriented ads and directed the new one to run youth focused ads and youth targeting. Cartoon network, kids websites, teen magazines.
I don't believe you can brush aside those decisions by just calling the company 'terrible.'
True you can never look into someone's brain and know their intent. But the evidence is pretty clear.
If we give everyone a pass like this because of terrible management or incompetence we'd never hold anyone accountable.
Genuinely question, but how much of that is Juul wanting to advertise to kids versus Juul wanting to advertise to an older Gen Z/Millennial crowd (half of Gen Z is over 18)? I think it's really dumb to advertise to Gen Z no matter how old the age range is right now, but I'm not sure if it's malicious or just stupid.
Millenials (myself among them) grew up before state-wide indoor smoking bans, and those of us who didn't smoke weren't interested in picking up anything resembling it.
A lot of Zoomers, however, grew up in a cigarette free world, where they also didn't see addiction or substantial anti-smoking messages. The older folks (Millenials) were set in their ways, but the Zoomers were the addressable audience. It was intentional. It was evil.
I think this is a great way of framing it because it kills the root of the arguments pro-vaping people make all the time as an excuse for this behavior: that it is better than combustable tobacco.
They are advertising to consumers who do not smoke.
An earnestly posted, semi-anonymous comment from an HN user claiming to have an insider account should be regarded more highly than a NYT reporter's account, unless/until independent evidence suggests otherwise.
Can we please stop perpetuating the idea that the NYT is a reputable source?
A flippant dismissal of OP's firsthand account requires something a bit more substantial than "I found an article printed in an outlet that has been on a decade-long mission to demonize the tech industry, or any other industry remotely worthy of the term."
They have, at this point, shown they're willing to print nearly anything if it damages their cultural opponents. Any facts they report should prompt corroboration from reputable sources.
"Hey can we make it a habit to get a second data point before running with the NYT's account of things?"
"Whoa hey bring it down several notches, extremist."
My only hope is that the NYT grows even larger and more "successful", so that more of you can have the experience of having your field, your work, or you personally written about with their signature erroneous confidence.
I should listen to the whitewashing of an insider (who at least financially benefited from Juul’s rise, at worst was personally involved in some of the very shady campaigns), instead of looking at cold hard evidence like the fact that they paid schools in order to talk to school children directly about their “health benefits”? I should take their word that their marketing was highly incompetent and couldn’t achieve anything, yet somehow accidentally trumped all competition and got millions of kids hooked on their product, opening up a whole new market segment, which would be any marketing team’s wet dream? Fuck no.
It's insane to think that some of you value the words of a person
- who has no relevant experience in anything being discussed,
- works for an outlet which has shown countless times that it cannot reliably and accurately report on nearly any field and
- whose primary experience has been in taking dictation from the FDA
over one of your peers, who
- has worked in the relevant industry, and the relevant company
- puts his name next to his words, and
- has given you a first person account of what he's seen and done, including acknowledging his own blind spots
If your instincts are to invest immovable faith in the belief that the latter is absolutely lying, based on facts related to you by the former, you are epistemically ruined beyond hope.
I need exactly nothing from the former to see that the latter narrative doesn’t add up. It’s not the first time I’ve seen this kind of feigning innocence from “earnest” insiders. Well let’s be charitable and say they simply believe this “our marketing team was so incompetent their evil plans amounted to nothing, all the objectives were achieved through dumb luck” bullshit. Doesn’t change a thing. And no, whether they’re my peer or not adds zero credibility.
This comes from someone who is deeply skeptical of and disagrees with a lot of NYT narratives. I just don’t start a thinly veiled crusade against them whenever they are mentioned.
Read the settlement and sources cited if you think the NyTimes rigorous reporting standards aren't up to par as an anonymous hacker news er who may or may not be telling the truth.
"previously product & growth & marketing guy for @juulvapor"
Given the scale and growth trajectory of Juul, perhaps you really were unaware of the numerous marketing and growth plans targeted at minors. Also likely, most of your points amount to n-th hand hearsay and your insider knowledge is actually missing many important facts. Be careful repeating stories you've heard if you are publicly associating yourself with the company.
Anyway, your ignorance of their tactics isn't really an excuse when it's been covered so widely. I think you should probably not defend and attack them so easily. Stories of ignorance and incompetence can actually be well crafted PR to attempt to attempt to limit the responsibility of the company and senior management for illegal activity.
I dont get this statement:
```
however, e-cigarettes end up saving billions in health care dollars and quality of life.
```
Where is this from?
Why not just ban all cigeratee?
We all known why, because of commercial profit.
Can we openly discuss the balance between human lives and profit?
It's not like Capitalism is anything but balance profit and humanity, right?
Why involve this "saving billions in health care dollars and quality of life." as a derivative statement. It's much clear to just balance the profit and human lives. And stop muddy the pond with dubious metrics no one can verify.
When I was trying to quit smoking, I tried e-cigarettes and found the devices to be quite unsanitary and the liquids questionable. I was under the impression that something like Juul would be solution to all that, I mean a proper large brand with end-to-end solution of the product chain.
I'm kind of surprised that Juul is targeted, real cigarettes are so much more horrible. I guess it's not a good idea to start smoking with e-cigarettes but in a world of legal real tobacco cigarettes I expected to see regulation on marketing only.
PS: later I quit by just not smoking anything and a happy ex-smoker ever since.
The purpose of e-cigs is to get kids hooked on something that seems more "cute" and healthy, so they can graduate to real tobacco products when they grow up.
Because that's what tobacco marketers say. And it is, indeed, working - this generation is the first one that smokes more than the previous one. (Though it's true that they vape instead of burning plant matter.)
Whether they will graduate to "real" cigarettes we don't know yet, because this demographic is not 21 years old yet. But it's likely to be true, because "real" cigarettes purportedly are more potent.
To be honest, here somewhere in Europe the same laws apply to e-cigarettes as real cigarettes. You can only buy them at specific places if you are over 18.
It shouldn't be. The "think of the children" rhetoric has been used many a time now around e-cigarettes/vaping, to effectively restrict the rights of everybody.
E.g. the PACT act amendment (Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking, not the other one) means USPS - and therefore effectively all other carriers - can't ship vaping products from businesses to individuals, effectively ending online sales. "Law-making" at it's worst, especially because it was bundled into a massive COVID-19 relief bill.
They literally called it the "Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes to Children Act", although it's just the "Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes Act".
I remember my first purchase of e-cigarettes online involved a picture of my id and a selfie to confirm my ID. I remember I thought it was great that developers were quickly able to spin up a solution. So it was a shock to hear they were banning online sales outright.
> he "think of the children" rhetoric has been used many a time now around e-cigarettes/vaping
Probably due to historical precedent set by RJ Reynolds where they overtly and intentionally marketed cigarettes to kids because their research found that getting people addicted young was the best way to gain market share.
This is basic common sense legislation. We know exactly what these companies are going to do, we already know it's going to be bad, and we already have a solution in place.
> We know exactly what these companies are going to do
What companies would that be? They are companies like Juul. And then there were plenty of small vape shops run by individuals who mixed their own e-liquids, or who curated a selection of e-liquids from other manufacturers.
> This is basic common sense legislation.
No, it isn't. Requiring age verification? Sure, even if it wasn't the law previously, all places I used did that already. Banning USPS from shipping nicotine? Maybe, but questionable.
But the 2020 PACT Act amendment goes even further. It covers Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems, a very broad term that includes "any component, liquid, part, or accessory of a device described [above], without regard to whether the component, liquid, part, or accessory is sold separately from the device." (!)
Think about this for a second. This potentially means lithium ion batteries, coils, wire, cotton, nicotine-free/0% e-liquids, etc. How exactly does that help? I would even be fine with other solutions, e.g. banning shipping anything containing nicotine. This is how it works in some other countries; you could still buy e-liquids and components, to which you could add nicotine. The mix-in nicotine could be more controlled.
I'm quite frankly sick of these bad faith arguments. It's a ridiculously broad law, and it's awful.
> Probably due to historical precedent set by RJ Reynolds where they overtly and intentionally marketed cigarettes to kids because their research found that getting people addicted young was the best way to gain market share.
in a world of legal real tobacco cigarettes I expected to see regulation on marketing only
Regulators tend to only care about things which aren't already entrenched in the culture of the regulator. For example, if you tried to market a car that was as dangerous to drive as the safest motorcycle on the road the NHTSA would probably draw and quarter you.
>For example, if you tried to market a car that was as dangerous to drive as the safest motorcycle on the road the NHTSA would probably draw and quarter you.
They'd be happy to ignore you. But the nanosecond you try and market such a car people who would never buy your car would read the spec and start screeching about it. Internet commenters would make a stink. Journalists would speculate. The Youtube talking heads would summarize. The MSM would report on the fervor. And all these screeching would alert the regulator to the fact that there are political brownie points to be earned regulating or brownie points to be earned crapping on them for not regulating and they know which one they'd prefer so they break out the ban hammer.
See the whole self driving deal. Nobody cared to regulate it until it became a contentious issue over which virtue points could be earned or lost.
You see this in all sorts of areas. Regulators sit around doing what they've always done until some Outraged(TM) subset of the public comes along. It's not that they go around regulating un-entrenched things. It's that by the time you're entrenched you've long since pissed off some special interest group and got yourself regulated.
> Nobody cared to regulate it until it became a contentious issue over which virtue points could be earned or lost.
... and until people died in mind-blowing spectacular accidents [1] and Tesla in particular repeatedly lied in public or did other questionable maneuvers.
If the self-driving car industry wants someone to blame for their misery aka stricter regulations, they should look at Tesla. All it takes to make stuff worse for everyone is one who is caught doing stuff that simply is not OK.
This the same FDA that was going to take 75 years to release the data on a vaccine that is defacto compulsory because they lacked the resources to do so?
Yes, because regulating and authorizing drugs and food are their primary mission and support for FOIA requests is done at the legally-mandated level. This is not particularly contradictory or surprising; the amount of data that was FOIA'd would take 75 years to emit at the rate of 500 pages a month (that might even be a reasonable rate, given the risk of leaking PII in the raw disclosure of medical trial data; each page being emitted should be seen by human eyes, ideally human eyes familiar with PII concerns).
The legal orders were changed to mandate a 55,000 pages per month rate and the disclosure should now wrap up before the end of this year. I have no idea what the PII controls look like.
>This is not particularly contradictory or surprising
That may be true, but it is still telling that we can only get information from a government agency because they are legally forced to give it to us and they will do so in a way that is as disruptive as they can be. This isn't related to this FOIA request, but to FOIA in general and the issue that FOIA was even needed to begin with. It denotes a lack of transparency and trust, one which has fed into many not trusting the government and builds a question of what extent it should be trusted even today. This factors into far more than just vaccine related discussions.
The started goal is to help people taper off cigarettes entirely, which I don't believe will work, and I'm not sure the FDA believes it either.
The actual point is to nudge people away from inhaling raw carcinogens (actual real smoke) directly into their lungs, and nudge them toward the still-potent e-cigarettes and vapes, which have way less cancer risk.
It's something that they are taking into account. According to the studies the FDA is basing their decision on, the smokers smoked more initially but that effect only lasted 1-2 weeks.
The issue isn't e-cigs in general (though, to be clear in terms of health risks: if you aren't smoking anything now, avoid smoking both). It's that Juul was such a trash-fire that even acquisition by one of the biggest FDA-compliance-factories in the United States didn't convince the FDA that the fire was out.
They're proposing removing most of the nicotine from real cigarettes, too.
I haven't consumed any nicotine in quite some time, but I find the whole thing very obnoxious. (Smoking is a sin, but a pleasure. I'd like the freedom to navigate that choice myself, thank you very much.)
>They're proposing removing most of the nicotine from real cigarettes, too.
This must have been imagined by people who have no understanding of drugs whatsoever. Lessening the content of nicotine is likely to make people smoke -more-, I'd wager, inhaling more tar/cancer inducing substances in the process.
When the first e-cigs hit the market, most of the commonly found ones were things like the Joyetech eGo and eliquids that were frankly, unable to provide the necessary amount of nicotine to truly replace cigarettes. I found myself using the device far more than I smoked cigarettes, although it's probably still not as bad. A few studies proved that it's not just in the mind, people who vaped with those devices didn't have much nicotine in their bloodstream.
Modern e-cigarettes with high power delivery, or low power combined with nicotine salts, satisfy me much faster and I don't feel a craving all day like I did with the eGo.
Removing the nicotine but keeping the cancer stick has to be one of the dumbest thing I've ever heard of in my life. Absolutely insanity, this is just going to make people burn more cancer sticks to satisfy their craving.
This is a shame. For those who don’t know Juul uses a special nicotine salt that hits the brain hard fast and satisfying. Additionally their mango flavor was top notch. I guess I’ll have to switch have to cigarettes now. I wish the government would stop mandating what I can and cannot put in my body.
I wouldn't care the least bit what you put in your body if it didn't have disastrous public health and finance implications. How many tens or hundreds of millions are spent annually via medicare and medicaid on old and poor people with COPD, emphysema, lung cancer, etc?
Hell, I'd be happy with loosening e- and combustible cigarette regulations if it meant smoking permanently banned you from both medicare and medicaid. If you really want to smoke that bad, fine, but don't expect me to pay for the extremely predictable consequences please.
I agree with all of this, but the same argument can be made for being overweight. If we ban smoking, we should also ban being fat.
I don't have the numbers to compare, but I suspect banning being fat might even save the US healthcare system more money, if not now - at least at the current trajectory.
If you think "You can't ban being fat, my body my choice".. well, then I don't think you should ban smoking.
Smoking is a choice 100% of the time. There are at least some instances (a small minority) where being overweight, even extremely obese, is not entirely a choice. It's apples and oranges.
You might be bedbound and not in control of your own food. But, the staff could just give you less food.
There is no medical condition that will cause someone in a locked room given a calorie restricted diet to gain weight. That is against the laws of physics.
It's fine to say "losing weight is very very very hard". But it's incorrect to say "being overweight is not a choice".
By your same logic, a broken leg doesn't stop you from jumping. It just makes it "very very very hard." It's incorrect to say jumping on your broken leg is not a choice. But you might find your health outcomes far worse if you jump with it vs. rest.
But by your logic, smoking either isn't addictive or there is no such thing as addiction. If obese people are strongly compelled to eat, I'm pretty sure we've discovered that smokers are comparably strongly compelled to smoke.
Why do you keep attacking that strawman? The analogy is to ban
sugar rich foods or they're marketing to children or tax it. Which is a pretty good idea IMHO...
Is taxing sugar rich foods a good idea? Because I lived around Chicago when it happened. Didn't work so well, and ended up as basically a "poor people regressive tax".
All consumption taxes are regressive, by definition. That doesn't necessarily mean it didn't do what it was intended to. I'm curious how (if?) the consumption patterns changed.
It's a choice in the same way having anxiety or depression is a choice. That is, it's treatable and is possible to overcome it, but it's a very difficult path. I think it's unfair to compare it to smoking though. There are genetic factors with obesity and mental health issues.
Except, many poor people use smoking as a treatment for mental health issues. It's a bit of a "poor mans prozac".. (Which isn't entirely true, because at the current cost, I think it cost more than actual prozac).
Propensity for addiction varies significantly between individuals. We've discovered a large number of genetic correlates of addiction susceptibility.
Once you grant the existence of individuals that are outliers in susceptibility to addiction (which I think is reasonable because it's such a highly polygenic trait) I don't see how one could claim that obesity is sometimes not entirely a "choice", while smoking is always a "choice".
Your comparison isn't apt. I don't think banning being overweight or fat (two separate poorly defined physical attributes) is the same thing as banning (e-)cigarettes (a specific type of product), so I don't think the same argument can be made.
If you make this argument in the future, maybe you should think about comparing it to the banning of a particular type of unhealthy food (which is similar in scope to e-cigs and cigarettes).
I think this entire line of thinking of you and the parent poster is flawed anyway. Denying health insurance to anyone would probably have negative effects for all of us anyway (the insured usually end up paying anyway at different levels, whether that's through higher premiums at the personal level, lower productivity overall at the national level, or dealing with an untimely death/sickness of friends/family at the local level).
I think it would be enough to give a nice tax on all food which contains X amount of sugars per weight unit per type (ie liquids and maxybe 2-3 more). HFCS should be hammered there so tightly there is no way around it.
No exceptions apart from purely medical (=very expensive) stuff.
Another may be trans-fats. All the revenue -> medical system. Your wallet would be telling you all the time how stupid your eating habits/disorders are. But good luck pushing this through society setup like US (aka impossible).
Also being fat isn't a choice that anybody makes. It is heavily dependent on environment and genetics, both things that people do not control in their formative years
> Also being fat isn't a choice that anybody makes.
This is a stretch. The difficulty of losing weight might be related to genetics and the environment and monetary capability, but it is 100% possible for every person on this planet to lose weight. Bodies cannot create calories.
Of course it is. Plenty of people are fat because they like to eat food and don't like to exercise all that much. Environment and genetics do not change the second law of thermodynamics.
There are absolutely some medical conditions that make it hard to lose weight, make you retain water, etc. and it's not as cut and dry as smoking (100% of the time it's 100% your fault), but "being fat isn't a choice" is objectively, laughably wrong.
This is false. The world population becoming fat has only been a problem in the last 50 years. It is because we have an abundance of calories available for cheap now, which wasn't the case before.
Obesity rates also show high correlation with plastic and other chemical contamination. I think it's more nuanced than blaming it entirely on cheap calories/fast food (but that is the main impetus, I'll agree).
I generally agree. Though I would imagine banning a specific activity (smoking) is significantly easier than banning a pattern of behavior (overeating).
How do you ban being fat without banning all foods? Banning smoking is easy, just ban sales of cigarettes. How would you even enforce banning being fat? Random checks for weight? Everyone needs their weight checked periodically and if you are too fat you have to ...idk pay a fine or go to jail? That is some true dystopian stuff. Even just banning unhealthy food would not work, because there is a lot of healthy food that can cause people to being fat if they eat enough. I guess you could make some food stamp type program where you can only buy a set number of calories per week (i.e. WW2 style rationing), but that would be another very intrusive solution.
Eliminate the subsidizes that allows for processed and fast foods to be dirt-cheap and funnel those subsidies to whole foods.
>there is a lot of healthy food that can cause people to being fat if they eat enough
Okay, but unhealthy food is unhealthy because it is easy to eat large quantities of it. No one is getting fat because they are overeating fruits and veggies.
