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Juul is reportedly laying off 800 to 950 employees
- ars 7y agoI used to see adults smoking these in order to quit regular cigarettes. That stopped a while ago, and now I only see teenagers using them.
- alexandercrohde 7y agoA hundred times better than teenagers smoking.
- karamanolev 7y agoAnd a thousand time worse than teenagers not smoking...
- Gaelan 7y agoIIRC, before Juul teenage smoking was trending down. Now it's going up.
- emilsedgh 7y agoAny sources? That'd be helpful for my verdict!
- nimish 7y agohttps://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/youth-and-tobacco/youth-tobacco-use-results-national-youth-tobacco-survey https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/youth-and-tobacco/youth... Buried but smoking cigarettes was trending down for years then e-cigs, mostly Juul, caused it to skyrocket
- function_seven 7y agoOnly if you count vaping as equal to "smoking cigarettes". The link you shared shows that smoking among that cohort in 2019 was the lowest it has ever been.
- decebalus1 7y agoYou're conflating tobacco use with smoking. The information in the link basically contradicts what you're saying.
- t-writescode 7y agoIn this same article, the tobacco-powered sources of nicotine use are down this in 2019 to 5.8 for high school students. It's up to 2.3 for middle school users, though. e-cig (nicotine and some liquids to make it a vape) is up quite a lot; but, it looks like children are not converting from e-cig use to tobacco use, which was a fear that I had when I was earlier considering e-cigs. My fear was basically that if enough people start using e-cigs and want to "graduate" to tobacco use, then over all tobacco use will increase. That does not seem to be happening in high school students. It's definitely not good that a quarter of highschoolers are indulging in a highly addictive substance; but, I think there are other means of managing that than making the product illegal or tasteless.
- refurb 7y agoBut vaping is not smoking.
- Gaelan 7y agoSorry, no—just my vague recollection. Looks like someone else found one, though.
- elliekelly 7y agoI used to think that, too. Then I read this post[1]. JUUL has more nicotine than a cigarette and there’s less friction to using it: a 10 second hit instead of a 10 minute cigarette and there’s no need to find a lighter or go outside. It also doesn’t really smell so it’s easy to use discretely. All of that adds up to people who think JUUL is safer or can help them quit but it actually gets them hooked even more. It’s like trying to cure a coffee addiction by switching to a shot of espresso. It might look like cutting back but it’s really doubling up. [1]https://gen.medium.com/confessions-of-a-juul-junkie-6b5ce4a8b92e https://gen.medium.com/confessions-of-a-juul-junkie-6b5ce4a8...
- cwkoss 7y agoNicotine doesn't cause chronic disease, though. It's the tar and other toxins that cause the majority of negative effects from smoking.
- function_seven 7y ago> JUUL has more nicotine than a cigarette and there’s less friction to using it: a 10 second hit instead of a 10 minute cigarette and there’s no need to find a lighter or go outside. They chose the nicotine concentration to mimic the delivery of a regular cigarette. Not less or more, but the same. A pod will deliver the same amount of nicotine to a user as 20 cigarettes. A 10-second hit is nowhere near the same as smoking an entire cigarette. It has the same feeling as an equivalent drag on a smoke.
- dlivingston 7y agoWhat you're missing is that nicotine is harmless on its own; in fact, it's commonly used as a "nootropic" (cognitive enhancer) [0]. The true danger of smoking cigarettes is not the nicotine - that's simply the vessel by one gets addicted. The true danger is the tar and other carcinogenic by-products of inhaling a combusted tobacco plant. Anecdotally, I started smoking cigarettes as a university undergraduate. I used Juuls (and other e-cigarettes, both disposable and refillable) to help me quit, and I'm now nicotine and tobacco free. When I smoked cigarettes, I would wake up every morning hacking my lungs out. I smelled awful. I couldn't engage in cardiovascular exercise for longer than a minute. With e-cigarettes, my coughing went away and my lung capacity returned to approximately normal. In fact, I competed in two Spartan Beast races while addicted to e-cigs. Juul is an awful company for marketing towards children, but it's no exaggeration to say that e-cigarettes saved my life. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1579636 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1579636
- BubRoss 7y agoGood god, does anyone at techcrunch ever turn their phone to the side? Even with ad blocking their site is straight up unusable.
- rawrmaan 7y agoWow, no kidding. That is awful.
- artificial 7y agoLet them eat ads.
- toomuchtodo 7y agohttps://outline.com/KHYkU7 https://outline.com/KHYkU7
- burmer 7y agogood.
- notRobot 7y agoThey targeted children with their flavors, colors, branding and advertisements. They are responsible for countless teenagers getting addicted to nicotine. I couldn't care less about anyone who helped make that happen. Scum of the earth.
- nogabebop23 7y agoNo kidding: "the potential for harm reduction for adult smokers while combating underage use." <<insert photo of all the yummy flavors available>> If their mandate was really harm reduction they could do that with a "plain" flavor; that's how we stop the kids in my house from eating all the yogurt.
- sneak 7y agoAdults like yummy flavors too. This “flavored products are for kids” is utter nonsense, designed to vilify a new entrant and distract from the continued functioning of the tobacco industry. Smoking kills half its users. It is one of the great tragedies of our time that tobacco companies got vaping lumped in with smoking and its harms, when it is at least two orders of magnitude safer.
- BubRoss 7y agoYou can't be serious. Juul is not being villified for just having flavors, they are being villified for marketing to kids. https://www.businessinsider.com/juul-congress-e-cigs-target-teens-students-testimony-2019-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/juul-congress-e-cigs-target-... "The memo accused Juul of knowingly marketing products to teens by holding programs at schools and camps and recruiting teens as "Juul influencers."" "The hearing's testimony included claims that a Juul representative once visited a high-school classroom and told students that Juul e-cigarettes were "totally safe," according to a memo from congressional investigators."
