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Something to keep in mind is that the tobacco industry has a ton of money, a demonstrated willingness to play dirty if needed, and a deeply vested interest in u

by Lazare 8y ago

Something to keep in mind is that the tobacco industry has a ton of money, a demonstrated willingness to play dirty if needed, and a deeply vested interest in undermining companies like Juul. I'm not saying that the The Verge or Rachel Becker have any intention of defending the tobacco industry from disruptive startups, not am I suggesting that vaping in general or Juul in specific aren't be problematic. What I am saying is that there's an immense amount of money and effort is being deployed to ensure that people will defend the tobacco industry and will attack vaping, and it's always worth being extra cautious. "Where there's smoke, there's fire" is rarely a useful heuristic, but it's extra useless when you know there's a guy with a smoke machine around the corner. :)

paulwithap 8y ago
There has certainly been a lot of anti-vaping money backing ballot measures like the recent one in SF. I’ve been meaning to look into who is actually funding this. The tobacco companies seem to be on board with the trend and many are manufacturing their own devices. What’s bad for Juul would likely be bad for them too.
UnderProtest 8y ago
To some extent for Big Tobacco this might be like BP hedging on solar power. Nicotine is still best extracted from the tobacco plant. I doubt they'll fight vaping forever. What I see is people foolishly fighting the last war. Today's adults have been trained since early life on the evils of smoking and nicotine addiction and vice. We have this narrative of Big Tobacco pushing a product they claimed was safe and which was not. There are all these programmed mental circuits saying "if you don't like smoking, you should be suspicious of vaping." And so at the beginning of vaping there was a lot of FUD about popcorn lung. Now there's FUD about kids getting hooked on Juul. Everybody's looking for the catch because last time there was a catch. A future in which 20% of the population is forever hooked on vaping nicotine and no cigarettes are sold is a utopia compared to what we have now. Instead of embracing that future we have the anti-tobacco activists spreading alarm about vaping and all the old smoking laws being expanded to cover an activity that doesn't justify the ostracism. I've never smoked or vaped and the laws have no effect on me. For a brief period I saw smokers switching when they could vape indoors. That advantage is disappearing. We're missing a chance to kill cigarettes in the developed world. We should embrace the viral appeal of the vape fad before they become just another nicotine delivery device. We could save millions of lives.
- Lazare 8y ago
  I agree very strongly. Vaping is a bit of an unknown, but it's difficult to overstate how terrible tobacco is. Like you, I've never smoked or vaped, but I see vaping as an excellent chance to actually kill off tobacco. If we later learn some flavouring agent is harmful, well, we have an entire regulatory apparatus that let's us solve these things. > We could save millions of lives. Yep. Or we could virtue signal about how important self restraint and puritan morals are. Might kill a bunch of people, but man, think how great that smug feeling will feel!

by Lazare 8y ago

paulwithap 8y ago

There has certainly been a lot of anti-vaping money backing ballot measures like the recent one in SF. I’ve been meaning to look into who is actually funding this. The tobacco companies seem to be on board with the trend and many are manufacturing their own devices. What’s bad for Juul would likely be bad for them too.

UnderProtest 8y ago

To some extent for Big Tobacco this might be like BP hedging on solar power. Nicotine is still best extracted from the tobacco plant. I doubt they'll fight vaping forever. What I see is people foolishly fighting the last war. Today's adults have been trained since early life on the evils of smoking and nicotine addiction and vice. We have this narrative of Big Tobacco pushing a product they claimed was safe and which was not. There are all these programmed mental circuits saying "if you don't like smoking, you should be suspicious of vaping." And so at the beginning of vaping there was a lot of FUD about popcorn lung. Now there's FUD about kids getting hooked on Juul. Everybody's looking for the catch because last time there was a catch. A future in which 20% of the population is forever hooked on vaping nicotine and no cigarettes are sold is a utopia compared to what we have now. Instead of embracing that future we have the anti-tobacco activists spreading alarm about vaping and all the old smoking laws being expanded to cover an activity that doesn't justify the ostracism. I've never smoked or vaped and the laws have no effect on me. For a brief period I saw smokers switching when they could vape indoors. That advantage is disappearing. We're missing a chance to kill cigarettes in the developed world. We should embrace the viral appeal of the vape fad before they become just another nicotine delivery device. We could save millions of lives.

Lazare 8y ago
I agree very strongly. Vaping is a bit of an unknown, but it's difficult to overstate how terrible tobacco is. Like you, I've never smoked or vaped, but I see vaping as an excellent chance to actually kill off tobacco. If we later learn some flavouring agent is harmful, well, we have an entire regulatory apparatus that let's us solve these things. > We could save millions of lives. Yep. Or we could virtue signal about how important self restraint and puritan morals are. Might kill a bunch of people, but man, think how great that smug feeling will feel!