You would agree that that is mostly healthy food? And he is eating very large quantities of it. He is not fat, but people who do not do a lot of exercise could eat the same amount of food (or even half, he eats 12,000 calories a day) and gain quite a lot of weight.
Also a diet needs more than fruits and vegetables to be healthy at all.
I agree that there should be less focus on processed and fast foods, but that alone does not eliminate the problem of people eating a lot of food.
I could eat a big mac and medium fries for every meal and not gain a lot of weight (3x big mac (563 calories) = 1689 calories + 3* fries (333 calories) = 2688 calories. Which is around the 2500 calorie range for an adult man. That would in no way be healthy, but I would not gain weight quickly.
What? The average person is not anything like Brian Shaw. The article also quickly points out eating that much is the hardest thing about his lifestyle. My brain can’t do these mental gymnastics to understand what you’re trying to say.
I never said a diet of only fruits and veggies was healthy. It is significantly closer to being a healthy diet than the average American diet. Add nuts, seeds, legumes, and maybe some meat or starch and then it’s a healthy diet. The problem is processed foods are heavily subsidized and whole plant based foods are not.
I bet if you ate a Big Mac and fries 3x a day, you’re going to be hungry all day too. Some foods are more satiating than others. Eliminating calorie dense foods that are not satiating is something that every healthy diet is going to do.
The simplest would be requiring all ready-to-eat food to have a certain proportion of fats & carbs, and no higher.
And yeah, this is true dystopian stuff. But that is exactly where this line of thinking inevitably leads. Once you accept that costs of public healthcare are a valid reason to regulate lifestyle choices, practically nothing is off-limits.
You don’t need to ban it. Just punish it. Tax people based on some combination of BMI and body fat percentage, to compensate the body politic for them extra healthcare costs of their life choices.
My Singaporean friend told me about a policy there that you get a (not huge) cash award from the government every year if you can pass a fitness test. It's not a ton of cash and he's well off, but nonetheless it's helped him motivate to stay super fit all the time. Sounds pretty good to me!
Proximity to a fat person has no impact on my calorie intake. I'm amazed how many people post arguments like this without being able to shift to a third person observer perspective.
It doesn't need to be that extreme, giving up the right to healthcare would probably make things a hell of a lot worse (encourage people to not go to the doctor and then incur even more expenses).
It seems that the incurred costs per capita for overweight/obese people is somewhere from $250-$2000 according to this study. [1] So we can use some combination of the carrot (reward people who are healthy) and the stick (tax/penalize people who aren't) and end up more or less in the same place.
> the same argument can be made for being overweight.
What an ignorant and offensive comment. People do not choose their weight the way they choose to smoke or not smoke.
Weight is an outcome that has many factors outside of diet and behavioral choices. And diet, when it is a factor, is not a simple factor. Many, many people make very good dietary choices and remain overweight. Many of those same people exercise regularly and remain overweight.
Please don't judge people for being overweight -- and don't blame them either.
Calories in == calories out. Right. Calories in is diet, yes. Calories out is influenced heavily by hereditary and lifestyle factors that are outside of diet.
It would seem pretty straightforward and intuitive that people get the same amount of calories from identical foods.
However, that is not true.
Once food enters our bodies -- especially our colon, it encounters our microbiomes. Everybody has a different microbiome -- little bugs/bacteria in our gut. Some of these bacteria convert undigestable foods into usable calories that are then absorbed by our bodies. (Short Chain Fatty Acids.) The amount of food converted by these bacteria varies depending on an individual's unique microbiome.
So, it turns out that no, not all food results in the same amount of calorie absorption. This is something that varies significantly, and not just based on the microbiome, though this is certainly one of the factors.
Let's say you and me eat the same food. I get 2x the calories out of the food as you do due to my super gut biosphere.
Therefore, if I want to weigh the same, I must eat half the food.
Your argument is an argument for why Calories are not perfect, and I 100% agree.
However, you can just pick any calorie amount as as starting number. Weigh yourself on a scale ever day. If weight is going up, decrease calories by 200 per day. If weight is going down, increase by 200 per day.
The exact rate of burning calories is not important. And that is why the 2,000 calorie a day diet is a very very rough guess.
You're assuming that the body absorbs calories the same way, even under different circumstances, such as various caloric intakes. This isn't always true.
People too often assume that bodies are like cars, and that food is like gasoline. This is not true. Our bodies are far more complex (and interesting) than mechanical machines. The food we eat is also far more complex (and interesting) than gasoline as well.
While it's true for typical cases at a micro level, people do "choose" to get fat little by little with every dietary choice they make, there's a lot of ways that it ends up out of your control:
- your parents overfed you while you were a child and now you're fat before you really had agency
- you had a medical condition and your medication is associated with weight gain
- you have a stressful lifestyle and have fallen on eating as a stress relief mechanism, leading you to gain weight
- the food you have available in your neighborhood is all junk and you get fat as a result
- the cuisine in your country is generally junk and portion sizes are out of control (I'm looking at you, America)
- everyone in your community is fat and so you consider that normal
- you do just have slower metabolism than others and so staying lean is just more effort
Not to say that it's outside one's control to control their weight (I live in Japan, practically nobody here is fat), but it's not quite as simple as choosing to smoke or not. Lots of ways you can end up fat "by default" whereas smoking does involve the explicit choice to start (by default you don't smoke).
Tangential thought, I miss when Hackernews comments provided references more. Maybe I’m just an old person.
Regardless, research has show being obese or overweight is by and large preventable.
> Overweight and obesity, as well as their related noncommunicable diseases, are largely preventable. Supportive environments and communities are fundamental in shaping people’s choices, by making the choice of healthier foods and regular physical activity the easiest choice (the choice that is the most accessible, available and affordable), and therefore preventing overweight and obesity. [1]
However, compared to smoking it is an issue that affects more people and has been addresses muuuch less
> The study reveals that obesity is linked to very high rates of chronic illnesses — higher than living in poverty, and much higher than smoking or drinking. [2]
> In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults aged 18 years and older were overweight. Of these over 650 million adults were obese. [1]
Are the diseases you didn't get because smoking-related diseases killed you already, are those diseases any cheaper to treat?
The predictable consequence of American lives is that you'll get serious medical conditions and spend a lot of money addressing them at the end of your life. Changing out one for another won't necessarily make things cheaper.
Smoking is actually profitable for the government. Social security and medicare make up about half of total expenditures, so the best thing you can do from the perspective of government finance is die younger.
You're thinking about spending incorrectly. You're thinking about per year healthcare spending which is higher for smokers. You should be thinking about lifetime spending which is lower for smokers.
Smokers die in there's 60s from a heart attack or lung cancer. Healthy people die in their 80s after collecting Medicare and social security for 25 years having spent the last 10 years in memory care.
> So the only difference that I can see is that the Cheeseburger is more deadly.
Eating is a requirement for life, and there is no meaningful way to make a nutritionally complete diet available (especially at "feeding society without devoting your entire GDP to food production and distribution" scales) while making it impossible for people to gain unhealthy amounts of weight. It is fully a sliding scale.
Even the most pro-nicotine people can't argue that smoking is a necessary component of human survival.
You don’t have to make it impossible to gain weight, but don’t make gaining weight the default choice like it is today.
Reduce the insane amount of sugar, empty carbs, and saturated fats in the food available to an average American, and subsidize vegetables and fruits and whole grains. Incentivize the mass-producing manufacturers to use healthier ingredients.
Yes, just as there's clearly a difference between smoking and vaping. In a sane regulatory world as soon as e-cigarettes became widely available we would have banned legacy cigarettes. Instead we're doing the opposite on the basis of logic-free moralizing.
You can tell me to stop doing X and/or Y, but if I do stop them, then it would be equivalent to me stopping antidepressants that help me get out of bed and do my damn job (which is helping people) and be able to live my life instead of driving myself nuts and end up hanging myself. It is NOT WORTH IT to me (and to society, since I contribute this way much more, but you may rather prefer I was dead) to stop doing X and/or Y. FWIW the reason for this is that my brain is physically damaged.
Plus I would advise you give them any tips (not just any random ones though) as to how to do that exactly.
---
At any case, why are we so eager to tell people what to do without knowing anything about their life anyway?
Lots of ways you could have attacked my "just stop lol" quip, and you chose to equate cigarettes with antidepressants. Interesting strategy.
I smoked cigarettes for a long time, and it really does boil down to just... not smoking anymore. I think the average number of quit attempts prior to success is 6 or 7, which seems about right. Some people find success with the gum, some people like to do cold turkey and push through it. I weaned myself off to the point where the last couple cigarettes in a pack were so stale it lost its enjoyment. I think a big part of why it takes a bunch of attempts is finding the method that works for you because a lot of them are mutually exclusive.
The 'seat-belt' argument is a pet peeve of mine because it shifts the debate from 'should the government do this' to 'can the government do this' and presupposes a yes answer. The argument shifts away from the specifics of the regulation in question to broadness around government authority itself.
Additionally, just because the government can force you to wear a seat-belt doesn't mean it has the same kind of authority over just about anything else.
That's not accurate as seal belt laws actually protect other people other than yourself. Think about a human flying through a windshield at 40mph hitting a pedestrian, or you flying around the car smashing into other passengers that were wearing their seatbelt.
I guess I’ll have to switch have to cigarettes now. I wish the government would stop mandating what I can and cannot put in my body.
Why are you being so over-dramatic? Juuls weren't the only e-cigs on the market. They also weren't the only alternative (to cigarettes) nicotine product on the market, either. You don't have to switch to cigarettes.
juul has the best salts and all the other variants don't come close. cats out of the bag, and it's so backwards to take down juul when so many other trash alternates exist. any idea if other product lines use something similar to juul's nic salt mix?
I wonder if this will have any impact on the funding and development of Solidus? The main developers of Solidus were purchased by Juul in 2018.
https://edgeguides.solidus.io/
I'm not seeing anybody actually comment on the substance of the article, which is what happens when you post paywalled articles to HN. The reason is because of flavorings.
> in 2019 [Juul] stopped selling sweet and fruity flavors
> The [FDA] has cleared the way for Juul’s biggest rivals to keep tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes on the market. Industry observers had expected Juul to receive similar clearance.
I don't believe Altria was ever interested in Juul doing well. I suspect this entire incident was planned. If Juul had exploded in popularity Altria wanted to be in a position to take advantage of that but otherwise had a direct interest in making all of vaping seem dangerous and essentially equivalent to smoking, and have worked with the FDA toward that end.
I think this precipitated from decisions made at juul before Altria bought in. Looking at their stock price today ($MO), I highly doubt this was intentional.
According to Wikipedia Juul was founded in July of 2017, in December of 2018 Altria bought a 35% share valuing the Juul company at $38 billion. So A. I think they would have had some influence and B. Altria just didn't notice all this apparent mismanagement of a company that continued operating until now, 3+ years later?
Oh, I thought the action was about what they had been doing in the past. The wheels of justice can move pretty slowly, especially if ones legal team is doing their best to slow things down.
I'd hope that Altria knows how to operate properly by now, anyway, whatever they did, they probably deserve it. Whether it's the responsibility of the new guard or the old doesn't matter too much I guess.
Now we're being told what we can and can't do in random ways in America and it's a really strange form of hypocrisy. From talk about regulating the size of big gulps to mandating paper straws to legalization of marijuana and the banning of smoking products, this country is going insane.
We still live in a country where illegal drugs are prevalent in all settings of life. All of the moral legislation doesn't change the underlying narrative that the people we task with serving this country are not doing their jobs right, and simply voting does not fix that because of the deep seated agendas of non-tax-paying corporations and individuals influencing our political systems.
It's not about Juul products, it's a hostile bid to take their market share...
There are literally 20+ other vape product companies, and many other non-legal suppliers that will step in regardless of what laws are passed, many adding harmful chemicals to products as well, while the FDA is not focused on making vape products better and safer. It's meant to be simple nicotine, that's been around since America was inhabited by native cultures. What's next for elimination? Brands of Alcohol?
Are we going to limit blood alcohol content to 2 sips per outing? Who is driving all of this? Name the specific people pushing these rules, and then follow the paper trails, and you'll find that in a country where health care companies give major contributions to legislators to keep the market deregulated that it's all about money, not our best interests, and we fund it all every year, mandatorily, when we pay taxes...
Everyone is getting prodded and pushed around by the legislators we're mandatorily funding. I'm not advocating protest or overthrow of government and corporations at all, but the ones we have in place are not helping us by any means right now, and they're overreaching into our privacy and lives and driving policy based on agendas and profit at our expense. People smoke mostly because they are stressed and burdened within their lives, reduce public financial and emotional stress factors first, then they'll have no excuses left for smoking.
We need to be more vocal about the harm in moral legislation, even if smoking is eliminated, we still don't have free health care for being citizens, and we pay an extraordinary amount in taxes every year with cost of living that threatens to kill most well before smoking ever could.
Just note that this isn’t anything new. I highly recommend the book “How to become a Federal Criminal” that shows 200 years of code and statute for all kinds of odd rules.
I had similar thoughts when they banned flavored vapes. "For the sake of the children" means that me, as an adult, am not allowed to choose fruit flavors for an adult product when that is what I prefer. Seems hypocritical that I can buy blueberry vodka but not blueberry vape.
Except they didn't ban them they kept some weird loophole that allows disposable vapes to still be sold in any range of flavors so now people are just throwing away tons of batteries and for some reason Juul is getting banned who actually complied with the laws and took significant losses doing so. I don't think the people who are/were running juul are saints but if this is really about the kids they're really missing the target because all those teens moved onto other products.
This is the true absurdity. You can actively buy high percentage nicotine in any flavor you want online, delivered to your door with minimal age checks.
Lawmakers are activist on the matter because they believe it will somehow protect their own children from vaping... Truth is it's too late to prevent their own children from vaping, they've already caught them vaping.
Because of social media and populism, too many bad/harmful decisions are being made now in government. Most of it is driven by people seeking re-election or social media popularity more than by people who truly want to create positive change.
I never want to breathe in cigarette smoke on the sidewalk because of the damage to my health. Why does the individual freedom to do whatever you want overrule my individual freedom not to be affected by the externalities of your choices? The fundamental flaw in your argument is that you focus almost exclusively on individual right to the detriment of public good.
No offense personally, but the alternative to fuel burning cars is only cars with more toxic batteries that will pollute drinking water.
There are no honestly viable solutions currently on the market to our environmental crisis in place, it's just marketing to shift profit to another harmful money making industry.
Hauling a family of four on a bicycle to the hospital in a crisis in 2 feet of snow (for example) only goes further to highlight the small-mindedness our future is up against.
They have a huge problem with unexpected detonations.
One of the best things about vaping has been that I'm pretty sure that there are less unintentional home fires than in past decades, because when they are dropped on a mattress, they usually do not burn... Another aspect that no one really considers.
Hydride cells can be punctured, smoked near, smoked on, it's fine, it's also old technology. Just about any vehicle can be retrofitted for this, and can sequester the hydrogen overnight from the air.
Public transport was crippled during the pandemic for obvious reasons... Let's not forget that.
Also during an earthquake/power outage scenario would likely do the same, and cause far more dramatic loss of life if it was the only option.
It's a hard sell to people who want to be free and independent, and in control of their safety and time.
Getting rid of cars also means eliminating a huge volume of revenue from federal, state, and local government from related taxes... This means funding for bike lanes, roads, and even public transport, would evaporate.
Most of the busses in many major cities were also once electric (at a very high cost to cities), but now (somehow) have mostly gone back to diesel... No one is asking Why...
We still have major factories, ships, planes, and many other big business hallmarks that create the majority of pollution in the world (while the same companies try to portray that they are "green"). Conservation efforts are futile unless we start talking about the real issues, and create accountability, not if we leave rules up to profit seeking individuals and companies.
It's beyond a hard sell at this point for many people, and contradictory to the concept of a free society.
Back when we had mostly horses providing transit, they consumed more energy than cars on an individual basis too, and created health problems with their waste...
It's all just shifting the buck somewhere else, and not solving real underlying problems.
> Public transport was crippled during the pandemic for obvious reasons... Let's not forget that.
A once a century event shouldn't define the other 98 years.
> Getting rid of cars also means eliminating a huge volume of revenue from federal, state, and local government from related taxes... This means funding for bike lanes, roads, and even public transport, would evaporate.
This is not an issue. If people aren't buying cars, they'll have more money that they'll spend on other things or we can just raise taxes because people have more money.
> We still have major factories, ships, planes, and many other big business hallmarks that create the majority of pollution in the world (while the same companies try to portray that they are "green"). Conservation efforts are futile unless we start talking about the real issues, and create accountability, not if we leave rules up to profit seeking individuals and companies.
We're never gonna solve climate change if we only focus on the biggest issues. It's multifaceted problem.
The difference is that gasoline powered engines add value to the world in exchange for the destruction they cause, while cigarettes are purely destructive.
But yes, we should eliminate gasoline powered vehicles as soon as feasible. This is something that's already going on.
Most people driving cars don't need to be, just as most people smoking don't need to be.
The main point is that it's easy to be personally offended by a cigarette, but the real damage is caused elsewhere. Sometimes we need to step outside of our selfish, interpersonal bubbles to see that.
Smoking has been banned successfully in most public places. You rights to clean air are reasonable to an extent, but outdoors it's a different story. Can you tell people driving gas burning cars and diesel vehicles to stay far away from humans? There has to be better reasonability in discussion of the issue.
Because breathing some second hand smoke outside in a city is objectively such a tiny problem that the benefits in personal freedom to the smoker outweigh the 10 seconds of your lifespan taken away.
Not as many people die from second hand smoke as is often presented. Even the campaigns that run ads to encourage quitting pay out salaries and generate funding to stay alive, so they've got to keep developing slogans and make charts to fund their existence.
If that was the case, the smokers, who had "first hand" smoke, would be dying a lot more frequently. Many of the people that died of lung cancer historically were exposed to asbestos products, which greatly skewed diagnoses for many many years... Many people who also never smoked in their lives died of lung cancer because of the prevalence of asbestos products in building materials as well. Most people don't know this because it would have resulted in many well embedded companies going bankrupt.
You'd also be surprised to know how smoking actually curbs incidents of rage, violence, suicide, and anger in people too, but there are no proper scientific studies because of the blinding bias promoted by companies that also seek to make a profit. There is a deeper discussion involved in quality of life versus quantity of life too, that is often overlooked, and no matter what regulation comes into play, nothing is going to stop a person from growing tobacco and smoking it even with prohibition, we know this from all the people that were murdered and made rich over bootlegging alcohol. This moral legislation is a waste of time, it's harmful to progress, and it's destructive to American freedoms that characterize the country.
