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As a reformed smoker who moved to vaping, I'm terribly concerned at the current marketing of vaping to teens, and the uptake within that age bracket in my count

As a reformed smoker who moved to vaping, I'm terribly concerned at the current marketing of vaping to teens, and the uptake within that age bracket in my country (NZ). I switched because my nicotine addiction isn't an easy one to break, and vaping is significantly cheaper (our government increases excise taxes on tobacco annually, so currrently $30 NZD buys me a pack of 20 cigarette that I smoke in a day, or it buys me a bottle of vape juice that lasts 2 weeks). And I'm a big fan of vaping for the economic and (so far as we know currently) health benefits for smokers. But what really concerns me, is the number of young people who would never smoke due to the (successful! and good on the Ministry of Health for doing so) demonisation of cigarette smoking, who are instead happily vaping away. It seems apparent from the marketing that Big Tobacco has realised where their next big market lies - young people who don't want to smoke, but will vape if you tell them it's healthy and cool. At the end of the day, you're still getting people addicted to nicotine for money. Yes, bonus that there's less cancer involved, but it' still a monetised addiction. My preference would be for vape liquids containing nicotine to be prescription only for recovering smokers. If kids want to blow watermelon vapour out of their lungs, go nuts, just don't do it with a known addictive substance in the mix.

lovehashbrowns 7y ago
> My preference would be for vape liquids containing nicotine to be prescription only for recovering smokers. Isn't this going to make the argument for making teens smoke cigarettes so they can get access to vaping with nicotine? And before you say "they're not going to go that far," we can also have a conversation about what underage people will do to get access to alcohol. Also, I'm especially humored by people wanting to put legal restrictions on things like vaping but wont have that same discussion about alcohol, which imo is much more harmful. Alcohol literally is: Yes, bonus that there's less cancer involved, but it' still a monetized addiction.
- adjkant 7y ago
  I think the flaw in that flow is that no one cares about nicotine, they just want vaping. As long as vaping without nicotine exists, there's no reason to go after the other version. Unless you're already addicted, and in that case, I'd say let's get them the prescription as well.
  - lnanek2 7y ago
    > As long as vaping without nicotine exists, there's no reason to go after the other version. That's not true. I find nicotine quite useful for hackathons and the like where I don't want to sleep, but also don't want to visit the restroom as often as red bull or other caffeine options would make me.
    - adjkant 7y ago
      That's an active choice for a specific use case, mind you one that's not healthy to have regularly. If people want nicotine, let's sell its on its own. There is literally no reason to package it into vaping unless you're coming from smoking or are simply trying to hook your customers.
    - EdwardDiego 7y ago
      You may be interested in methamphetamine then... ...personally I'd be worried if I couldn't code without a drug. And yes, I include caffeine in that. However, nicotine is far, far, far more addictive than caffeine, so it really is a different ball game.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    Yeah, and I smoked for more than a decade for the great taste and flavor. People vape for nicotine. It’s habit forming, pleasant, either compatible with or actively helpful for normal social and working. Like caffeine. People say they don’t drink tea or coffee for caffeine but there might be one person who drinks decaf or no caffeine tea or coffee with the regularity of all the addicts who know perfectly well that they drink it most every day and feel crap if they don’t.
    - adjkant 7y ago
      If you don't get hooked to start, no habit forming needed. Isn't the point to stop the cycle? You also have to remember that these are teens as young as 9th grade that are doing it for social reasons. Let them play around with some flavored vapor (which seems safe so far, needing more regulation) and walk away without an addition.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  And how would minors be filling prescriptions for nicotine juice? Presumably it wouldn't be prescribed to minors, and doctors doing that would risk serious consequences.
  - lovehashbrowns 7y ago
    So then what options would minors that have addictions to cigarettes have for getting off of them?
    - newnewpdro 7y ago
      This strikes me as quite the edge case, but we have a variety of alternative forms of metered nicotine delivery that are far less recreational, trendy, and photogenic like nicotine gums and patches that doctors can prescribe to assist parents struggling with addicted children.
