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When a company moves its HQ from its former home to Washington, you know it's become a regulatory / lobbying firm and not a technology or product-focused compan
by supernova87a 7y ago
When a company moves its HQ from its former home to Washington, you know it's become a regulatory / lobbying firm and not a technology or product-focused company.
- paxys 7y agoIt was never a technology company. It's biggest function was marketing, and now it is going to be lobbying.
- musicale 7y agoIts biggest innovation was figuring out how to avoid tobacco regulations, and it does seem likely that Washington is the next battleground on that front.
- alden_penny 7y agoIt's biggest innovation was ensuring tobacco regulations for everyone else while making sure it didn't apply to them.
- pjscott 7y agoI'm not sure it's even possible for a nicotine company to stay successful for very long without a big lobbying effort. As soon as they're a big enough brand, they become a juicy target for political interference from the usual bootleggers-and-baptists combo of anti-tobacco activists and competing tobacco companies.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- at_a_remove 7y agoSan Francisco banned e-cigs as of 2020. I could certainly see Juul wanting to leave in that case.
- paulie_a 7y agoWhy? It seems short-sighted because it increases regular smoking. Plus no one cares about the ban. You can literally get away using a juul (or other device) on an airplane discretely.
- erispoe 7y agoBecause Juul gets teens addicted to nicotine, and this outweights the public health benefits or providing an alternative to cigarettes for adult cigarette addicts.
- stronglikedan 7y ago> this outweights the public health benefits or providing an alternative to cigarettes for adult cigarette addicts No way. It's not the e-cigs - those are vastly more helpful than harmful overall. It's Juul specifically - they're the bad player in the game. Not the only one, but the biggest of the handful - most e-cig companies just want to sell within the rules. No need to cut off the nose to spite the face. That would be detrimental.
- dantheman 7y agoYeah - that's not true.
- JamesBarney 7y agoThe UK government agencies opinion is that e-cigarettes are about 1/20th the risk of smoking. So if 1% of teens switch from smoking to vaping and 19% of teens start vaping it's a wash from a public health standpoint. And the numbers are far better than this which means it's a public health benefit.
- paulie_a 7y agoI disagree. 1300 deaths from actually smoking per day sounds way worse than 2000 people getting hospitaled and 33 deaths per YEAR And banning vaping has increased good old fashioned cigs in teens. Teens are going to smoke or vape. Pick your poison.
- LatteLazy 7y agoJuul sort of has to to survive though. Big tobacco wont tolerate an actual competitor.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y agoBut juul is big tobacco?
- gregw134 7y agoAltria owns a 35 percent stake in them, so their interests are definitely aligned.
- thawaway1837 7y agoJuul is a huge opportunity for big tobacco. It’s a way to get the kids hooked and make them life long customers.
- totalZero 7y agoJuul is not an alternative to Big Tobacco. It is just another member of the club, facing the same kind of existential regulatory pressure as the other major participants in the industry. And as mentioned by others, Altria owns a third of the company.
- owlninja 7y agoPossibly not for long: https://www.barrons.com/articles/altria-group-must-unwind-its-troubled-juul-labs-stake-ftc-says-51585848654 https://www.barrons.com/articles/altria-group-must-unwind-it...
- slfnflctd 7y agoExactly. From what I understand, they're trying to get all vape products heavily taxed like cigarettes (which states are chomping at the bit to do because of declining revenue from that sector)-- they can simply sell their stuff at break-even or a loss for a while until all competition is dead. Voila! A new monopoly is born.
- WJW 7y agoHow much technology is there in e-cigarettes anyway? It's basically a small electric heater and a battery.
- leetcrew 7y agojuul pods are more sophisticated than you might think. the circuitry monitors the resistance change of the heating coil to estimate its temperature and adjusts the power to hit a target. this stops the wick from burning if it's dry (very unpleasant for the user) and delivers a consistent experience mostly independent of airflow over the coil. it takes a lot of engineering effort to make that work in such a small form factor and cheap enough to be disposable.
- ulfw 7y agoWhat was ever 'tech' about Juul?
- uptown 7y agoTheir valuation!