Also ask yourself, why nicotine gum and patches (made to help people quit smoking) are always priced so high... This will further demonstrate the financial drive behind all aspects of tobacco. Tobacco was also a main driver of slave trade historically, meaning there are several companies that sold it and now are tied to investments and profit within the industry, including health care companies. CVS sold cigarettes for years, and that's likely a huge part of why they are still in business to this day.
I'm thoroughly convinced that moves like this have little to do with concern for the health of individuals. Smoking is a bad habit, but why is it always more polarizing than stock market manipulation, work wage theft, regulation of insurance industries, and so many other things that would improve the lives of citizens if not to shift profit elsewhere...
Government operates to protect companies and the wealthy now, not an individual making minimum wage with a smoking problem.
>You'd also be surprised to know how smoking actually curbs incidents of rage, violence, suicide, and anger in people too...
A lot of the claims you're making in these posts are going to need citations. This specific sentence (with the obvious exception of suicide) sounds as though you're describing a "nic fit", otherwise known as nicotine withdrawal. So of course getting more nicotine in your system is going to fix that.
Without cited sources, your claim is suspect because I can't confirm whether or not nicotine withdrawals were taken into account.
For the record, it's personal observation. I am in no way tied to the industry or empirical studies concerning the matter, and I don't think I presented the information as if I was providing empirical data.
I'd envision that data to back that claim would be impossible to find anyway, because no one has ever taken time to investigate it and publish a report due to societal bias on the matter.
The only real way to understand it yourself is to talk with a lot of smokers concerning their life experiences, and to also ask why in movies historically the first thing police would hand to a victim or person who has undergone a traumatic incident was often a cigarette.
> and to also ask why in movies historically the first thing police would hand to a victim or person who has undergone a traumatic incident was often a cigarette
"in movies"?
Even in real life...
Maybe we should ask why historically kids were given alcohol for all manner of ailments from teething to colds.
If we really cared about this, we'd start forced removals, because kids are the one's getting the most damage from that many particulates over their lifetimes.
> I never want to breathe in cigarette smoke on the sidewalk because of the damage to my health.
I’m always a little shocked when I hear otherwise very intelligent people make these sorts of statements about second hand smoke.
The second hand smoke you’d encounter on a sidewalk is completely harmless. Any affect, if any, to your health would be completely insignificant and unmeasurable.
Second hand smoke is harmful when exposed to heavy amounts of it in confined spaces for prolonged periods of time. Think decades not seconds.
In fact that was the original justification for indoor bans. It was in defence of staff who may encounter health issues after being exposed to indoor second hand smoke for 8 hours a day over decades. (Think single mom working at a bar) They weren’t put in place to preserve the health of customers, since any affect would be extremely minimal and voluntary.
I should try to dig this up some time but I recall reading once about one of the lead promoters of the first indoor smoking bans in NYC. He later had to step down out of principal, when things pivoted to outdoor bans. In his mind it would be completely irrational and unscientific.
Air pollution is definitely a significant problem but cigarette smoke is nothing more than a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. Look in to brake pad dust.
> The second hand smoke you’d encounter on a sidewalk is completely harmless. Any affect, if any, to your health would be completely insignificant and unmeasurable.
This sounds correct to me but keep in mind marketing the dangers of second hand smoke was an effective way to get people who thought of it as a solitary activity to thing of the secondary impacts. Most smokers don’t care about their long term health enough, but they may care about the health of those around them.
Sure, but in general we don't ban products because they smell gross. I can buy a durian fruit, or put rotten eggs in a dumpster, or be homeless and unable to bathe and that's not illegal on its own.
There's a lot of stuff that's gross and obnoxious that isn't banned by the FTC or FDA.
I find a lot of body odor or perfume and how heavily it is applied just as offensive, but I don't think people should be told to change because of that.
It’s not clear to me what you mean when you say it’s the same concept.
Your position is based on your own subjective preference rather than any objective fact.
We’ve gone from “your actions are having a direct negative impact on my health”, to “I’m not particularly fond of what you’re doing.”
Far from being the same, your position is actually very different conceptually.
The personal preferences of some aren’t valid reasons to ban things in public places for all. In most cases that would be a gross violation of human rights.
In my city the vast majority have a strong preference against pan handling. But it’s been made clear time and time again the pans handlers have every right to sit in public and ask for money, whether people like it or not. Moreover if they like they can also smoke a cigarette or bang a drum.
That's personal preference vs. a potential health hazard.
Great example - masks. You may have had a personal preference not to wear a mask during the height of the pandemic, but that 'personal preference' puts others at a proven health hazard.
In this case, your 'personal preference' is irrelevant.
If second hand outdoor smoke really did have the affects you initially used to back up your point, then that would be a 'health hazard', and therefore important to the greater whole, and something to be considered taking legal action on.
Since you reduced your argument to 'I don't want to smell it', the underlying concept completely changes, and your statement is completely irrelevant.
Frankly I don’t care if it’s harmless, get that shit the fuck out of my face. It’s like someone deciding it’s okay to just let a massive fart out next to you. Harmless, but is it really appropriate? No.
Personal liberty isn't some absolute line. You have to understand that its impossible to grant everyone freedoms without creating some consequence.
> Why does the individual freedom to do whatever you want overrule my individual freedom not to be affected by the externalities of your choices? The fundamental flaw in your argument is that you focus almost exclusively on individual right to the detriment of public good.
This is insanity. The same argument can be applied to any personal liberty. Should washing hands be mandated by the government? After all, your freedom to not wash your hands increases my chances of catching disease. Let's ban bugspray too since exposure to second hand insecticides infringes upon your right to never be affected by another individual's choices!
The health dangers of breathing gasoline/diesel vehicle exhaust fumes are certainly as well known, and at least as risky. Yet the 'right' to drive a car or a semi seems to be invincible against this fact.
When I was approached by people gathering signatures for anti-smoking measures, I always asked how they arrived at the location. Invariably they did not walk or bicycle to it. Always shrugged off, because not their problem.
>The fundamental flaw in your argument is that you focus almost exclusively on individual right to the detriment of public good.
Who defines what "the public good" is? The same people who argue that rights must be eliminated for "the public good" are the ones who want to pass laws telling grown adults what they are allowed to do behind closed doors. From what plants they want to make illegal for you to grow, to what substances you want to ingest, to preventing you from playing poker with other consenting adults, to what language you must refer to people by - it is fundamentally anti-freedom.
>Why does the individual freedom to do whatever you want overrule my individual freedom not to be affected by the externalities of your choices?
This is the proper argument to make, and why I'm fine with banning smoking in certain public places, just like I'm fine with restricting a wide variety of other behaviors on public property that adults should otherwise be able to engage in behind closed doors. This is not what the federal government is doing in regard to Juul (or many other cases). They aren't addressing public behavior, they are passing laws and regulations to prevent you from behaving how you wish, on your own property, for your own good. The government shouldn't be in the business of telling consenting adults, at the point of a gun, what behaviors they aren't allowed to engage in behind closed doors.
It's totally sane when looked at through one lens, and asinine when viewed through the other.
From a societal point of view, banning these products makes sense. They don't add value to the world, but they cause a lot of damage. The people who feel they are flipping the bill for the damaged caused don't see a reason that they have to pay it. The costs can be abstract, like increased medical costs, but they can also be direct, say, your child gets hooked on one of these and suffers some sort of medical complication.
From an individual perspective, then banning these products seems ridiculous. It's pretty common for people to believe that they aren't impacting others with their choices (which is wrong), or they acknowledge the negative impacts, but they just don't care.
Generally speaking, if you want to maintain a freedom, it is advisable to not bother other people with your activity.
Your first view is sane only on an individual, isolated basis. If you step back and see that a particular e-cig is banned while the original (and the causes for this type of product) is still legal, then any sane argument gets throw out of the window. If legislators wanted to remove causes of societal damage, they would ban the use of nicotine on cigarettes, that have the biggest share of nicotine consumption.
Because millions of people were smokers and that necessitated a long-term strategy for dealing with cigarettes. And that strategy is basically, increase taxes on them a little bit every year until they become so damn expensive that people quit using them and they are de facto banned.
Juul is new enough that the blunt approach will work. Plus, it's not a plant that grows all over, making a black market for them less likely to spring up.
> Now we're being told what we can and can't do in random ways in America and it's a really strange form of hypocrisy.
Are these ways random though, really? Or do they reflect that we have vastly divergent ideas of what society should be from the “my home is my castle” folks to the “we live in a society” folks. For the former it’s an abrogation of their sacred right to do whatever they want. For the latter it’s not wanting to be subjected to powerful corporations doing sociopathic things to make as much money as possible.
> From talk about regulating the size of big gulps to mandating paper straws to legalization of marijuana and the banning of smoking products, this country is going insane.
Smoking marijuana and big gulps are very different from paper straws. Rules around smoking and soda sizes are the government legislating freedoms. I personally don't mind regulations here, but I agree it's taking away your liberty to some extent. Paper straws are mandated for a completely different reason: because they impose an externality that the user doesn't adequately pay for. Philosophically these bans are for the same reason we don't allow you to leave garbage on a public bench or dump toxic waste in a river. Again, you can debate the merits of single-use plastic legislation, but I wouldn't lump it together with smoking and soda bans at all.
But why ban paper straws and not plastic wrapped plastic bottles with plastic stickers on a pallet wrapped in plastic? Just eliminating the "sixpack" part of the packaging of sodas would save more plastics than the straws bans do.
Sure, but my point is more that legislation on e-cigarettes and soda is an issue of civil liberty, plain and simple, and legislation on plastics has little to do with them (unless you think that it's your right to pollute the environment). You might not think that it's effective, but it's not a case of the government telling you you can't do something for your own good.
People will always find ways to screw themselves up. Trying to ban this or ban that is like playing whack a mole. It ends up being a contest of who can shout the loudest to gain the government's attention, which isn't fair and also hurts the economy. The only answer in my opinion is deregulation + strong family values to help raise kids right.
Now you got me thinking about one thing in particular.
Suppose we will have quite soon portable and discreet technology that can, through monitoring your BAC, or what have you, warn you that you're about to be overly drunk. It would stand to reason that for many folks out there who have An Alcohol Problem that technology like this could materially enhance their lives. Now that I think of this, something like this could even become the first practical widespread form of cybernetic enhancement, not that we don't already have plenty of awesome ones in the form of prostheses.
Just makes me wonder what kind of hurdles a company developing such a product would face.
Free healthcare (i.e. paid for by taxes) would certainly make me vote to eliminate known harmful things. I don't want to pay for your choices. It's more than moral legislation then.
Teen vaping is a problem, but this seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water. Tobacco and nicotine products should take a similar approach to alcohol and increase the age to 21.
This would help get the products out of high schools like it did for alcohol.
Removing e-cigs can hurt people that use them to get off cigarettes.
I did, but now as an adult (early 30s) I wonder how we even got our hands on it. I guess we knew some sketchy characters and people with fake IDs, but there's no I would risk a charge providing alcohol to minors as an adult, and I wouldn't have provided alcohol to high-schoolers when I was 21, either.
I didn't realize that the laws were changed somewhat recently. For your other point I certainly would have drank a lot more in HS if I was able to buy it myself or had friends that could.
Seriously not cool! We ban such accounts. I don't want to ban you, so please review the rules and stick to them. That means no more name-calling, no more personal attacks, no more swipes.
Marijuana is getting legalized all over the place. We're headed towards decriminalizing hard drugs all over the Western World. US FDA goes after e-cigs. What's the conspiracy theory version of this? Are old school tobacco companies paying the government to get rid of their competition or something?
> US FDA goes after e-cigs. What's the conspiracy theory version of this? Are old school tobacco companies paying the government to get rid of their competition or something?
E-cig tobacco comes from the same companies as cigarette tobacco. Heck, e-cigs themselves often come from the same companies: Juul is Altria (ex-Phillip-Morris). There is no competition, simply different channels for the same suppliers.
(Also, the FDA is going after some current combustible tobacco products as well some current e-cigs.)
That just makes the behavior even more confusing. Why specifically go after tobacco when we're moving towards legalizing/decriminalizing everything else?
Usually when something dumb like this happens you can follow the money. But I'm open to other hypotheses.
The matter at hand is an outright ban, not merely standards.
Although from the discussion above it's also clear that the standards are nonsensical, resulting in a ban for less dangerous products while more dangerous ones are still legal, albeit with heavier regulation.
Hm, reminds me of gun laws, actually. A bolt-action rifle with a barrel under 16" requires a multi-month federal approval, while a semi-auto with a longer barrel is one instant background check away. It's almost as if people who write those laws don't have any clue, and are just chasing public opinion in their eternal popularity contest.
No one should have the power to control what people do with their bodies, or what they ingest. Junk food has an arguably much more significant negative impact than nicotine, and it’s openly targeted at kids.
I think smoking is a terrible habit. But, isn’t kind of strange that at the same time when there is a push to get rid of Juul, almost everyone thinks that selling weed should be legal? By “everyone”, I mean across the political spectrum from most conservatives and liberals.
766 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 324 ms ] threadhttps://tobaccofreelife.org/resources/marijuana-vs-tobacco/
(I originally said 1k, which appears to have been misremembering.)
Vitamin A is far too thick to vape in a Juul type pod system. The only use it has is as a thickener for concentrates which use a whole different type of wicking system.
Concentrate cartridges use a ceramic stone with a heating element inside or encased. This ceramic greatly reduces the flow rate and allows slower vaporization of the concentrate.
I ran a vape shop for years I am more than happy to discuss safety of vaping but won't participate in whataboutism.
But how can you convince others of this view if you're "not particularly interested" in the relevant facts?
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+people+died+from+va...
also, vitamin e acetate was used to cut black/grey market cannabis vape products, not nicotine. nic juice is so cheap to produce that there's no reason to cut, vitamin e acetate is probably more expensive.
i quit an 8 year smoking habit the first day i purchased a vape. it's depressing and frustrating to see this option removed for others.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...)
This would be like saying Coors Light is dangerous because your cousin's moonshine had methanol in it.
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/s...
> National and state data from patient reports and product sample testing show tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-containing e-cigarette, or vaping, products, particularly from informal sources like friends, family, or in-person or online dealers, are linked to most EVALI cases and play a major role in the outbreak.
Incidentally, smoking has been a pretty significant cause of car accidents. People drop them while driving and panic.
I think there is nobody in this comments section who would disagree with banning the use of Vitamin A Acetate as an additive to vape products, and also nobody who wouldn't want those responsible for the deaths to be held accountable.
None of those are in a Juul cartridge. Vitamin A Acetate is also not in a Juul cartridge.
It's like when we talk about alcohol consumption. Yes there are negative effects from the calories and other stuff in beer, but the main negative health effects come from the alcohol in the beer, so we talk in terms of alcohol consumption not beer (without the alcohol) consumption.
Nicotine is the same thing, it's far worse than the simple act of smoking. It changes the brain chemistry to be dependent on it, it hardens your vessels and leads to long term systemic hypertension (high blood pressure) that can cause tons of other issues.
Smoking is a form of nicotine consumption. If cigarettes didnt have nicotine we wouldn't smoke them.
Smoking causes X number of preventable deaths per year, which is the most preventable deaths in any one bucket. There are other forms of nicotine consumption, which also cause preventable deaths which add to that number. So Y number of additional deaths due to chewing tobacco, Z additional due to vaping nicotine and the systemic circulatory issues that come with that. It's a simple fact that X < X + Y + Z
Your argument sucks. You should feel bad about that.
> It's not that A implies B. It's that B [did you mean A?] is contained within B.
"A implies B" and "A is contained within B" are equivalent statements. For example, if you are Catholic, you are a Christian. Being Catholic implies being Christian. Catholicism is contained within Christianity. However, you can't go the other way. Being a Christian doesn't imply that you are a Catholic.
Regarding alcohol consumption, we talk about about consumption, compared to beer consumption, because we know that alcohol consumption has the same general risk profile whether or not you're drinking beer, wine, or spirits. The important part is that alcohol has been shown to have negative effects. Because alcohol has been shown to have negative effects, we can extrapolate that beer has the negative effects associated with alcohol, However, if only beer had been shown to have negative effects, we couldn't automatically assume alcohol was the cause because there is a lot of other stuff in beer that distinguishes it from wine and spirits.
Now the same thing applies to smoking. Smoking is known to produce over 9000 chemical compounds, 70 of which are known to cause cancer. At least part of the causal link to cancer is specifically tied to the compounds from combustion specific to smoking. Therefore, we can't automatically assume that nicotine is harmful just because its present in smoke and we know smoke to cause cancer.
Here is an overview from Cancer Research UK: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-canc...
> Nicotine is the chemical that makes cigarettes addictive. But it is not responsible for the harmful effects of smoking. Nicotine does not cause cancer, and people have used nicotine replacement therapy safely for many years. Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) is safe enough to be prescribed by doctors.
So, in short, just because smoking is known to cause cancer, doesn't mean you can assume that nicotine would be responsible for the same number of deaths if you replaced smoking with some other form of nicotine consumption.
I'm not talking about a hypothetical comparison between smoking and vaping.
I'm talking about my original statement, and your misunderstanding of it.
My original statement was not to say that if you replace smoking with vaping. Of course vaping is less bad than smoking.
My original statement was to say that smoking nicotine is the leading cause of preventable death, so if we add in deaths by chewing and vaping thats even more deaths. That's all my original comment and subsequent replies are referring to - not a comparison of vaping vs smoking.
See, you've assumed that A implies B means B implies A again. Smoking tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death. Nicotine is in tobacco, but that doesn't mean you can replace "Smoking nicotine" anywhere you see "Smoking tobacco." Hope that clears it up.
Weed is addictive too. Smoking plant matter of almost any variety increases cancer risk.
If you're eating 100+mg a day you will have physical withdrawal symptoms. This kind of consumption just hasn't been possible, or more likely affordable, for a large swath of the population until a few years ago.
I think your bigger concerns at 100+mg a day will be paying for your habit, and having a life outside of melting onto the couch and watching dumb YouTube videos
In this study 57% out of 1000 persons seeking treatment for drug and alcohol dependencies said that quitting smoking was harder than their problem substance.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/37628...
From this article: 'Heroin addicts say it is easier to give up dope than it is to give up smoking,'' says Dr. Sharon Hall, a psychology professor
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/29/magazine/nicotine-harder-...