    - gnicholas 7y ago
      They could allow prescriptions for minors, but require the amount to be ramped down over weeks/months so as not to enable new ongoing addictions.
- EdwardDiego 7y ago
  > Isn't this going to make the argument for making teens smoke cigarettes so they can get access to vaping with nicotine? And before you say "they're not going to go that far," we can also have a conversation about what underage people will do to get access to alcohol Alcohol is an entirely different animal to nicotine. Nicotine doesn't, in normal doses, produce a notably altered mental state that's strongly associated in society with "having a good time". Alcohol is significantly more attractive because of all its socialisation associations. Also, nicotine is significantly more addictive than alcohol. https://www.health.com/condition/smoking/an-addiction-specialist-explains-nicotines-powerful-hold-over-cigarette-smokers https://www.health.com/condition/smoking/an-addiction-specia...
  - lovehashbrowns 7y ago
    > Nicotine doesn't, in normal doses, produce a notably altered mental state Right, nicotine doesn't lead to drunk driving. So that makes vaping with nicotine a target for legislation, whereas alcohol is perfectly fine because it leads to a good time? Nicotine also doesn't lead to things like alcohol poisoning, or liver damage.
  - derefr 7y ago
    Nicotine is increasingly being considered a nootropic/cognitive enhancer, and so is likely to become a drug of abuse as a "study drug" for college students, the way Ritalin is today.
- apta 7y ago
  > Isn't this going to make the argument for making teens smoke cigarettes so they can get access to vaping with nicotine? Then simply apply the same to cigarettes. Only current people who smoke can buy them, this paves the way to eliminate it altogether. But unfortunately, greed and money speak more than the health of people.
AmericanChopper 7y ago
> My preference would be for vape liquids containing nicotine to be prescription only for recovering smokers But what if adults just want to vape? Plenty of things are addictive. Sugar, video games, Facebook... if you want to take away somebody freedom to do something I think you’d need a pretty compelling reason. Otherwise why not just have the government tell you when to go to bed, wake up, go to the gym, what to eat, etc.
- aaomidi 7y ago
  It's also stupid because if vaping is difficult would you rather I smoke?
- adjkant 7y ago
  How about requiring companies to produce non-nicotine versions of equal quality? The addictive part is optional, unlike with sugar for example. Video games and Facebook are more of a grey area but removing the addictive elements is more complex to say the least. Let's remove it when we literally know it's one non-essential ingredient.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    Where did you get the idea from that you or anybody else should get to make people’s decisions for them? With smoking, the government decided that the affects were so grievously harmful that they should put serious restrictions in place regulating their sale. You can agree with that or not, but at least there’s some logic to it. Nicotine is not the harmful part of the cigarette, and unless some new information comes to light, vaping isn’t anywhere as harmful as smoking. Where’s your justification for trying to remove people freedom to do it? Because following your line of reasoning to it’s logical conclusion, we’d end up with government mandated lifestyles.
    - adjkant 7y ago
      > Where did you get the idea from that you or anybody else should get to make people’s decisions for them? Where did you get the idea that I made anyone else's decision? I am literally just asking for the option of vaping without nicotine to exist. My theory is only that many people (especially kids without a history of smoking) would choose vaping without nicotine on their own if they had the option. Juul et al know that would drastically shrink their revenue, so they, the profit seeking company they are, made sure their product had an addictive substance in it, and then marketed it to people not already exposed to the addiction. Requiring them to make an equal product without nicotine is at worst market regulation that basically all consumable products go through and at best a public safety mandate.
barry-cotter 7y ago
My god, if this kind of paternalistic shite spreads it won’t be long until we’re back to 30% of the adult population smoking just as a fuck you to puritans.
- EdwardDiego 7y ago
  Natural selection wins, it would seem.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    Smoking has very limited effects on reproductive fitness as it barely effects lifetime fertility, given that almost all of the bad effects generally happen after reproductive age. Natural selection won’t do anything about smoking for the same reason it doesn’t do anything about cancer or heart disease.