- t-writescode 7y agoThat’s fair, but then focus on that and not the flavors. I’ll happily continue drinking my fruity loops flavored vodka and enjoying its taste.
- xiaolingxiao 7y agoHow does this affect employees who have options but have yet to fully vest? Under standard terms, can they sell their options immediately assuming the have cash on hand and there is a market?
- chimeracoder 7y ago> Under standard terms, can they sell their options Under standard terms, options can't be sold, ever. Shares that were purchased from options that were early-exercised and have not vested can be forcibly repurchased at the company's choice (not employee's choice) upon termination. Shares that were purchased from options that had already vested can only be sold if there's a secondary market at that moment, but presumably Juul is not laying off a thousand employees at the same time as it's raising external money, so no.
- xiaolingxiao 7y agoMy apologies, somewhat new to the details of this. > ... can be forcibly repurchased at the company's choice ... For the sake of argument, what is the repurchase price here, and if the company "repurchase" it, does the money go to the employees?
- alexpetralia 7y agoIt is detailed in the Employee Stock Plan. I believe it is often the share price on the date of grant (yes, when you started; yes, it is a good deal for the company). Nobody reads the Employee Stock Plan however, and companies can behave pretty poorly (but legally) as a result. For the curious, you will commonly see such onerous terms in YC startups: https://www.clerky.com/yc-stock-plan-forms https://www.clerky.com/yc-stock-plan-forms
- xiaolingxiao 7y agohmm... so just to be absolutely clear: employees who purchased shares before the excercise date will actually lose money if the company forcefully repurchase it back
- adaisadais 7y agoWild, typically during economic downturns companies that sell things like alcohol and nicotine see an uptick. But as a millennial myself I do see fewer and fewer of my friends purchasing Juul / pods.
- TaylorGood 7y agoFrom what I've seen lately, the JUUL crowd has moved to disposables, one brand called PUFF.
- adaisadais 7y agoI think the horror of “popcorn lung” and other maladies have also scared many away.
- clomond 7y agoIt makes sense to me that their business specifically would be impacted here by corona. With Juul use being impacted with the lack of social outings/nightlife eliminating many social use cases. Anecdotally, most consumption I've seen has been within contexts which have since been restricted. As well, given people's concerns about keeping their lungs healthy, I imagine 'discretionary' consumption of vapes would be down as well.
- mandelbrotwurst 7y agoIt could also go up if more people are trying to quit smoking.
- 013a 7y agoAnecdotally, the few vapers I have spoken to have, actually, substantially increased their consumption. At home all day, nothing to do, vaping is something you can pair with anything else. This has been corroborated with casual conversations with a local vape shop owner; they've never done better business, at least until the actual "shut your in-person shops down" a couple weeks ago here. People want to stock up, and they're consuming more. People quitting with the goal of keeping their lungs healthy may have an impact, but you could similarly move up the "addiction" chain and reasonably say that there's got to be a decent number of smokers who are looking at this coronavirus as the sign from god they needed to begin quitting. Juul, and vapes in general, are that next step. My suspicion is that this has little to do with the coronavirus, and more to do with lingering effects from the government pressure months ago. Juul stopped production of every decent flavor they had. Even long time Juul users I know have moved on from Juul and on to other products. They're, in essence, the lightning rod of the industry. Kids don't vape Juul anymore; they haven't for months. They're on cali bars, or even devices like the suorin air. Are those going to get the same pressure Juul did? Probably not. The zeitgeist has moved on.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- trekrich 7y agoJuul was sold to a big tobacco firm, cannot recall the name now. But they bought it to rid of it so they sell their new ecig machine.
- catalogia 7y agoThe tobacco company formerly known as Philip Morris. (Altria)
- asdff 7y agoThey are mutually exclusive. Altria is the parent company. Like Alphabet and Google.
- catalogia 7y ago> Altria Group, Inc. (previously known as Philip Morris Companies, Inc.) The distinction you're making is meaningless because it's all the same group of assholes. They decided to play cute tricks with their branding because the general public came to recognize them as assholes. It's no different than the mercenary company 'Blackwater' rebranding itself to 'Academi' after it became notorious.
- EForEndeavour 7y ago> It's no different than the mercenary company 'Blackwater' rebranding itself to 'Academi' after it became notorious. Wow, I'd totally missed that. Going full 180 from the comically evil-sounding Blackwater to the modern and vaguely nerdy Academi, complete with hipster-friendly spelling variant, sounds like something straight out of a comedy sketch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi
- dredmorbius 7y agoDo you remember "Xe"?
- philtar 7y agoThe most surprising thing here is that they had that many employees to begin with.
- black6 7y agoAll part of the plan following their acquisition by Altria (Phillip Morris). Altria already had the IQOS in development and the vape companies were eating into their customer base. By purchasing Juul Altria could publicly act as a vaping proponent while working behind the scenes to maintain Big Tobacco’s control over nicotine. Small, bathtub style operations locally cranking out custom vape juice flavors had to be shuttered. Enter the rash of negative press surrounding vaping and government intervention in the market (vitamin E acetate as the carrier for illicit THC and CBD vape juice was the ultimate culprit, not “e-cigarettes”). The small operations are not able to afford the expensive licensing required for each flavor, and states really aren’t interested in giving up the future money from Big Tobacco, against which they’ve issued bonds. This is a long play made by Altria, and watching it come to fruition has been amazing.
- wilg 7y agoJuul time
- ChrisArchitect 7y agowhat do <puff> all these <puff> employees do?<exhale large cloud of gross sweet smoke> Sorry I can't stop puffing on this thing while I type.