I dont have personal experience with opiates, but do with nicotine and I can say it took 10-15 years before I didn't have a regular desire to consume nicotine. It was the hardest thing I've ever done.
Smoking a cigarette is like taking a fast acting but short duration antidepressant along with a mild/moderate stimulant simultaneously, which has been specifically engineered to go from lungs to brain in the shortest time possible.
Switching to vaping from smoking has a transition period ranging from a few days to just over a week while the brain adjusts to receiving the nicotine much more slowly. Vaping relieves nicotine cravings, but at normal doses in an ex-smoker barely scratches the surface of the instant relief/rush delivered by a cigarette.
Nicotine itself and on its own is relatively harmless to an ex-smoker. But should still be avoided by non-smokers.
Most of the harm caused by cigarettes are related to the tobacco-specific nitrosamines found naturally in tobacco which are carcinogenic, combined with additional carcinogens and harmful compounds created when tobacco combusts.
That said many of the flavourings used in e-cigarettes are harmful to health, especially when heated. Most notably sucralose, which itself partially decomposes into carcinogenic compounds when heated to temperatures reached by vaping. But that's another problem, my main point is that nicotine is only about as harmful as caffeine when consumed alone outside the context of a cigarette.
Why is this meme so popular on HN? There's nothing 'harmless' about it, and a few minutes of Googling makes that incredibly clear. Even in the absence of tobacco compounds, nicotine unquestionably wreaks havoc on pulmonary and cardiovascular function, and promotes vascular calcification and arteriosclerosis. It's also implicated as a cause with a plethora of other horrible medical issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine_poisoning
However for nicotine addicts the e-cigarette is certainly a better method of delivery than the cigarette, as you're not getting exposure to known carcinogens like benzo[a]pyrene etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzo(a)pyrene
> "Benzo[a]pyrene is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon and the result of incomplete combustion of organic matter at temperatures between 300 °C (572 °F) and 600 °C (1,112 °F). The ubiquitous compound can be found in coal tar, tobacco smoke and many foods, especially grilled meats. The substance with the formula C20H12 is one of the benzopyrenes, formed by a benzene ring fused to pyrene. Its diol epoxide metabolites (more commonly known as BPDE) react with and bind to DNA, resulting in mutations and eventually cancer."
My guess is because people who claim this rarely have any references, and when they can dig one out, it's very bad.
Chewing tobacco is about just as fast without I assume engineering or maoi.
[1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3755365/
This is literally just looking at pathways and saying "yeah that seems possible".
Not to mention there are tons of published papers that are worth less than toilet paper. This is a huge problem and pubmed is a central database that doesn't exert anywhere near enough curation, it is meant to be used by professionals of targeted interests who can exert proper critical judgement, not by random people.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148641/
>Recent reports that PubMed, one of the world’s leading biomedical databases, includes predatory journals and their publications1,2 is cause for concern. PubMed handles millions of queries daily and represents a key source of knowledge for health researchers worldwide. Much medical research that underpins clinical practice relies on the findings generated by peer-reviewed studies that are retrieved via biomedical databases, in particular, those that are free to search such as MEDLINE and PubMed. Thus, it is imperative that these databases are free of contamination by the outputs of predatory journals with their critically flawed peer review procedures.3 We analyze why this is happening and identify some possible solutions to stop the penetration of predatory journals and publishers into biomedical databases.
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking-health-a...
>Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent paper linking the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine to inflammation of the colon and to autism, and upon whose illusory foundation the modern anti-vaccine movement rests, is listed on PubMed (though it is marked as “retracted”). There is a journal called Medical Hypotheses whose articles are also discoverable through PubMed. The journal’s purpose is to publish theoretical papers, and its editors will consider “radical, speculative and non-mainstream scientific ideas” as long as they are written in a way that makes some kind of sense. One such paper proposes that ejaculation might be a potential treatment for a congested nose. Another argues that this handy intervention is “inconvenient, unreliable and potentially hazardous.” Both are, you guessed it, found on PubMed.
Just because it's on pubmed doesn't mean anything. There are so many terrible studies published and listed there that only a researcher of the studied field can tell whether it's any good or bad.
>Nicotine itself and on its own is relatively harmless to an ex-smoker. Why is this meme so popular on HN? There's nothing 'harmless' about it, and a few minutes of Googling makes that incredibly clear. Even in the absence of tobacco compounds, nicotine unquestionably wreaks havoc on pulmonary and cardiovascular function, and promotes vascular calcification and arteriosclerosis. It's also implicated as a cause with a plethora of other horrible medical issues.
... but in this specific case, if you're already vaping, the FDA doesn't care if you switch to Vuse. It's Juul specifically that isn't getting the nod, it seems.
Marijuana is a Schedule 1 drug, considered illegal for possession and consumption, at the federal level.
The fact that the federal government has chosen to not interfere in states that have decriminalized it is merely a policy position- it continues to have the authority to go after people in any state for the production, distribution and (I think) consumption of any Schedule 1 drug, which marijuana is currently listed as.
"Decriminalization" is a specific term with a specific meaning in the context of drugs.
When states decriminalize a drug, they reduce/eliminate enforcement of the existing laws.
When states legalize a drug, they actually remove the laws prohibiting the drug. When most states legalize marijuana, they also create regulatory regimes to dictate how when the drug can be created, sold and used.
So while you are correct that Marijuana is illegal under federal law and that there are good precedents for their ability to enforce those laws, you attempt to get this point across by nitpicking the use of "legalize" is pedantically wrong. The correct explanation is that there are many states that have legalized marijuana under state law and the federal government has a policy of decriminalization for intrastate marijuana commerce in those states.
I think that part of the reason why that approach is taken by the DEA is to avoid creating opportunity for legal challenges that might undermine the existing precedents that give them power to regulate even intrastate commerce.
Is definitely correct.
> When states legalize a drug, they actually remove the laws prohibiting the drug. When most states legalize marijuana, they also create regulatory regimes to dictate how when the drug can be created, sold and used.
This does not mean that it has been made legal in the state- the state does not have the authority to make it legal, as that power is reserved by the federal government.
I will concede that "decriminalize" may not be the best word to use, but "legalize" implies that it is legal under state law, which it cannot be.
In truth, I'm suspect of the legality of states imposing criminal punishment on drug use as well. States which have passed laws on immigration mirroring the federal government's laws (in an effort to step up what they viewed as lax enforcement) were taken to court and shot down under the Supremacy Clause: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/11-182 and similar cases. I think the same logic would apply to drug laws, if any politician were foolhardy enough to challenge the states on it (as it would be far less popular to do so).
> I will concede that "decriminalize" may not be the best word to use, but "legalize" implies that it is legal under state law, which it cannot be.
Not true, most states have laws making marijuana illegal and when state courts prosecute people for marijuana it is under state laws. Only federal courts can prosecute you for violations of federal law. (Edit: not completely true, there are complications and exceptions.)
So when a state legalizes marijuana, it is indeed now legal under the law of that state and state prosecutors and judges can't just switch to applying the federal laws.
The supremacy clause absolutely does not say that states can't pass laws that cover the same subject matter as federal laws. There are a huge number of acts that are illegal under both state and federal law.
The supremacy clause says that federal can pass laws that supercede state laws, either explicitly or implicitly. Given the long history of cooperation between state and federal law enforcement in the war on drugs, combined with the now fairly long standing policy of the decriminalization of intrastate drug commerce in where legal at the state level, would make it really hard to argue that there is any implict intent for our current drug legislation to supercede all state law.
The supremacy clause just means that congress could pass new drug regulations that did supercede state drug laws. That would probably end up getting challenged in the supreme court and set some new precedents so this seems pretty unlikely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commandeering
This provides a convenient upper boundary on the actual power of the federal level - they can ban all they want under the modern expansive implementation of the Commerce Clause, but to get effective enforcement, they either need to allocate enough money on the federal level to cover the entire country, or they need to convince the states to help them enforce.
"States can't legalize only decriminalize"
God I hate when HN members who are really wrong act all conceited about it.
"In October, the FDA allowed Juul rival British American Tobacco Plc (BATS.L) to market its Vuse Solo e-cigarettes and tobacco-flavored pods, making it the first-ever vapor product to get clearance from the health regulator."
We won't know for sure until the FDA actually releases their report, but one could infer that Juul as a provider of human-consumable vapor products was unsalvageably bad, to the point of being a danger to public health (in a way that their market competition was not).
Altria surely didn’t want Juul to get regulated out of existence. But the rest of the majors did.
How does this help them?
Of all the e-cig players, Juul (which is now majority owned by Altria) is the most reputable one — by far - they have by far the best technology, quality controls, compliance and regulation teams, etc.
Unfortunately before Altria acquired Juul it was a terribly ran company. People spend a lot of time discussing the chronic youth issues but the reality is that Juul never wanted to sell to youths or anything of the sort — they were just _so_ incompetent at operations that they couldn't do anything.
They set fire to hundreds of millions of dollars on totally ridiculous projects plainly stupid ideas:
* A modular supply chain project with the idea that they could use manufacturing as a carrot for regulatory laws — this team was 50-100 people and had tens of millions of dollars in budget. Never did anything.
* All manner of vanity innovation projects: new battery technology, next and next and next generation projects, dozens of flavours, absurd marketing campaigns, rebrands, a $250k custom typeface, the list goes on.
* Hired McKinsey and Bain because the executive team (who were all ex-management consultants) wanted the company to move fast ....
* My personal favourite Juul story (ok I have a bunch) was that the company was so incompetent they didn't do headcount planning — You could just hire as many people as you wanted if your random (often incompetent) VP was okay with it. Juul had 50-100 VPs so it was sheer chaos.
It got so bad that Altria had to step in and install their own CEO and axe all of the existing executive team (and lay off thousands of random employees) to try and right the ship. Altria are a very legit operational business — you may not like them but they know how to work with the FDA within strict regulation guidelines. If Juul is removed from the market despite Altria taking over they're truly fucked.
In my time at Juul I have never worked with so many incompetent people. It was quite impressive but also incredibly depressing as someone that joined because the idea of creating a connected device vaping product to help switch Americans off combustible cigarettes was very compelling.
I believe the jury is still out on whether or not smokers have more expensive health care requirements than non-smokers. Smokers tend to die younger and quicker than non-smokers, so their health care needs may actually be less than most non-smokers. They've also voluntarily paid a huge amount of additional taxes throughout their lifetime.
It is when talking about healthcare costs.
And once you're retired you're providing less tax than you're consuming (for most people) so there's a double benefit! Die at 65 and help balance the budget today!
You'll live longer and pay taxes on that.
And if your retirement is funded by private insurer it's not a cost to the country. But you still pay taxes on what you consume.
It's been studied, and those past income-earning age may pay few if any taxes in the US (food is not taxed, there are ways to get pension income untaxed, and the standard deduction is in play, mainly property tax is the one still collected).
Not really. Only if by "dying younger" you mean being instantly killed in a car crash or by a falling piano.
But someone dying at 80 of a heart attack is less costly than someone dying at 40 after being treated for a decade for several cancers caused by smoking.
Not at all. I work in healthcare. We make these comparisons all the time.
Using your argument, "dying early is a benefit when it comes to healthcare costs"...
"I believe the jury is still out on whether chronic drunk drivers have more expensive health care requirements than non-drunk drivers."
Huh.
What are those
Much easier than assuming someone was trolling.
They're not « slightly » less terrible. They're not even comparable. Vaporizing glycerin and glycol is in no way comparable to burning plants. Implying it is is specious.
I like to say that vaping is slightly less terrible than combustible cigarettes because it is very clear that you. should. not vape. unless. you. smoke. cigarettes.
Btw all addictive substances are bad for you by definition.
Maybe not current “normal cancersticks”; FDA is targeting those, too: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-anno...
We can and should be working to increase the fidelity of communication as well as make policy less of a blunt instrument. Education can work wonders as can honest, real, considerate conversations. All of these things benefit all of us.
Things are different today when compared to our young experiences. Younger people have far more information than anyone making these policy decisions does.
People did make that poor leap. Yes.
Will they do it again? I doubt many of them will, and the ones who might are likely to be using pot and will combust and inhale.
Society has far different norms and can handle nuance far better today. We need to recognize these changes and treat people better.
They can and will respond. They have tech and the body of common knowledge continues beyond what it was two decades ago.
This kind of "we know better for you" communication packs a lackluster punch and may do more harm than good.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/
There is some regulatory nuance I believe that makes them harder to buy than regular vaping products but I forget what it is — a simple fact though is that the social aspect of smoking breaks, smoking at bars, the habit of smoking is a huge draw and it's hard to replicate that with gum.
The best product to solve the nicotine crisis is a smart device that gradually lowers the nicotine invisibly to the user over a 3-6-12 month period. This isn't a super hard problem, the FDA and the market is just too non technical to execute.
People who want to taper off nicotine using vapes can do this manually, and many do. I find this proposed solution overengineered.
Of course it could be enforced. "Smart" vapes could be regulated as medical devices, available only by prescription and used under the supervision of doctors. I think that would greatly reduce their appeal as a smoking replacement with a low barrier to entry though; other nicotine delivery systems to aid in quitting smoking were available decades before vaping.
Is it, though? The psychology of knowing vs not knowing that your nicotine concentration is being ramped down over time could be significant. For instance, I can easily imagine being far more willing to vape more on a hard day of work because "my nicotine is being ramped down anyway, so it's not as bad".
We already had that in Swedish snus and Obama chose to tax it to death to help the domestic tobacco industry out. Not only is snus not dangerous, but you can quit by just leaving the sachet in your mouth for longer and longer periods. That's how I quit, and I haven't had a cigarette in 11 years or a snus in 8.
The problem with medicalized nicotine gums, etc. is their absurdly high pricing.
It also has the same flavouring problem as vapes (anecdotal paraphrasing from a friend: "I could never smoke but I use Snus because I think it tastes nice").
Whereas Juul was getting kids to TAKE up vaping, and add new smokers to the market.
So overall, pills/lozenges was doing good for society, and Juul was not.
It's outright benine. No need to frame it in a negative way (« much less terrible »).
> I like to say that vaping is slightly less terrible than combustible cigarettes because it is very clear that you. should. not vape. unless. you. smoke. cigarettes.
Sure. And vaping shouldn't be made to look dubious or suspicious to smokers who would otherwise wildly profit from switching off cigarettes. Drawing an equivalency relationship between smoking and vaping is really bad from a public health perspective.
People can debate if vaping or nicotine is good or bad or moot from a health point of view but a simple salient fact is:
A small percentage of people who never smoked cigarettes before start to vape and then switch to combustible cigarettes. That is bad.
Also this comment is correct that a poorly regulated and operated vaping industry fuelled a youth nicotine crisis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31836842
What are we doing to address the nation's ongoing caffeine crisis?
You seem to have a particular fixation on nicotine and haven't taken an opportunity to look at any of the counter-evidence a dozen different people in this thread have tried to show you. The primary enemy here is inhalation of combusted materials, followed by inhalation of just about anything, followed by nicotine.
Cigarette smoking is a crisis. People applying nicotine patches will almost certainly never be a crisis. Trying to conflate the two, as you're doing, doesn't make sense. Trying to conflate tobacco smoking and nicotine vaping is slightly less senseless, but still irresponsible.
There absolutely is a massive risk of people who've never smoked starting with vaping and then moving to cigarettes, but you're only falling back to that as a motte to your "nicotine is a harmful molecule" bailey and aren't making it the center of your argument.
That alone appears to render your entire comment moot, but I'll add that all of my comments today have been incredibly consistent: smoking cigarettes is really really really bad and vaping nicotine is really bad (because its addictive, there are longterm implications of inhaling nicotine, ...) - to put it another way, if you smoke combustible cigarettes then you should switch to vaping ASAP. But if you do not smoke combustible cigarettes do not start vaping because nicotine is highly addictive!
PS: equating nicotine to caffeine is incredibly stupid and offensive towards the millions of people that battle nicotine addiction every day.
You're allowed to acknowledge the odd double standard the world seems to have where because the most popular delivery methods for nicotine are extremely harmful that we treat nicotine itself as more harmful than it really is and say that we would still be better off simply banning nicotine. If it was an established cultural norm that gum just had nicotine in it and you had to buy "denic" gum like decaf there would never have been a massive push for people to quit.
Also, I think you're overestimating how many young people vape. I promise you it's not that cool.
Yes, nicotine can be addictive. Caffeine can also be addictive. Yes, nicotine can cause certain health problems - as can caffeine. I'm surprised you worked at a company that sold nicotine products and yet have such a moral panic mentality around a fairly mundane, mild cholinergic stimulant out there.
Smoking is terrible for one's health, but smoking cannabis is possibly not much healthier than smoking tobacco; people just smoke tobacco far more frequently per day than cannabis, typically. At least one study shows cannabis smoke is actually more likely to cause lung cancer than tobacco smoke when taking that into consideration. Odds are burning and inhaling the leaves of many other kinds of plants will have similar risks. This is not a defense of tobacco smoke on my part but rather an attack against any kind of combustion-based smoking period.
So we've both seen different things and both are anecdotal. I don't think it should be banned BTW.
Cigarettes here are not cool anymore to young (great), vaping unfortunately is.
The benefits of vaping over smoking even ignoring health concerns are simply massive. It doesn't smell nearly as offensive, it's vastly more palatable, you don't need to litter or look for an ever-dissapearing batch of ashtrays, there's vastly less social stigma, and if you're so inclined you can get much heavier nicotine hit.
I do know people with certain psychological disorders (I believe Schizophrenics) crave nicotine, and Psychiatrists don't have a clue why, like most of there art.
Nicotine appears to calm them down?
I had a friend who smoked 4-5 packs of cigarettes a day. If he was vaping, I bet he would still be around today?
(To those that cannot stop smoking cigarettes. I got down to 3 packs a year. Instead of just stopping, I use a tiny amount of tobacco daily, or when ever the urge hits hard. In my case 2x weekly. I buy a rolling papers, and roll tiny cigarettes. In one cigarette I can roll five tiny cigarettes. I would buy loose tobacco, but the taxes are worse than filtered cigarettes.
My point is use your vice in moderation. Most of you can. This black/white attitude towards drugs in America is troubling.)
The abuse of that or the "cigarretization" is the problem.
One thing is to get real organic tabbaco and smoke in small quantities not inhalling only getting nicotine thru gum line.
About the benefits in cognition [1][4] alzheimers and parkinson [2], helping with covid [3] and even testosterone [5]
Cigarretes + additives are *very* bad you can see the difference here [6].