lovehashbrowns 7y ago

> My preference would be for vape liquids containing nicotine to be prescription only for recovering smokers. Isn't this going to make the argument for making teens smoke cigarettes so they can get access to vaping with nicotine? And before you say "they're not going to go that far," we can also have a conversation about what underage people will do to get access to alcohol. Also, I'm especially humored by people wanting to put legal restrictions on things like vaping but wont have that same discussion about alcohol, which imo is much more harmful. Alcohol literally is: Yes, bonus that there's less cancer involved, but it' still a monetized addiction.

adjkant 7y ago
I think the flaw in that flow is that no one cares about nicotine, they just want vaping. As long as vaping without nicotine exists, there's no reason to go after the other version. Unless you're already addicted, and in that case, I'd say let's get them the prescription as well.
- lnanek2 7y ago
  > As long as vaping without nicotine exists, there's no reason to go after the other version. That's not true. I find nicotine quite useful for hackathons and the like where I don't want to sleep, but also don't want to visit the restroom as often as red bull or other caffeine options would make me.
  - adjkant 7y ago
    That's an active choice for a specific use case, mind you one that's not healthy to have regularly. If people want nicotine, let's sell its on its own. There is literally no reason to package it into vaping unless you're coming from smoking or are simply trying to hook your customers.
  - EdwardDiego 7y ago
    You may be interested in methamphetamine then... ...personally I'd be worried if I couldn't code without a drug. And yes, I include caffeine in that. However, nicotine is far, far, far more addictive than caffeine, so it really is a different ball game.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Yeah, and I smoked for more than a decade for the great taste and flavor. People vape for nicotine. It’s habit forming, pleasant, either compatible with or actively helpful for normal social and working. Like caffeine. People say they don’t drink tea or coffee for caffeine but there might be one person who drinks decaf or no caffeine tea or coffee with the regularity of all the addicts who know perfectly well that they drink it most every day and feel crap if they don’t.
  - adjkant 7y ago
    If you don't get hooked to start, no habit forming needed. Isn't the point to stop the cycle? You also have to remember that these are teens as young as 9th grade that are doing it for social reasons. Let them play around with some flavored vapor (which seems safe so far, needing more regulation) and walk away without an addition.
newnewpdro 7y ago
And how would minors be filling prescriptions for nicotine juice? Presumably it wouldn't be prescribed to minors, and doctors doing that would risk serious consequences.
- lovehashbrowns 7y ago
  So then what options would minors that have addictions to cigarettes have for getting off of them?
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    This strikes me as quite the edge case, but we have a variety of alternative forms of metered nicotine delivery that are far less recreational, trendy, and photogenic like nicotine gums and patches that doctors can prescribe to assist parents struggling with addicted children.
  - gnicholas 7y ago
    They could allow prescriptions for minors, but require the amount to be ramped down over weeks/months so as not to enable new ongoing addictions.
EdwardDiego 7y ago
> Isn't this going to make the argument for making teens smoke cigarettes so they can get access to vaping with nicotine? And before you say "they're not going to go that far," we can also have a conversation about what underage people will do to get access to alcohol Alcohol is an entirely different animal to nicotine. Nicotine doesn't, in normal doses, produce a notably altered mental state that's strongly associated in society with "having a good time". Alcohol is significantly more attractive because of all its socialisation associations. Also, nicotine is significantly more addictive than alcohol. https://www.health.com/condition/smoking/an-addiction-specialist-explains-nicotines-powerful-hold-over-cigarette-smokers https://www.health.com/condition/smoking/an-addiction-specia...
- lovehashbrowns 7y ago
  > Nicotine doesn't, in normal doses, produce a notably altered mental state Right, nicotine doesn't lead to drunk driving. So that makes vaping with nicotine a target for legislation, whereas alcohol is perfectly fine because it leads to a good time? Nicotine also doesn't lead to things like alcohol poisoning, or liver damage.
- derefr 7y ago
  Nicotine is increasingly being considered a nootropic/cognitive enhancer, and so is likely to become a drug of abuse as a "study drug" for college students, the way Ritalin is today.
apta 7y ago
> Isn't this going to make the argument for making teens smoke cigarettes so they can get access to vaping with nicotine? Then simply apply the same to cigarettes. Only current people who smoke can buy them, this paves the way to eliminate it altogether. But unfortunately, greed and money speak more than the health of people.

AmericanChopper 7y ago

> My preference would be for vape liquids containing nicotine to be prescription only for recovering smokers But what if adults just want to vape? Plenty of things are addictive. Sugar, video games, Facebook... if you want to take away somebody freedom to do something I think you’d need a pretty compelling reason. Otherwise why not just have the government tell you when to go to bed, wake up, go to the gym, what to eat, etc.

aaomidi 7y ago
It's also stupid because if vaping is difficult would you rather I smoke?
adjkant 7y ago
How about requiring companies to produce non-nicotine versions of equal quality? The addictive part is optional, unlike with sugar for example. Video games and Facebook are more of a grey area but removing the addictive elements is more complex to say the least. Let's remove it when we literally know it's one non-essential ingredient.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  Where did you get the idea from that you or anybody else should get to make people’s decisions for them? With smoking, the government decided that the affects were so grievously harmful that they should put serious restrictions in place regulating their sale. You can agree with that or not, but at least there’s some logic to it. Nicotine is not the harmful part of the cigarette, and unless some new information comes to light, vaping isn’t anywhere as harmful as smoking. Where’s your justification for trying to remove people freedom to do it? Because following your line of reasoning to it’s logical conclusion, we’d end up with government mandated lifestyles.
  - adjkant 7y ago
    > Where did you get the idea from that you or anybody else should get to make people’s decisions for them? Where did you get the idea that I made anyone else's decision? I am literally just asking for the option of vaping without nicotine to exist. My theory is only that many people (especially kids without a history of smoking) would choose vaping without nicotine on their own if they had the option. Juul et al know that would drastically shrink their revenue, so they, the profit seeking company they are, made sure their product had an addictive substance in it, and then marketed it to people not already exposed to the addiction. Requiring them to make an equal product without nicotine is at worst market regulation that basically all consumable products go through and at best a public safety mandate.

barry-cotter 7y ago

My god, if this kind of paternalistic shite spreads it won’t be long until we’re back to 30% of the adult population smoking just as a fuck you to puritans.

EdwardDiego 7y ago
Natural selection wins, it would seem.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Smoking has very limited effects on reproductive fitness as it barely effects lifetime fertility, given that almost all of the bad effects generally happen after reproductive age. Natural selection won’t do anything about smoking for the same reason it doesn’t do anything about cancer or heart disease.