Is tobbaco bad? yes. Is nicotine bad maybe.
Is cigarrete bad? Yes very
Is Cigar bad? Yes but not as cigarrete.
TlDr -> Go for pure nicotine or cigars if you need neuroprotection.
[1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1579636/
[2] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1859921/
[3] - https://openres.ersjournals.com/content/7/2/00713-2020
[4] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9006184/
[5] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24457405/
[6] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29459935/
Sorry, I don't want my parent comment to be construed as being pro nicotine. If you don't smoke combustible cigarettes don't vape or touch nicotine. I feel a moral burden to be really clear about these topics as someone that briefly worked in this industry.
Minor nootropic effect aside, nicotine is absolutely terrible for the human body. Most people don't realize this because public health campaigns highlighting issues with tobacco products include statements about negative health outcomes caused by nicotine, but neglect to separate these issues from those that are linked to tobacco specifically.
Nicotine consumption is linked to:
-accelerated tumor growth: https://www.nature.com/articles/nm0701_833
-vascular calcification: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/eci.13077
-arteriosclerosis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4805015/
-mutagenesis/various cancers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/
-reduced alveolar function and bronchoconstriction, miscellaneous pulmonary injury: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3097432/; https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajplung.005...
-peridontal disease: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/omi.12228
mouse model
>-vascular calcification: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/eci.13077
review which includes mostly studies on cigarettes
>-arteriosclerosis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4805015/
cigarettes
>-mutagenesis/various cancers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/
giant systematic review, going through though it seems most of these are mice studies or studies on smokers (cigarette smokers)
>-reduced alveolar function and bronchoconstriction, miscellaneous pulmonary injury: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3097432/; https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajplung.005...
first one is cigarettes, second one is a rat model but they actually did design the aerosolized nicotine pretty well
>-peridontal disease: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/omi.12228
cigarettes
to really get a concise view, we would want to look at studies of people who only use nicotine gum, or studies of people who use vapes. just be careful blindly posting papers you found from googling "nicotine bad paper" and dig more than 2 seconds into a paper, you can spread a lot of misinformation that way. we all know smoking and cigarettes are bad for you, but are the outside effects primarily from nicotine or from everything surrounding the delivery mechanism of it?
I got started in the military. Flat out, smokers got more breaks and some considerations that others didn't, and so yeah. Light 'em up! And I was in during the late 80's when smoking was basically everywhere.
Smoked for many years, and was on strong cigarettes. Very hard to quit, and I tried a few times.
The impact was noticable later in life, I was easily winded and had some minor league emphysema beginning. Not good.
I had by chance mostly tried a vape. And it sort of worked, but did not deliver the levels I needed. Nicotine salt does. I did one vape on that formulation, and that was it. No more smokes.
Some years later, my recovery has been dramatic! Some basic damage is not going to heal, but most everything else has and I feel great! Can do what I should be doing too. And the benefits continue to accrue.
Coughed up bits of tar for a long time. On another whim, I did inversion, and gakked out a ton of the stuff. Recommended, if you've got clogged up lungs. Just make sure you've got a spotter and someone to assist you in the process. I needed that due to the exertion.
Moving on...
Vapes are seriously good harm reduction, assuming someone is using gear that isn't damaging somehow. There is a lot of crap out there. Sadly, rather than regulate it all and maximize the benefit, the pressure to get rid of vaping altogether is winning out here in the US.
Too bad JUUL was run so badly. Their core mission is a good one, and tons of people are going to benefit very significantly.
Nicotine itself isn't that big of a deal. It's a stimulant and is addictive like similar compounds are. What really maxxes out it's addictive nature is the inhalation delivery method. Taking it orally, for example, isn't quite the same thing, unless the method is intended to pass through the skin, like chew does.
Nicotine is not cancerous.
The real danger in smoking is tar & particulates damaging the lungs, and cancer caused by the tons of byproducts of the combustion chemistry. The nicotine comes along for the ride and again, by itself isn't such a big deal.
Great to hear that you're off combustible cigarettes :) You can easily ween down the nicotine from 5% to 3% to 1.5% over a time period too.
Today, I use a nicotine salt formulation on par with the best of JUUL, minus the accellerants.
On those:
The good part is those actually do matter when it comes to smokers switching off combustion. Psychologically, the impact is there and similar enough to not trigger anxieties that inhibit quitting. Fair enough.
The bad part is those make a JUUL absolutely fucking great to a non smoker and particularly younger smoker. Young people will grab one and drain the pod in an hour copping a major league buzz on par with what they can get with combustion cigarettes!
In my view, this should have been partitioned in some way, harder to get and easier to keep out of young hands.
Once someone is vaping, the accellerants are unnecessary given reputable gear and a salt formulation.
I am struggling to remember my source for that info. If it comes to me, I will drop it here.
All I found was the common additive, which is Benzoic Acid. Honestly, that is the heavy hitter, so close enough for this discussion. At one point, I know I saw a more complete list and should have saved it...
The acid increases bioavailability. And it is significant, as in test some people and they will notice. Can't miss it. For all but the nic-whales, adding it makes a big difference. For JUUL, this all means a little bit of vapor can pack a big punch.
The other important thing is the ratio of propoline glycol and glycerin and temp control. Too hot and toxic compounds get made and other bits may be inhaled. Metals. Too cool, and the experience sucks, gear clogs, total mess.
The glycerin has a sweet smell and taste, but it is thick and that property inhibits absorption as well as how well it atomized. (Poorly, in general without using heavy components with moving parts. Makes a good cloud too.
Propoline glycol atomizes very well, but has a harsh feel and taste, but also has better absorption. I do not recall the cloud performance with the fidelity I want, but I think you can take it from here.
Basically, JUUL packaged up a good ratio, used the nicotine salt form, and added the acid and a sprinkle of other things and hit a home run!
Other vendors followed, but few have flavors that make sense. Early on, others were harsh, or very seriously overdoing it. Flavors can be a major league irritant too.
Today, one can get good juice and reasonable gear that has the temperature right and have few worries. The US is making a major league mistake here because this path we are on will favor the hucksters selling shit to people. Not good.
https://www.healthline.com/health/juul-pod-ingredients#:~:te....
Edit: On things like super long flights, I take a little juice and just rub it on the inside of my arm and let it soak in like a patch.
Slowly, given how things look, Mrs and I need to taper down faster and just get away from this all. And frankly, that pisses me off because the cognitive bump I get from nicotine is hard to give up.
Stupid people, who don't care about people, who do care more about money more should not be running things. The problem is chronic in the US and something I do not look forward to.
Hard times ahead for many. Unnecessary hard times.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JWTRA5I?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_...
I quit smoking years ago and have always felt some residual effects. After a few months of breathing exercises with a muscle oxygen trainer, I've noticed a night and day difference. I spent a few weeks coughing stuff up, my blood pressure has improved, as has my cardio performance on measured performance equipment like the Peloton.
Again, this is just my personal experience, but it might be worth a look if you're working towards a long term recovery.
Very interesting how such a simple thing can add right up over time. Thanks again.
With no combustion, tobacco causes mouth cancer all the time. It is simply cancerous (though nicotine isn't). I'm sure tar etc. makes it worse, but something else is bad in tobacco.
Then have someone whack on my back while I cough out crap.
It was basic, and a bit of a whim. Came up during discussion, and the gear to do it was right there, so... we did it. Some crap came out, and I felt better.
Maybe doing that is bad. I don't know and can't edit now that I think more about it. But, it worked great for me.
I bet it is similar in the basic idea of getting the gunk out. How it gets out is likely best left up to experts.
What I noted was that feeling when one takes a deep breath did not extend down as far as it normally would. And repeated ones would dislodge some gunk, and often I would gak that up.
When I inverted, I had someone lightly pummel my back, open heel of the hand, just thump, thump, thadathump! Just a rapid rhythm while I took my lungs to their extremes, full inhale, full exhale, then cough and gak it out. And I used a cycle.
Get rested, feeling good, then invert, work the process and when something shakes loose, there is a lot of coughing, and one can't really do that upside down without getting a major league headache, so I had my spotter rotate me head up and I would work the gunk, until it came out, or I reached a steady state where it's just not happening. Rest, repeat.
Took about an hour.
And the aftermath was a few days of sudden gakking stuff up too. It's like everything got shook loose, and often hunks of tar and other mucus would come up and out. Other times it would just be a fit of coughing and then nothing.
What I did notice near immediately after doing all this was a deep breath triggered that feeling much lower. There were areas doing air exchange without so much crap in the way.
Combustible cigarettes near immediately inflame lung tissue, blood pressure goes up and a whole lot of other things happen. Over time, our response to all that becomes more aggrevated and our ability to recover is reduced due to wear and tear with no effective rest. Like say someone gets too much smoke during some fire or other.
It's bad, but when they are away from all that, they are getting normal air and the body processes can do what they do and they heal. Some damage is done of course, and the healing is less than perfect, but the outcome is often good, unless someone crosses some line or other, like near death type crossing.
After I quit, I noticed improvements in a week. And sometimes little regressions, like after intense exercise. Coughing up chunks of this and that got me to thinking the body is probably responding in those areas and maybe that strain on it all inhibits the healing that would otherwise happen.
In the end, all I know is an hour spent working the problem got a bunch of crap out of my lungs that really didn't need to be there. Perhaps the body would absorb it, or it ends up coming out over time, or I think the more likely scenario is it's just there and the body deals with it.
Nothing hurt, and there was no blood. It honestly felt like clearing out like what might happen after a particularly bad flu or pneumonia.
It has been years now, and I still feel improvement every summer. Some of that is just our normal healing and re-invigoration that happens when one gets outdoors for an extended time. And that's most of it. But, each year the peak lasts longer. I get through more of a less active winter before feeling like I really need some sun, good air, and exercise.
Speaking of which... There is a lot of rain where I live and our outings are delayed. Mrs and I both feel it big time! Hoping for more of a summer to happen soon, or we might just have to take a bigger trip and go somewhere we can get after all this anyway.
We just love our spot. Have been going since we were married.
https://tobacco21.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/teen-vaping... (couldn't find a graph newer than 2018)
I speak as someone who doesn't vape, doesn't like vaping, and will never vape. What I want is for people who want to quit smoking to be able to, and the way you enable that for the most people is to give them a far less dangerous alternative that involves the fewest lifestyle changes.
The antismoking industry long ago became a self-sustaining, self-protecting bureaucracy who cares less about health and more about civil suits and fundraising on new legislation.
“Very bad” is too strong. Nicotine is a drug that does not have therapeutic value. It does not cause cancer. It is addictive. It has mild nootropic effects, as well as other effects like appetite suppression. Here’s a good, easy to read rundown:
https://elemental.medium.com/your-brain-on-nicotine-668c0b6a...
We should be careful to differentiate smoking/vaping from nicotine use.
That is false.
> Nicotine in tobacco brings illness and death to millions of people. Yet nicotine in its pure form has the potential to be a valuable pharmaceutical agent. Nicotine fairly specifically binds to the cholinergic nicotinic gating site on cationic ion channels in receptors throughout the body. This action stimulates the release of a variety of neurotransmitters including especially catecholamines and serotonin. When chronically taken, nicotine may result in: (1) positive reinforcement, (2) negative reinforcement, (3) reduction of body weight, (4) enhancement of performance, and protection against; (5) Parkinson's disease (6) Tourette's disease (7) Alzheimers disease, (8) ulcerative colitis and (9) sleep apnea. The reliability of these effects varies greatly but justifies the search for more therapeutic applications for this interesting compound.[1]
Plus, you even said it yourself: "It has mild nootropic effects, as well as other effects like appetite suppression". Sounds like it could pretty much be therapeutic for cognition and weight loss.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1859921/
"should not be" covers a ton of activities medical people would prefer we don't do.
What you are doing here is attempting to put additional weight behind your moral assessment of vaping by implying it's more dangerous than it actually is.
I suggest your opinion would carry far more weight when bolstered with the many potent, rational arguments against vaping, all of which I personally agree with. Those are all true, do not require manipulation in the form of misrepresentation; namely, overstating risk either.
Misrepresenting things is how we get bad law and bad norms. People do not respect bad law and tend to reject bad norms. Look at the whole theft argument used for media works. What actually happens is people infringe, and had we actually discussed all that word means, we would likely have better law today and people with a far better understanding of the issue. But theft sells, and is a sexy, if untrue argument very similar to the one you are making about vaping right now.
This means you may actually do more harm than good, despite obviously well meaning and in your view, considerate intent!
And no judgement here. I am not going to tell you what to do or say. Nor should I.
That is all, just wanted to put a different take here and ask you to think about all that some.
If you quantify the risk associated with one activity as 100, and you quantify the risk of another activity as 5, and you then describe the first activity as bad, and the second as less bad, while that might be perfectly true, you've lost a lot of information in the assessment.
So an entire day of heavy vaping probably takes about 9 minutes off your life, a little less time than eating a piece of bacon, a hot dog, or driving for half an hour.
Sources for these? I've never heard this one before...
There is some evidence fatty meats or red meats aren't good for you.
There is more evidence that fatty red meats are bad for you.
And there is a lot of evidence that heavily processed(specifically cured) red meats such as hot dogs and bacon are bad for you.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon
Or you can just google cured meats mortality, bacon mortality, etc...
With full knowledge that nicotine is is a poison; widely used in pesticides; that if you swallow one cigarette it'll make you sick, two and they will make you sick and kill all of your internal parasites, and swallowing three might kill you; and that nicotine addiction is harder to break than heroin addiction: is there any actual evidence that smoking nicotine (alone) is physically harmful?
Actually, this is inaccurate[0] and I think it's rather incredible that it was accepted uncritically. It seems that you particularly dislike vaping, but aren't very familiar with the science. Personally I would not be telling people what they "should. not. be" doing without even a basic understanding of the subject.
[0]: https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine
Oh, really? What exactly is very bad about nicotine gum?
People say things like this all the time, but it'd be nice to get some actual hard data to quantify the risk.
At the very least, i suspect the nicotine is doing bad things in both cases.
Can't delete when there are replies, maybe. hehe.
Does the american government not spend money on retirement? In my country smoking saves like 30 times more in retirement expenses than spend on smoking-related diseases. IIRC, that's not even accounting savings on healthcare that earlier deaths cause.
Altria is a terribly run company. I was part of their previous attempt at entering the e-cig market (Green Smoke and Mark Ten). Everything they touch turns to dust, so this news about Juul is not surprising. I've never seen a company with so much dysfunction, in-fighting, and ineffectiveness.
When they shut us down in favor of the stake in Juul, we joked that they only took a minority stake in order to save Juul from them.
At the time I was there, Altria's entire business model was basically "let's lobby for the regulators to ban everyone but us."
It also seemed like they also didn't really want e-cigs to cannibalize trad-cigs, but they wanted it in their back pocket in case it started to take off. They were not interested in increasing sales at all and sometimes seemed to be actively working against it.
Honestly, I feel slightly bad that Altria were hoodwinked into investing in Juul and having it implode like it did, all the Altria executives I interacted with were remarkably precise and lucid. BTW I think the FDA deserves 75% of the blame for their poor vaping policies (and total lack of enforcement.)
How many because Juul essentially randomly went viral and is an inherently addictive product? Unfortunately way too many.
E-cigarettes are not better than not smoking anything.
Technically true but there's barely any health risks from vaped nicotine. The number of serious injuries are in the low thousands (total, not per year) and are mostly associated with THC vapes of questionable origin.
Huh. Sauce?
So does caffeine.
https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine
>Another example is a breathless media article “Children Exposed to Nicotine in Utero Have Lower Reading Scores” on Cho et al 2012: here we can’t blame the media or Wikipedia editors because the paper itself (a longitudinal correlational study) has “nicotine” in its title and abstract (a total of 8 times), though the abstract quietly mentions it is actually a study of “maternal smoking”
The non nicotine components of vaping are also harmful. Smoke machines operating on similar principles are a known workplace safety hazard. It’s likely decades of inflammation from vaping would present it’s own unique hazards.
From that perspective patches and vaping are probably closer to a pill than coffee and as such represent increased risks over the nicotine it’s self.
I've never smoked a cigarette or vaped in my life. The dose required to alleviate my symptoms is so low (6~8mg a day) that addiction is basically non-existent. I don't take it on weekend unless I'm working and am totally fine.
I get salty when people demonize nicotine, it's made my life tolerable.
Still, the symptoms that get grouped together as ADHD are so diverse that I could see it helping people. Biggest issue is probably relative addictiveness, since after 15 years of adderall use I feel absolutely no desire to take it on weekends or vacation, and that's probably not totally the same for nicotine.
That doesn't sound like a very low dose for a non-smoker? While addiction to gum is very unlikely, the probability of developing tolerance is high. How long have you been using this dosage?
Nicotine patches are probably a less addictive option than gum, but gum itself is much less addictive than smoking.
Heard that for a century from tobacco companies. I guess we will see after 50 years of vaping.
What possible harm could come from chronically inhaling a viscous agent into our lungs?
These are asthmatics, reminder. If propylene glycol was a problem for lungs, we would know.
Ventolin does not use propylene glycol: https://www.drugs.com/pro/ventolin.html
Airomir did not.
Maxair? Nope: https://www.drugs.com/pro/maxair-autohaler.html
Even pro-vape sites recognize that this is BS.
> There is one study looking at the potential to use PG as a carrier for an inhaled medicine (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18158714) and another which mentions that PG or ethanol may be used as a cosolvent (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12425745) in nebulizers, but no evidence presented of an asthma inhaler or nebulizer that is actually used today containing PG.
There's also a huge difference between 3-4 puffs a day of a smaller amount, than chronic hundreds of puffs a day with vapes.
They routinely use propylene glycol: you're wrong, I'm right. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12425745/
Severe asthmatics will be on a nebulizer five or ten minutes at a time, several times a day. Far higher volume than the most committed vaper.
To have a fair discussion I think we should compare to other substances we legally consume.
Neither is "if we forbid everything that might be dangerous".
Let's try to move beyond Page 1 of the textbook for Logical Fallacies 101, please.
Re: cars, cars have upsides. What's the upside of nicotine?
regarding upsides of nicotine - one may improve mood, alertness, calm down anxiety. These are acute results. Long-term - I believe there are quite a few papers on nicotine usage being associated with decreased chances of alzheimer's. (just one off top of my head, there might be more.)
There is so much politics and misinformation in this discussion. That's not good.
ps: For me the upside of nicotine is fun. The same with alcohol. (I say this as someone who is vaping once a month and uses nicotine as a drug but does not want the downsides of cigarettes.)
> For me the upside of nicotine is fun. The same with alcohol.
I'm with you 100% on this one; I love to drink haha. But alcohol is pretty tightly regulated most places, both culturally and legally. I guess I'm fine if vaping/smoking/drinking/sugar are in the category of "we know they're bad for us but we like it, so we'll have some kind of regime where we can enjoy them in moderation"?
> What's the upside of nicotine?
Nicotine is potent cognitive enhancer.
No. Nicotine in these forms is "a lot less addictive" than inhaled forms. It just doesn't seem that way to step-down users.
Nicotine is naturally present in at least as many foods as sugar is, albeit in very low concentrations.
Nicotine on it's own has a nootropic effect in normal doses, and a sedative effect in larger doses and is a very useful compound. It is at least as useful as alcohol, and the vast majority of the downsides of using nicotine come from using tobacco, not nicotine itself.
Maybe in some sense of the word [0], but definitely not like nicotine [1]. [1] also addresses nicotine replacement therapies, finding that nicotine on its own is still addictive.
> Nicotine is naturally present in at least as many foods as sugar is...
Definitely untrue, it's like eggplant, potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, and a couple others.
> ...albeit in very low concentrations.
The amounts are comically low:
> ...you need to eat 5 kilograms of eggplant, 12 kilograms of fresh potatoes or drink 9.5 liters of tomato juice to get [a cigarette's worth of nicotine, or 3mg]. [2]
I don't really think there's an equivalency between 30kg of eggplant and 20mg of nicotine in a vape pack.
> Nicotine on it's own has a nootropic effect in normal doses, and a sedative effect in larger doses and is a very useful compound.
We have other things for this. Is there a need for nicotine as a sedative? Do we need to satisfy that need with bubblegum Juul?
[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5174153/
[1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7724697/
[2]: https://thisnutrition.com/food-products-containing-nicotine
~40% of our population is obese and another 35% or so are overweight and we don't regulate it at all in any capacity (marketing to kids, packaging, etc).
While I agree obesity etc. are problems, I would argue that this is due to sugar's ubiquity rather than its addictive qualities.
It just seems oddly specific and too "big government", why is one specific vaping product being banned when the science has shown that they're less harmful than cigarettes, you can still buy cigarettes, and there are almost certainly other more harmful substances (like alcohol) that have a bigger impact on the health of the USA that are not banned.
I don't feel like anyone would argue against more regulations, but an outright ban of sale feels super weird.
To have a fair discussion you should compare both the costs and benefits of an item, not just a simplistic downside that is not even at that simplicity equivalent. Comparing damage from nicotine to the damage of sugar while ignoring that sugar is also necessary for human life shows the problem with your line of reasoning.
I swear we could cut down on 80% of the comments in this thread if people took a minute to learn that essentially all the health risks from smoking are the result of combusting plant material and not the effect of nicotine.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5307352/
If you're serious about ensuring that you know what goes into your body, just mix nicotine with USP food grade vegetable glycerin at desired concentrations and vape that, no flavors.
I've never paid attention to Juul marketing, so perhaps they were committing faux pas in their targeting, but the existence of a bubble gum (or other enjoyable flavors) should probably not meet the threshold as readily as we allow it.
Juice companies, for the most part, are just throwing together vegetable glycerin, propylene glycol, and a couple of commercially available food/candy flavorings.
People love to bring up the "Adult flavors" argument like it's as simple as deciding to make juice that tastes like coffee, like they've forgotten that some companies have trouble producing coffee that tastes like coffee.
I abhor the tobacco industry. I wish their execs had been thrown behind bars decades ago. They've proven that they'll put profit over human life and that they're willing to lie to our faces while they do it. They've earned all the skepticism and scrutiny they get, but I can't get over how baseless and absurd that argument against them was. Ads with colors and young adults in them aren't targeting children. There is plenty of evil to point at without getting ridiculous.
"Bubble gum" flavor is a combination of fruity flavors. No mint.
https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/what-is-bubblegum-flavo...
> People think it’s a made-up flavour but it isn’t.
It is a made-up flavor, originally created by Thomas Adams.
Other sources disagree.
https://candyflavor.com/How_To_Make_Bubble_Gum_Flavor.html
> the key is really in the wintergreen, cinnamon and clove
It tastes a bit of bubblegum!
> 3 parts banana flavor, 3 parts pineapple flavor, 2 parts wintergreen, 1 part cinnamon and 1 part clove.
If the public benefit is that current tobacco-smokers will switch, then the experience only needs to be better than cigarettes - broad appeal beyond that is only a net negative for society.
I put up with it like I accept that people fart. Being around “vape smoke’ is something between discomfort and disgust (smell, smoke, etcetera), Ugggh. Yes: I have close friends that vape. No: I don’t complain to them or make faces or anything.
Even if I were hypothetically shown it was a purely nonsensical psychological dislike, that doesn’t mean I could stop disliking it.
I think there is great value in considering this possibility, and all others. The problem I am trying to get at is that people have a tendency to not be terribly interested in what is true.
Tobacco-flavored JUUL pods are mainly used by former smokers as an alternative to cigarettes. High schoolers are vaping hot pink, mint bubblegum flavored, one-time-use Puff Bars now. They won't even notice when JUUL is banned.
There’s other rechargeable vapes available now like Stlth, which seem far better than the disposables, but it’s still madness.
I also remember that a solid quarter of the student population smoked. So good luck with your abstinence policies, they have such a strong track record.
Speaking of which, does abstinence only education result in less teen pregnancy, or more? I can't quite remember.
Before e-cigarettes came along, it sure looked like the United States was well on its way to eliminating tobacco smoking altogether.
[1] https://kottke.org/14/07/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-smoki...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/su/su6901a7.htm
Marketing a highly-addictive carcinogen to children is not about "personal freedom".
Your freedoms end where mine begin. If you want to smoke, fine. Do it in a location where I NEVER have to breathe it in.
Starting smoking, on the other hand, is something that, for the most part, only children do. The entire goal of tobacco companies is to get children addicted so they'll keep buying nicotine for the rest of their lives, without any adult decision-making involved. Here are some numbers for you:
Almost 90% of people in the US who smoke tried their first cigarette before they were 18[1]. Effectively all of the rest did before they were 26 (most by 22), which is around the age where the human brain's capacity for risk assessment and long-term decision-making is fully developed. Two thirds of daily smokers started doing that by the time they were 18, and over 95% did by the time they were 26. Over a quarter of daily smokers started before they were 15. Furthermore, people who start smoking are most likely to do so with the help of their peers (i.e. other children), not adults.
The concept of rational free choice is a bit murky even under the best circumstances. When you add in addiction, it gets a lot more complicated. And when you're talking about children getting addicted, I don't think it's a helpful framework. Children are not capable of consenting to a destructive long-term addiction, and in practice, almost nobody else does.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/n/surgtobyouth/pdf/ See chapter 3, especially Table 3.2.
When your choices cause others problems they’re no longer just “yours” and you need to consider how you’re affecting the wider society.
Orwell, is that you?
>If you want to smoke I’m totally fine with that as long as you agree to be banned from using any public health services ever, no Medicaid no Medicare no social security.
This is something that people who harass and spit homeless people would say.
>As you said, the dangers have been known for decades, so everyone involved can make a rational decision.
You think drug addition is in any way rational? Wake up.
Also, governments have a perverse incentive to maintain tobacco sales. There are 10x as many enforcement checks for tobacco taxes being paid as there are for underage tobacco purchases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...
It's the smoking that's deleterious to health. Nicotine is an addictive stimulant but if it's otherwise harmful it's very difficult to demonstrate this.
I feel like abstinence campaigns work somewhat better with cigarettes than sex/alcohol because cigarettes are legitimately bad for you, and many users of cigarettes genuinely regret taking up smoking (whereas barely anyone will tell you they regret drinking or having sex).
https://www.icr.ac.uk/blogs/science-talk/page-details/when-i...
Can you provide a recent example of cigarettes being marketed to kids in USA?
Taking these tools away from consenting adults is morally criminal. If your main argument is "think of the children" I'm going to doubt your sincerity.
I've always felt the reason why most people fail quitting any drug America deems unsafe, is because of this all or nothing approach they have to quitting. American black and white thinking.
I've seen so many people quit a drug (Alcohol, nicotine, benzos, opoids, and even meth) by going cold turkey. It has dismal failure rates. Yes there are people whom have one cigarette, and they are up to 4 pack a day. Yes--there are people whom have one beer, and are buying 1.75 L of Jack daily. Those addicts are not typicical.
Tapering down over a long period of time seems to make more sence. And then allow the recovering patient access to a very low dose of their drug of choice forever.
Sorry about my speech. Personally, I have found cutting way back on a dangerous substance has been successful. And the way our government handled this opioid crisis has me seeing red. Yea--just make it impossible to get any regulated opioid, and then wonder why we have people dying by the hundreds daily due to street fentanyl.
What world would they find themselves in?
I don't smoke regularly, but if my kids did, could they get a healthier alternative?
What if they fell into heroin?
It would be terrifying, but could they be safe?
I no longer can make that argument. I'm susceptible to the taxation attack. Ten years ago I would have gladly paid all the taxes for my kids and a dozen others. But as some have pointed out, I don't make enough money.
It's a good conservative argument, I can't pay for that.
So, I'm sorry, I can no longer take part in this discussion.
You're right, abstinence is better, because unlike the responsible conservatives who are paying for necessary services like education, I can't help as much.
I'm so sorry. I wanted to pay more. We could have had scientific discussions on risks of food grade propylene glycol or something. Would it make a good hair gel? Sorry, some light-hearted kidding.
My new dream is to not ever have to engage in this discussion again. Because the idea of others wasting time in this divisive acidic discussion is sadder. Thank you.
As a minor point, it could still apply with a slight overall increase of use. The required scale is far closer to zero than what it actually was, but of how many new people vaping would you accept if it suddenly caused all smokers to never smoke. It's an interesting question of which is the best for public health.
Is there any evidence for this at all? That there is a pipeline from vapers to cigarette smokers?
> Most Juul users are first time smokers.
This is just a simple oxymoron; vaping is not smoking.
My memory may be faulty, but wasn't Juul the e-cigarette company that was launching school programs to more or less directly market e-cigarettes to students during school hours and on school property?
Odds are we'll find out some unfortunate truths about e-cigs in 10-20 years, meanwhile many of the consumers of e-cig products will have believed they were avoiding the worst effects.
And I say this as an ex-smoker, I don't mind if you worked at Juul, I believe its a free country and I have no judgements against a person's profession, just be honest and say the money is good and I don't care that I am selling a product that is poisoning people.
I understand your example, and I'm not or ever a drug user - but the opening premise is a false dichotomy.
https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/Cocaine-2020...
"hat is its legal status in the United States? Cocaine is a Schedule II drug under the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has a high potential for abuse and has an accepted medical use for treatment in the United States. Cocaine hydrochloride solution (4 percent and 10 percent) is used primarily as a topical local anesthetic for the upper respiratory tract. It also is used to reduce bleeding of the mucous membranes in the mouth, throat, and nasal cavities."
Vs Heroin
https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/Heroin-2020....
Heroin is a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act meaning that it has a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.
"Its like saying cocaine is better than heroin..."
Well, it is. Legally.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/25/what-is-...
If we're talking about which is healthier, in a controlled context of pure and knowable doses, I'd bet cocaine is worse for you.
The stress it puts on your heart and body are awful. Especially combined with alcohol (which who does a line without drinking) cocaethylene i believe it's called
Opiates cause far more overdoses, but that's mostly because of adulteration and non controlled dosing.
In this ideal world of legal and safe drugs that's my bet.
A safe dose of opiates is way less likely to cause an OD. Long term WDs and dose escalation are dangerous. And mental health issues with long term use are dangerous. But coke is just awful for you, and even worse mental health issues (mania and worse).
> Altria are a very legit operational business
Worth noting that Altria used be known as Philip Morris - a company that has decades of history of marketing cigarettes to children and covering up the dangers of tobacco.
They are in no way, shape, or form a "good" company.
It's quite confusing, as there is also another S&P500 component called Philip Morris International. I believe they export Marlboro branded cigarettes to all countries outside the US.
It can both be the case that the people who ran PM in the 1950s lied about the dangers of cigarettes and that Altria today is, "a very legit operational business."
Otherwise it's as simple as everyone standing up from they job and taking one step to the left for an identical position at a other company for us to all just absolve them of responsibility and corrective punishment.
I am amused every time I hear concerns about AI alignment and the threat of the paperclip optimizer. We already have malevolent entities working towards goals antagonistic to humans: corporations. Soon we will have AI running them entirely.
My favourite is "winners don't quit". That was about two years ago.
I work for a company with a 30-year-old felony conviction (as a company). Pretty much the first thing that happens on new hire orientation day is that they tell you what happened, not to ever do it again, and all of the many ways available to rat out anyone who is doing it or letting it happen.
A company's culture doesn't necessarily change just because some folk are dead or retired.
>In 2006, a United States court found that Philip Morris "publicly ... disputed scientific findings linking smoking and disease knowing their assertions were false."[11] In a 2006 ruling, a federal court found that Altria, along with R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard and Philip Morris were found guilty of misleading the public about the dangers of smoking.[12] Within this ruling, it was noted that "defendants altered the chemical form of nicotine delivered in mainstream cigarette smoke for the purpose of improving nicotine transfer efficiency and increasing the speed with which nicotine is absorbed by smokers."[13] This was done by manipulating smoke pH with ammonia. Adding ammonia increases the smoke pH, in a process called "freebasing" which causes smokers to be "exposed to higher internal nicotine doses and become more addicted to the product."
>In 2010, the FDA banned the use of “Light” for ventilated cigarettes because it misrepresented the products as a healthier cigarette, and Philip Morris switched to using colors to brand them to circumvent the rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altria
But Monsanto are doing the same thing. You've been sold the story about "cow farts are killing the planet" and "being vegan is healthier", but where does all the plant-based food come from? GM soya by Monsanto. And to grow GM soya you need to blast every trace of life out of the soil with herbicides and pesticides from Monsanto, and you need to obliterate all the beasties that might attack it with insecticides from Monsanto.
Follow the money. Monsanto is paying people to tell you to buy their stuff because it's supposed to be good for the planet. It's not, it's good for Monsanto.
Also, this part:
> where does all the plant-based food come from? GM soya by Monsanto.
is plainly false. There are many more plant-based protein sources other than soy.
However, I do agree with you that relying heavily on Monsanto for (any of) these uses is not good, and overusing their products is likely damaging our soils and ecosystem.
Obviously farmers wish they could get a better deal on their seeds, but nobody is forcing them to use Monsanto. They use Monsanto crops because the technology works.
If you buy food from the supermarket, you're contributing to the decline of the planet's ecology, because it's the profitable thing to do.
What's really odd is for people to believe that companies doing bad things requires a continued supply of bad individuals. It doesn't, humans and systems are good at rationalizing bad behavior.
Full stop. End of line.
Another common theme is "Company X did work for Nazi Germany!", as if anyone involved in that is still around.
In April 2017, a Juul representative visited the Dwight School in New York City to meet with students — with no teachers present — and told them the company’s e-cigarettes were “totally safe.”
Other schools across the country were offered $10,000 from the e-cigarette company for the right to talk to students in classrooms or after school.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/juul-teens-vaping....
* I cannot reiterate enough just how incompetent Juul was in 2017. Everyone was running around with their hair on fire and had zero of the skills or experience to deal with these issues
* I believe that Juul did a lot of really really really stupid things like going into schools and trying to hamfistedly state that vaping was bad but safe — again, Juul had a lot of very inexperienced executives who were obsessed with doing things they thought were really smart but were just plain stupid
* It's worth noting that these actions didn't actually contribute to making youths vape. Vaping was exploding amongst teens because of social media and being a meme — in what world would going to a school and talking about Juul make youths want to use that product? that is what makes all this so hilarious - Juul did a stupid thing, has to live with the consequences, and the underlying thesis of why they did it in the first place was totally ridiculous.
Again, I was a Juul employee - I do not believe Juul consciously or explicitly wanted youths to use Juul, but I am sure that their incompetence meant that their communication and actions blurred their dreadful attempts at dealing with the issues.
The very fact this NYT article exists without a clear rebuttal and explanation from Juul says it all, really.
Juul the brand does not want to market to kids because laws, FDA, etc. Some incompetent VP of marketing wanted to quickly boost numbers, ethics be damned.
I don't mean to stick up for Juul, but it's not out of the realm of possibility considering how incompetent the company sounds from the above.
If I had to guess it would have been some nebulous 'youth prevention' team thinking it was wise to go into schools and explain why cigarettes were bad and vaping wasn't encouraged yada yada.
Inexcusable but Juul was a quintessential "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" company. (I don't expect people to believe me on that.)
Now I am waiting for the conspiracy theorists to twist your words and imply that you must be a company shill.
Or to tell you how evil you were working, and how they only produce using ethically sourced curly braces, with fairtrade electricity, an organic compiler, on their own hand-carved recyclable wooden laptop.
and that for the execs and the likes means "never do malice as malice, do it under the guise of stupidity". The VW diesel-gate comes to mind - they skillfully spun it like it wasn't VW malice as a company, and instead like it was some rogue employees.
May be you believe that you're saying. Yet giving the MBA types in charge of the company, my bet would be that they intentionally targeted youth while blaming it on whatever incompetence and chaos you're describing.
> This makes zero sense and I am not sure how your reply is coherent.
> * I cannot reiterate enough just how incompetent Juul was in 2017.
Pretty sure that's how they think the reply is coherent. My understanding so far is that someone in some decision-making capacity at Juul decided that it would be a good idea for company representatives to go to schools with the intent to tell students that vaping is bad mm'kay (but it's totally not as bad as cigarettes). This was done specifically because they did not want to sell to youths.
I've worked around other people long enough for that to be appropriately stupid. Yes, it makes zero sense, and that is, in part, why it's so believable.
Vaping was a "meme" largely BECAUSE of JUUL -- who else was even a market player?
In nyc it’s all I saw.
> I do not believe Juul consciously or explicitly wanted youths to use Juul
This... is not incompetence or a side effect.
They fucking paid schools to tell kids that Vaping was safe. You can try to say "oh, they didn't realllllly want to sell to kids, they just weren't good at their job".
They gave ad agencies specific briefs saying that their target market for a campaign was '13-17 year olds'.
"They didn't realllllly want to sell to kids".
No. They knew exactly what the fuck they were doing.
Regardless of what the corporate intent is. Inasmuch as there can be one in such a company.
And having worked at a few companies that suddenly fell into orders-of-magnitude more revenue, it rings plausible.
When the money hose is spewing, nobody spends much time asking "Why?" anyone is doing anything, as long as it's just shy (or sometime inclusive) of embezzlement.
Juul is not conscious and cannot want anything.
I think it's pretty clear that there were some Juul employees who wanted children to use their company's product. Company representatives did not just wander into schools by chance; someone reached out and struck that deal. Clearly not you, and maybe no one on your team, but certainly someone.
And incompetent or not, Juul the organization is responsible for its actions.
Not sure I buy this but it's amusing at the very least.
Whether or not it is conscious and whether or not it wants anything is fundamentally unprovable (even for you, assuming you are human) and thus this statement can only be founded on nothing but faith and assumptions.
In a practical sense Juul has legal personhood and can be seen to respond to impulses and plan. It is reasonable to treat it as an entity: if it is harmful it must be punished. If elements of it are exceptionally harmful, they must be punished extra (just as we do for cancer). None of that has anything at all to do with whether or not it has consciousness or wants things.
Straw man. Here's an equally clear (ie, not clear) steel man: someone wanted to get brand equity with adults from telling kids not to vape.
I know GP said Juul employees were largely incompetent, but I just can't believe anyone was that stupid. If the goal is "to get brand equity with adults", you want the adults to be watching.
Juul arranged to be there, but I find ithard to believe they did anything to explicitly prevent other adults from being in the room. No one at the school had enough common sense to be like "someone should chaperon this" ?
I kind of agree that it was probably entirely inconsequential to the popularity of juul though.
> And incompetent or not, Juul the organization is responsible for its actions.
Don’t those two conflict?
"I do not believe Juul consciously or explicitly wanted youths to use Juul."
I do, and their actions prove it. Individuals who worked at the company were simply reacting to the obvious economic incentives of "growth at all costs", and it was clear they were allowed to market using whatever means necessary.
Accidentally promoting their product to minors has 1) The same impact as if it was done on purpose and 2) demonstrates criminal negligence.
I also don't regard Altria's operational professionalism and discipline as a net positive in this situation. A company with a historical track record of deliberately marketing to children and a current track record of continuing to do so (IQOS) is no improvement merely because they control headcount and limit vanity projects.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
E-cigarettes aren’t slightly less terrible. They are much less terrible / much better than traditional cigarettes in that they do not cause lung cancer.
Lung cancer is the main problem with cigarettes and e-cigarettes don’t do this. So that’s a huge improvement.
Of course they have other problems but none of them are as bad as a 15x chance of lung cancer [0]
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/basic_info/risk_factors.htm
Nicely done. Rollies are worse. Think of the lives filtered cigarettes are saving.
Just focused on advertising alone here is NyTimes summary with link to MA lawsuit.
They fired the first ad company who suggested reasonable adult oriented ads and directed the new one to run youth focused ads and youth targeting. Cartoon network, kids websites, teen magazines.
I don't believe you can brush aside those decisions by just calling the company 'terrible.'
True you can never look into someone's brain and know their intent. But the evidence is pretty clear.
If we give everyone a pass like this because of terrible management or incompetence we'd never hold anyone accountable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/health/juul-vaping-lawsui...
Millenials (myself among them) grew up before state-wide indoor smoking bans, and those of us who didn't smoke weren't interested in picking up anything resembling it.
A lot of Zoomers, however, grew up in a cigarette free world, where they also didn't see addiction or substantial anti-smoking messages. The older folks (Millenials) were set in their ways, but the Zoomers were the addressable audience. It was intentional. It was evil.
They are advertising to consumers who do not smoke.
Can we please stop perpetuating the idea that the NYT is a reputable source?
A flippant dismissal of OP's firsthand account requires something a bit more substantial than "I found an article printed in an outlet that has been on a decade-long mission to demonize the tech industry, or any other industry remotely worthy of the term."
They have, at this point, shown they're willing to print nearly anything if it damages their cultural opponents. Any facts they report should prompt corroboration from reputable sources.
"Whoa hey bring it down several notches, extremist."
My only hope is that the NYT grows even larger and more "successful", so that more of you can have the experience of having your field, your work, or you personally written about with their signature erroneous confidence.
- who has no relevant experience in anything being discussed,
- works for an outlet which has shown countless times that it cannot reliably and accurately report on nearly any field and
- whose primary experience has been in taking dictation from the FDA
over one of your peers, who
- has worked in the relevant industry, and the relevant company
- puts his name next to his words, and
- has given you a first person account of what he's seen and done, including acknowledging his own blind spots
If your instincts are to invest immovable faith in the belief that the latter is absolutely lying, based on facts related to you by the former, you are epistemically ruined beyond hope.
This comes from someone who is deeply skeptical of and disagrees with a lot of NYT narratives. I just don’t start a thinly veiled crusade against them whenever they are mentioned.
2. So your opinion is based on even less knowledge than what that article contains?
no?
Given the scale and growth trajectory of Juul, perhaps you really were unaware of the numerous marketing and growth plans targeted at minors. Also likely, most of your points amount to n-th hand hearsay and your insider knowledge is actually missing many important facts. Be careful repeating stories you've heard if you are publicly associating yourself with the company.
Anyway, your ignorance of their tactics isn't really an excuse when it's been covered so widely. I think you should probably not defend and attack them so easily. Stories of ignorance and incompetence can actually be well crafted PR to attempt to attempt to limit the responsibility of the company and senior management for illegal activity.
Why not just ban all cigeratee? We all known why, because of commercial profit. Can we openly discuss the balance between human lives and profit? It's not like Capitalism is anything but balance profit and humanity, right?
Why involve this "saving billions in health care dollars and quality of life." as a derivative statement. It's much clear to just balance the profit and human lives. And stop muddy the pond with dubious metrics no one can verify.
PS: This does not intend to be a rant
Idk who they wanted to sell to, but their message was heard loud and clear at my kids school.
I'm kind of surprised that Juul is targeted, real cigarettes are so much more horrible. I guess it's not a good idea to start smoking with e-cigarettes but in a world of legal real tobacco cigarettes I expected to see regulation on marketing only.
PS: later I quit by just not smoking anything and a happy ex-smoker ever since.
Whether they will graduate to "real" cigarettes we don't know yet, because this demographic is not 21 years old yet. But it's likely to be true, because "real" cigarettes purportedly are more potent.
E.g. the PACT act amendment (Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking, not the other one) means USPS - and therefore effectively all other carriers - can't ship vaping products from businesses to individuals, effectively ending online sales. "Law-making" at it's worst, especially because it was bundled into a massive COVID-19 relief bill.
They literally called it the "Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes to Children Act", although it's just the "Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes Act".
Probably due to historical precedent set by RJ Reynolds where they overtly and intentionally marketed cigarettes to kids because their research found that getting people addicted young was the best way to gain market share.
This is basic common sense legislation. We know exactly what these companies are going to do, we already know it's going to be bad, and we already have a solution in place.
What companies would that be? They are companies like Juul. And then there were plenty of small vape shops run by individuals who mixed their own e-liquids, or who curated a selection of e-liquids from other manufacturers.
> This is basic common sense legislation.
No, it isn't. Requiring age verification? Sure, even if it wasn't the law previously, all places I used did that already. Banning USPS from shipping nicotine? Maybe, but questionable.
But the 2020 PACT Act amendment goes even further. It covers Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems, a very broad term that includes "any component, liquid, part, or accessory of a device described [above], without regard to whether the component, liquid, part, or accessory is sold separately from the device." (!)
Think about this for a second. This potentially means lithium ion batteries, coils, wire, cotton, nicotine-free/0% e-liquids, etc. How exactly does that help? I would even be fine with other solutions, e.g. banning shipping anything containing nicotine. This is how it works in some other countries; you could still buy e-liquids and components, to which you could add nicotine. The mix-in nicotine could be more controlled.
I'm quite frankly sick of these bad faith arguments. It's a ridiculously broad law, and it's awful.
But they still didn't ban actual cigarettes
If you follow the money, it makes more sense.
Regulators tend to only care about things which aren't already entrenched in the culture of the regulator. For example, if you tried to market a car that was as dangerous to drive as the safest motorcycle on the road the NHTSA would probably draw and quarter you.
They'd be happy to ignore you. But the nanosecond you try and market such a car people who would never buy your car would read the spec and start screeching about it. Internet commenters would make a stink. Journalists would speculate. The Youtube talking heads would summarize. The MSM would report on the fervor. And all these screeching would alert the regulator to the fact that there are political brownie points to be earned regulating or brownie points to be earned crapping on them for not regulating and they know which one they'd prefer so they break out the ban hammer.
See the whole self driving deal. Nobody cared to regulate it until it became a contentious issue over which virtue points could be earned or lost.
You see this in all sorts of areas. Regulators sit around doing what they've always done until some Outraged(TM) subset of the public comes along. It's not that they go around regulating un-entrenched things. It's that by the time you're entrenched you've long since pissed off some special interest group and got yourself regulated.
... and until people died in mind-blowing spectacular accidents [1] and Tesla in particular repeatedly lied in public or did other questionable maneuvers.
If the self-driving car industry wants someone to blame for their misery aka stricter regulations, they should look at Tesla. All it takes to make stuff worse for everyone is one who is caught doing stuff that simply is not OK.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/01/18/1073857310/tesla-autopilot-cr...
How would you falsifiably distinguish this from "nobody cared to regulate it until it became a meaningful threat to the lives of road users"?
Like, obviously before self-driving cars were being actively researched, nobody cared about their safety.
The legal orders were changed to mandate a 55,000 pages per month rate and the disclosure should now wrap up before the end of this year. I have no idea what the PII controls look like.
That may be true, but it is still telling that we can only get information from a government agency because they are legally forced to give it to us and they will do so in a way that is as disruptive as they can be. This isn't related to this FOIA request, but to FOIA in general and the issue that FOIA was even needed to begin with. It denotes a lack of transparency and trust, one which has fed into many not trusting the government and builds a question of what extent it should be trusted even today. This factors into far more than just vaccine related discussions.
But also current combustible tobacco products.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-anno...
The actual point is to nudge people away from inhaling raw carcinogens (actual real smoke) directly into their lungs, and nudge them toward the still-potent e-cigarettes and vapes, which have way less cancer risk.
The issue isn't e-cigs in general (though, to be clear in terms of health risks: if you aren't smoking anything now, avoid smoking both). It's that Juul was such a trash-fire that even acquisition by one of the biggest FDA-compliance-factories in the United States didn't convince the FDA that the fire was out.
I haven't consumed any nicotine in quite some time, but I find the whole thing very obnoxious. (Smoking is a sin, but a pleasure. I'd like the freedom to navigate that choice myself, thank you very much.)
This must have been imagined by people who have no understanding of drugs whatsoever. Lessening the content of nicotine is likely to make people smoke -more-, I'd wager, inhaling more tar/cancer inducing substances in the process.
When the first e-cigs hit the market, most of the commonly found ones were things like the Joyetech eGo and eliquids that were frankly, unable to provide the necessary amount of nicotine to truly replace cigarettes. I found myself using the device far more than I smoked cigarettes, although it's probably still not as bad. A few studies proved that it's not just in the mind, people who vaped with those devices didn't have much nicotine in their bloodstream. Modern e-cigarettes with high power delivery, or low power combined with nicotine salts, satisfy me much faster and I don't feel a craving all day like I did with the eGo.
Removing the nicotine but keeping the cancer stick has to be one of the dumbest thing I've ever heard of in my life. Absolutely insanity, this is just going to make people burn more cancer sticks to satisfy their craving.
I wouldn't care the least bit what you put in your body if it didn't have disastrous public health and finance implications. How many tens or hundreds of millions are spent annually via medicare and medicaid on old and poor people with COPD, emphysema, lung cancer, etc?
Hell, I'd be happy with loosening e- and combustible cigarette regulations if it meant smoking permanently banned you from both medicare and medicaid. If you really want to smoke that bad, fine, but don't expect me to pay for the extremely predictable consequences please.
I don't have the numbers to compare, but I suspect banning being fat might even save the US healthcare system more money, if not now - at least at the current trajectory.
If you think "You can't ban being fat, my body my choice".. well, then I don't think you should ban smoking.
You might be bedbound and not in control of your own food. But, the staff could just give you less food.
There is no medical condition that will cause someone in a locked room given a calorie restricted diet to gain weight. That is against the laws of physics.
It's fine to say "losing weight is very very very hard". But it's incorrect to say "being overweight is not a choice".
You (unless you are bedbound) choose what goes in your mouth. You, thus, have control of your own weight.
it probabbly "works".
Also is enough to get someone kicked out of office, as the public loves sugar.
Once you grant the existence of individuals that are outliers in susceptibility to addiction (which I think is reasonable because it's such a highly polygenic trait) I don't see how one could claim that obesity is sometimes not entirely a "choice", while smoking is always a "choice".
If you make this argument in the future, maybe you should think about comparing it to the banning of a particular type of unhealthy food (which is similar in scope to e-cigs and cigarettes).
I think this entire line of thinking of you and the parent poster is flawed anyway. Denying health insurance to anyone would probably have negative effects for all of us anyway (the insured usually end up paying anyway at different levels, whether that's through higher premiums at the personal level, lower productivity overall at the national level, or dealing with an untimely death/sickness of friends/family at the local level).
No exceptions apart from purely medical (=very expensive) stuff.
Another may be trans-fats. All the revenue -> medical system. Your wallet would be telling you all the time how stupid your eating habits/disorders are. But good luck pushing this through society setup like US (aka impossible).
This is a stretch. The difficulty of losing weight might be related to genetics and the environment and monetary capability, but it is 100% possible for every person on this planet to lose weight. Bodies cannot create calories.
There are absolutely some medical conditions that make it hard to lose weight, make you retain water, etc. and it's not as cut and dry as smoking (100% of the time it's 100% your fault), but "being fat isn't a choice" is objectively, laughably wrong.
>there is a lot of healthy food that can cause people to being fat if they eat enough
Okay, but unhealthy food is unhealthy because it is easy to eat large quantities of it. No one is getting fat because they are overeating fruits and veggies.
You would agree that that is mostly healthy food? And he is eating very large quantities of it. He is not fat, but people who do not do a lot of exercise could eat the same amount of food (or even half, he eats 12,000 calories a day) and gain quite a lot of weight.
Also a diet needs more than fruits and vegetables to be healthy at all.
I agree that there should be less focus on processed and fast foods, but that alone does not eliminate the problem of people eating a lot of food. I could eat a big mac and medium fries for every meal and not gain a lot of weight (3x big mac (563 calories) = 1689 calories + 3* fries (333 calories) = 2688 calories. Which is around the 2500 calorie range for an adult man. That would in no way be healthy, but I would not gain weight quickly.
I never said a diet of only fruits and veggies was healthy. It is significantly closer to being a healthy diet than the average American diet. Add nuts, seeds, legumes, and maybe some meat or starch and then it’s a healthy diet. The problem is processed foods are heavily subsidized and whole plant based foods are not.
I bet if you ate a Big Mac and fries 3x a day, you’re going to be hungry all day too. Some foods are more satiating than others. Eliminating calorie dense foods that are not satiating is something that every healthy diet is going to do.
And yeah, this is true dystopian stuff. But that is exactly where this line of thinking inevitably leads. Once you accept that costs of public healthcare are a valid reason to regulate lifestyle choices, practically nothing is off-limits.
It seems that the incurred costs per capita for overweight/obese people is somewhere from $250-$2000 according to this study. [1] So we can use some combination of the carrot (reward people who are healthy) and the stick (tax/penalize people who aren't) and end up more or less in the same place.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2891924/
> "We haven't developed the data yet to say that it's clearly dangerous, but it probably is," says Dr. Hays.
[1]: https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-mi...
What an ignorant and offensive comment. People do not choose their weight the way they choose to smoke or not smoke.
Weight is an outcome that has many factors outside of diet and behavioral choices. And diet, when it is a factor, is not a simple factor. Many, many people make very good dietary choices and remain overweight. Many of those same people exercise regularly and remain overweight.
Please don't judge people for being overweight -- and don't blame them either.
Thermodynamics disagrees with this assertion.
It's hard, I get it. I am losing weight right now. But I don't say I can't lose weight.
However, that is not true.
Once food enters our bodies -- especially our colon, it encounters our microbiomes. Everybody has a different microbiome -- little bugs/bacteria in our gut. Some of these bacteria convert undigestable foods into usable calories that are then absorbed by our bodies. (Short Chain Fatty Acids.) The amount of food converted by these bacteria varies depending on an individual's unique microbiome.
So, it turns out that no, not all food results in the same amount of calorie absorption. This is something that varies significantly, and not just based on the microbiome, though this is certainly one of the factors.
Let's say you and me eat the same food. I get 2x the calories out of the food as you do due to my super gut biosphere.
Therefore, if I want to weigh the same, I must eat half the food.
Your argument is an argument for why Calories are not perfect, and I 100% agree.
However, you can just pick any calorie amount as as starting number. Weigh yourself on a scale ever day. If weight is going up, decrease calories by 200 per day. If weight is going down, increase by 200 per day.
The exact rate of burning calories is not important. And that is why the 2,000 calorie a day diet is a very very rough guess.
People too often assume that bodies are like cars, and that food is like gasoline. This is not true. Our bodies are far more complex (and interesting) than mechanical machines. The food we eat is also far more complex (and interesting) than gasoline as well.
Oh dear. The vast majority of them most certainly do. I’m stunned to read you think otherwise.
- your parents overfed you while you were a child and now you're fat before you really had agency
- you had a medical condition and your medication is associated with weight gain
- you have a stressful lifestyle and have fallen on eating as a stress relief mechanism, leading you to gain weight
- the food you have available in your neighborhood is all junk and you get fat as a result
- the cuisine in your country is generally junk and portion sizes are out of control (I'm looking at you, America)
- everyone in your community is fat and so you consider that normal
- you do just have slower metabolism than others and so staying lean is just more effort
Not to say that it's outside one's control to control their weight (I live in Japan, practically nobody here is fat), but it's not quite as simple as choosing to smoke or not. Lots of ways you can end up fat "by default" whereas smoking does involve the explicit choice to start (by default you don't smoke).
Regardless, research has show being obese or overweight is by and large preventable.
> Overweight and obesity, as well as their related noncommunicable diseases, are largely preventable. Supportive environments and communities are fundamental in shaping people’s choices, by making the choice of healthier foods and regular physical activity the easiest choice (the choice that is the most accessible, available and affordable), and therefore preventing overweight and obesity. [1]
However, compared to smoking it is an issue that affects more people and has been addresses muuuch less
> The study reveals that obesity is linked to very high rates of chronic illnesses — higher than living in poverty, and much higher than smoking or drinking. [2]
> In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults aged 18 years and older were overweight. Of these over 650 million adults were obese. [1]
[1]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and...
[2]: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB4549.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6368221/
I’m of the opinion that the obesity epidemic and the large decrease in smoking in the US are not unrelated.
The predictable consequence of American lives is that you'll get serious medical conditions and spend a lot of money addressing them at the end of your life. Changing out one for another won't necessarily make things cheaper.
Smokers die in there's 60s from a heart attack or lung cancer. Healthy people die in their 80s after collecting Medicare and social security for 25 years having spent the last 10 years in memory care.
It's possible that smokers actually end up saving Medicare and Medicaid money, because they die sooner. I've seen articles that estimate it both ways.
You seem all too happy to tell everyone what they can and can't do and ready with all of the exceptions for the things you personally like.
Eating is a requirement for life, and there is no meaningful way to make a nutritionally complete diet available (especially at "feeding society without devoting your entire GDP to food production and distribution" scales) while making it impossible for people to gain unhealthy amounts of weight. It is fully a sliding scale.
Even the most pro-nicotine people can't argue that smoking is a necessary component of human survival.
Breathing is a requirement for life and smoking is a category of breathing in the same way that eating soda and candy bars is a category of eating.
I'm not arguing that in good faith. I'm pointing out that your argument doesn't hold up either.
Reduce the insane amount of sugar, empty carbs, and saturated fats in the food available to an average American, and subsidize vegetables and fruits and whole grains. Incentivize the mass-producing manufacturers to use healthier ingredients.
Saying things like this do not help.
You can tell me to stop doing X and/or Y, but if I do stop them, then it would be equivalent to me stopping antidepressants that help me get out of bed and do my damn job (which is helping people) and be able to live my life instead of driving myself nuts and end up hanging myself. It is NOT WORTH IT to me (and to society, since I contribute this way much more, but you may rather prefer I was dead) to stop doing X and/or Y. FWIW the reason for this is that my brain is physically damaged.
Plus I would advise you give them any tips (not just any random ones though) as to how to do that exactly.
---
At any case, why are we so eager to tell people what to do without knowing anything about their life anyway?
I smoked cigarettes for a long time, and it really does boil down to just... not smoking anymore. I think the average number of quit attempts prior to success is 6 or 7, which seems about right. Some people find success with the gum, some people like to do cold turkey and push through it. I weaned myself off to the point where the last couple cigarettes in a pack were so stale it lost its enjoyment. I think a big part of why it takes a bunch of attempts is finding the method that works for you because a lot of them are mutually exclusive.
I’m terribly sorry your government had forced you to pay for these things, I don’t agree with that either. I suggest you take it up with them.
If all you’re worried about is Medicaid expenditures, seems like you should be encouraging people to start smoking en masse.
Additionally, just because the government can force you to wear a seat-belt doesn't mean it has the same kind of authority over just about anything else.
Because that's patently absurd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKHY69AFstE
Why are you being so over-dramatic? Juuls weren't the only e-cigs on the market. They also weren't the only alternative (to cigarettes) nicotine product on the market, either. You don't have to switch to cigarettes.
> in 2019 [Juul] stopped selling sweet and fruity flavors
> The [FDA] has cleared the way for Juul’s biggest rivals to keep tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes on the market. Industry observers had expected Juul to receive similar clearance.
I'd hope that Altria knows how to operate properly by now, anyway, whatever they did, they probably deserve it. Whether it's the responsibility of the new guard or the old doesn't matter too much I guess.
We still live in a country where illegal drugs are prevalent in all settings of life. All of the moral legislation doesn't change the underlying narrative that the people we task with serving this country are not doing their jobs right, and simply voting does not fix that because of the deep seated agendas of non-tax-paying corporations and individuals influencing our political systems.
It's not about Juul products, it's a hostile bid to take their market share...
There are literally 20+ other vape product companies, and many other non-legal suppliers that will step in regardless of what laws are passed, many adding harmful chemicals to products as well, while the FDA is not focused on making vape products better and safer. It's meant to be simple nicotine, that's been around since America was inhabited by native cultures. What's next for elimination? Brands of Alcohol?
Are we going to limit blood alcohol content to 2 sips per outing? Who is driving all of this? Name the specific people pushing these rules, and then follow the paper trails, and you'll find that in a country where health care companies give major contributions to legislators to keep the market deregulated that it's all about money, not our best interests, and we fund it all every year, mandatorily, when we pay taxes...
Everyone is getting prodded and pushed around by the legislators we're mandatorily funding. I'm not advocating protest or overthrow of government and corporations at all, but the ones we have in place are not helping us by any means right now, and they're overreaching into our privacy and lives and driving policy based on agendas and profit at our expense. People smoke mostly because they are stressed and burdened within their lives, reduce public financial and emotional stress factors first, then they'll have no excuses left for smoking.
We need to be more vocal about the harm in moral legislation, even if smoking is eliminated, we still don't have free health care for being citizens, and we pay an extraordinary amount in taxes every year with cost of living that threatens to kill most well before smoking ever could.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-to-Become-a-Feder...
Flavored ecig sales increased after the ban. https://www.cdcfoundation.org/National-E-CigaretteSales-Data...
Because of social media and populism, too many bad/harmful decisions are being made now in government. Most of it is driven by people seeking re-election or social media popularity more than by people who truly want to create positive change.
There are no honestly viable solutions currently on the market to our environmental crisis in place, it's just marketing to shift profit to another harmful money making industry.
Hauling a family of four on a bicycle to the hospital in a crisis in 2 feet of snow (for example) only goes further to highlight the small-mindedness our future is up against.
They have a huge problem with unexpected detonations.
One of the best things about vaping has been that I'm pretty sure that there are less unintentional home fires than in past decades, because when they are dropped on a mattress, they usually do not burn... Another aspect that no one really considers.
Also during an earthquake/power outage scenario would likely do the same, and cause far more dramatic loss of life if it was the only option.
It's a hard sell to people who want to be free and independent, and in control of their safety and time.
Getting rid of cars also means eliminating a huge volume of revenue from federal, state, and local government from related taxes... This means funding for bike lanes, roads, and even public transport, would evaporate.
Most of the busses in many major cities were also once electric (at a very high cost to cities), but now (somehow) have mostly gone back to diesel... No one is asking Why...
We still have major factories, ships, planes, and many other big business hallmarks that create the majority of pollution in the world (while the same companies try to portray that they are "green"). Conservation efforts are futile unless we start talking about the real issues, and create accountability, not if we leave rules up to profit seeking individuals and companies.
It's beyond a hard sell at this point for many people, and contradictory to the concept of a free society.
Back when we had mostly horses providing transit, they consumed more energy than cars on an individual basis too, and created health problems with their waste...
It's all just shifting the buck somewhere else, and not solving real underlying problems.
A once a century event shouldn't define the other 98 years.
> Getting rid of cars also means eliminating a huge volume of revenue from federal, state, and local government from related taxes... This means funding for bike lanes, roads, and even public transport, would evaporate.
This is not an issue. If people aren't buying cars, they'll have more money that they'll spend on other things or we can just raise taxes because people have more money.
> We still have major factories, ships, planes, and many other big business hallmarks that create the majority of pollution in the world (while the same companies try to portray that they are "green"). Conservation efforts are futile unless we start talking about the real issues, and create accountability, not if we leave rules up to profit seeking individuals and companies.
We're never gonna solve climate change if we only focus on the biggest issues. It's multifaceted problem.
But this is life now, things have not and likely will not return to "normal".
That's already a thing in some city centers (at least in Europe), and we're moving towards banning the sale of new petrol cars.
It's not an instantaneous process as society would pretty much collapse of we did so, but we are moving in that direction.
But yes, we should eliminate gasoline powered vehicles as soon as feasible. This is something that's already going on.
The main point is that it's easy to be personally offended by a cigarette, but the real damage is caused elsewhere. Sometimes we need to step outside of our selfish, interpersonal bubbles to see that.
If that was the case, the smokers, who had "first hand" smoke, would be dying a lot more frequently. Many of the people that died of lung cancer historically were exposed to asbestos products, which greatly skewed diagnoses for many many years... Many people who also never smoked in their lives died of lung cancer because of the prevalence of asbestos products in building materials as well. Most people don't know this because it would have resulted in many well embedded companies going bankrupt.
You'd also be surprised to know how smoking actually curbs incidents of rage, violence, suicide, and anger in people too, but there are no proper scientific studies because of the blinding bias promoted by companies that also seek to make a profit. There is a deeper discussion involved in quality of life versus quantity of life too, that is often overlooked, and no matter what regulation comes into play, nothing is going to stop a person from growing tobacco and smoking it even with prohibition, we know this from all the people that were murdered and made rich over bootlegging alcohol. This moral legislation is a waste of time, it's harmful to progress, and it's destructive to American freedoms that characterize the country.
Also ask yourself, why nicotine gum and patches (made to help people quit smoking) are always priced so high... This will further demonstrate the financial drive behind all aspects of tobacco. Tobacco was also a main driver of slave trade historically, meaning there are several companies that sold it and now are tied to investments and profit within the industry, including health care companies. CVS sold cigarettes for years, and that's likely a huge part of why they are still in business to this day.
I'm thoroughly convinced that moves like this have little to do with concern for the health of individuals. Smoking is a bad habit, but why is it always more polarizing than stock market manipulation, work wage theft, regulation of insurance industries, and so many other things that would improve the lives of citizens if not to shift profit elsewhere...
Government operates to protect companies and the wealthy now, not an individual making minimum wage with a smoking problem.
A lot of the claims you're making in these posts are going to need citations. This specific sentence (with the obvious exception of suicide) sounds as though you're describing a "nic fit", otherwise known as nicotine withdrawal. So of course getting more nicotine in your system is going to fix that.
Without cited sources, your claim is suspect because I can't confirm whether or not nicotine withdrawals were taken into account.
I'd envision that data to back that claim would be impossible to find anyway, because no one has ever taken time to investigate it and publish a report due to societal bias on the matter.
The only real way to understand it yourself is to talk with a lot of smokers concerning their life experiences, and to also ask why in movies historically the first thing police would hand to a victim or person who has undergone a traumatic incident was often a cigarette.
"in movies"?
Even in real life...
Maybe we should ask why historically kids were given alcohol for all manner of ailments from teething to colds.
Or historically why cocaine was in Coca Cola?
If we really cared about this, we'd start forced removals, because kids are the one's getting the most damage from that many particulates over their lifetimes.
I’m always a little shocked when I hear otherwise very intelligent people make these sorts of statements about second hand smoke.
The second hand smoke you’d encounter on a sidewalk is completely harmless. Any affect, if any, to your health would be completely insignificant and unmeasurable.
Second hand smoke is harmful when exposed to heavy amounts of it in confined spaces for prolonged periods of time. Think decades not seconds.
In fact that was the original justification for indoor bans. It was in defence of staff who may encounter health issues after being exposed to indoor second hand smoke for 8 hours a day over decades. (Think single mom working at a bar) They weren’t put in place to preserve the health of customers, since any affect would be extremely minimal and voluntary.
I should try to dig this up some time but I recall reading once about one of the lead promoters of the first indoor smoking bans in NYC. He later had to step down out of principal, when things pivoted to outdoor bans. In his mind it would be completely irrational and unscientific.
Air pollution is definitely a significant problem but cigarette smoke is nothing more than a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. Look in to brake pad dust.
This sounds correct to me but keep in mind marketing the dangers of second hand smoke was an effective way to get people who thought of it as a solitary activity to thing of the secondary impacts. Most smokers don’t care about their long term health enough, but they may care about the health of those around them.
Fine, I don't want to smell it because I find the smell gross. Same concept.
There's a lot of stuff that's gross and obnoxious that isn't banned by the FTC or FDA.
Your position is based on your own subjective preference rather than any objective fact.
We’ve gone from “your actions are having a direct negative impact on my health”, to “I’m not particularly fond of what you’re doing.”
Far from being the same, your position is actually very different conceptually.
The personal preferences of some aren’t valid reasons to ban things in public places for all. In most cases that would be a gross violation of human rights.
In my city the vast majority have a strong preference against pan handling. But it’s been made clear time and time again the pans handlers have every right to sit in public and ask for money, whether people like it or not. Moreover if they like they can also smoke a cigarette or bang a drum.
I‘m sure some people find your breath and/or your body odor/perfume gross.
So should they be able to force you to wear a mask or keep a distance of say at least 6ft at all times?
Completely different concept.
That's personal preference vs. a potential health hazard.
Great example - masks. You may have had a personal preference not to wear a mask during the height of the pandemic, but that 'personal preference' puts others at a proven health hazard.
In this case, your 'personal preference' is irrelevant.
If second hand outdoor smoke really did have the affects you initially used to back up your point, then that would be a 'health hazard', and therefore important to the greater whole, and something to be considered taking legal action on.
Since you reduced your argument to 'I don't want to smell it', the underlying concept completely changes, and your statement is completely irrelevant.
I change a couple of words and suddenly your reasoning sounds absurd.
> Why does the individual freedom to do whatever you want overrule my individual freedom not to be affected by the externalities of your choices? The fundamental flaw in your argument is that you focus almost exclusively on individual right to the detriment of public good.
This is insanity. The same argument can be applied to any personal liberty. Should washing hands be mandated by the government? After all, your freedom to not wash your hands increases my chances of catching disease. Let's ban bugspray too since exposure to second hand insecticides infringes upon your right to never be affected by another individual's choices!
When I was approached by people gathering signatures for anti-smoking measures, I always asked how they arrived at the location. Invariably they did not walk or bicycle to it. Always shrugged off, because not their problem.
Who defines what "the public good" is? The same people who argue that rights must be eliminated for "the public good" are the ones who want to pass laws telling grown adults what they are allowed to do behind closed doors. From what plants they want to make illegal for you to grow, to what substances you want to ingest, to preventing you from playing poker with other consenting adults, to what language you must refer to people by - it is fundamentally anti-freedom.
>Why does the individual freedom to do whatever you want overrule my individual freedom not to be affected by the externalities of your choices?
This is the proper argument to make, and why I'm fine with banning smoking in certain public places, just like I'm fine with restricting a wide variety of other behaviors on public property that adults should otherwise be able to engage in behind closed doors. This is not what the federal government is doing in regard to Juul (or many other cases). They aren't addressing public behavior, they are passing laws and regulations to prevent you from behaving how you wish, on your own property, for your own good. The government shouldn't be in the business of telling consenting adults, at the point of a gun, what behaviors they aren't allowed to engage in behind closed doors.
It's totally sane when looked at through one lens, and asinine when viewed through the other.
From a societal point of view, banning these products makes sense. They don't add value to the world, but they cause a lot of damage. The people who feel they are flipping the bill for the damaged caused don't see a reason that they have to pay it. The costs can be abstract, like increased medical costs, but they can also be direct, say, your child gets hooked on one of these and suffers some sort of medical complication.
From an individual perspective, then banning these products seems ridiculous. It's pretty common for people to believe that they aren't impacting others with their choices (which is wrong), or they acknowledge the negative impacts, but they just don't care.
Generally speaking, if you want to maintain a freedom, it is advisable to not bother other people with your activity.
Juul is new enough that the blunt approach will work. Plus, it's not a plant that grows all over, making a black market for them less likely to spring up.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59589775
Yes, yes, black market and all that, but that's true for vapes too. And drugs.
Are these ways random though, really? Or do they reflect that we have vastly divergent ideas of what society should be from the “my home is my castle” folks to the “we live in a society” folks. For the former it’s an abrogation of their sacred right to do whatever they want. For the latter it’s not wanting to be subjected to powerful corporations doing sociopathic things to make as much money as possible.
For the former it's not wanting to be subjected to powerful politicians doing sociopathic things to make as much money as possible.
Smoking marijuana and big gulps are very different from paper straws. Rules around smoking and soda sizes are the government legislating freedoms. I personally don't mind regulations here, but I agree it's taking away your liberty to some extent. Paper straws are mandated for a completely different reason: because they impose an externality that the user doesn't adequately pay for. Philosophically these bans are for the same reason we don't allow you to leave garbage on a public bench or dump toxic waste in a river. Again, you can debate the merits of single-use plastic legislation, but I wouldn't lump it together with smoking and soda bans at all.
Now you got me thinking about one thing in particular.
Suppose we will have quite soon portable and discreet technology that can, through monitoring your BAC, or what have you, warn you that you're about to be overly drunk. It would stand to reason that for many folks out there who have An Alcohol Problem that technology like this could materially enhance their lives. Now that I think of this, something like this could even become the first practical widespread form of cybernetic enhancement, not that we don't already have plenty of awesome ones in the form of prostheses.
Just makes me wonder what kind of hurdles a company developing such a product would face.
Removing e-cigs can hurt people that use them to get off cigarettes.
2) I don't know a single human being who drinks who did not drink in high school. Same applies to smoking and vaping.
Maybe I'm just a lame nerd, but I didn't drink in high school.
This is just witchcraft. You aren't a serious person.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844324
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844306
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844250
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31843933
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31834903
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31824727
Seriously not cool! We ban such accounts. I don't want to ban you, so please review the rules and stick to them. That means no more name-calling, no more personal attacks, no more swipes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
E-cig tobacco comes from the same companies as cigarette tobacco. Heck, e-cigs themselves often come from the same companies: Juul is Altria (ex-Phillip-Morris). There is no competition, simply different channels for the same suppliers.
(Also, the FDA is going after some current combustible tobacco products as well some current e-cigs.)
Usually when something dumb like this happens you can follow the money. But I'm open to other hypotheses.
Why impose standards on tobacco when we are moving towards standards rather than prohibition on everything else?
Although from the discussion above it's also clear that the standards are nonsensical, resulting in a ban for less dangerous products while more dangerous ones are still legal, albeit with heavier regulation.
Hm, reminds me of gun laws, actually. A bolt-action rifle with a barrel under 16" requires a multi-month federal approval, while a semi-auto with a longer barrel is one instant background check away. It's almost as if people who write those laws don't have any clue, and are just chasing public opinion in their eternal popularity contest.