37 ms·

FDA to order Juul e-cigarettes off U.S. market

418 points by kgwgk 4y ago

MrPatan 4y ago
What's the excuse of the FDA then to allow tobacco?
giterdone 4y ago
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.
nathias 4y ago
well they wouldn't want people to stop smoking now would they
dustractor 4y ago
Looking forward to not seeing gutters full of those usb-stick-looking cartridges.
- cwkoss 4y ago
  Looking forward to seeing 20x more cigarette butts instead?
scarface74 4y ago
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.
keithwhor 4y ago
It's truly surprising to me how cartoonishly evil everybody in the tobacco / nicotine industry seems to be.
- xtracto 4y ago
  I think it is a matter of "optimization" ... Private companies are known to be relentless optimizers. A company that sells substances/products that do not have any objective whatsoever other than generate addiction, will attract the worse kind of people. Like, people who are in "known" Evil companies like Oracle, Nestle, Northrop Grumman, and others, can find a "good light" justification/spin to what they are doing. We make databases, we bottle water to send to people, we sell Freedom. But tobacco/nicotine? There's no other reason why someone will get a job in that supply chain other than "I want to make money while fucking up people's lives"
  - ausbah 4y ago
    repeat customers are a highly sought after business outcome, users that are literally addicted to your product seems like something every business would desire
standardUser 4y ago
I wish we would stop arguing about what is "safe" and "not safe" and instead focus on the actual issue here, which is addiction. Nicotine is wildly addictive to a lot of people and that addiction is the primacy cause of the harm done from all nicotine products. Taking a drag off a cigarette isn't bad for your health in any measurable way. It's the compulsively dragging of a cigarette throughout each and every day for years, due to an acute addiction, that results in the actual harm down the line.
- xanaxagoras 4y ago
  Now do alcohol.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
At this point the effects of obesity are probably much worse than smoking at the moment. In our live and let live - don’t judge anyone culture, who cares if people are smoking this?
- cma 4y ago
  Both probably combine badly. Nicotine with obesity is probably way worse if it messes with circulatory system or heart.
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    Maybe their goal isn’t to live forever?
betwixthewires 4y ago
Juul 1000% marketed their products to children. Altria (formerly Phillip Morris) also did the same thing with cigarettes for generations. Juul then goes on to lobby the government to pull the ladder up behind them, successfully, by accusing it's competitors of doing what it did and drumming up fear of problems it created. This company and it's parent company are poster children for what's wrong with the corporate world. If you vape, you should seriously consider ditching all these disposable finished products and just making coils and fluid yourself. It's cheaper (on the order of $100 a year) and you'll throw away less plastic and actually be able to know what it is you're inhaling. And as a bonus, these scum companies won't get any of your money.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > Juul […] marketed their products to children. And there's lots of data to back this up: https://tobacco-img.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/21231836/JUUL_Marketing_Stanford.pdf https://tobacco-img.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/...
- julienb_sea 4y ago
  Juul has taken a lot of active steps to eliminate this portion of their business. At this point there are myriad fruit-forwards disposable competitors eating their lunch. See elf bars etc. Banning Juul is utterly irrelevant at this point and nothing more than retroactive punishment.
  - abracadaniel 4y ago
    What would non-retroactive punishment look like? Allowing corporations to suffer actual consequences for their actions seems like something we could do with a lot more of.
- soared 4y ago
  I trust juul more than literally any online (or in store) nicotine juice seller.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/QHDHl https://archive.ph/QHDHl
altgeek 4y ago
This is a gift to the mafia and the DEA. The cat is way out of the bag at this point.
ethagknight 4y ago
>> Last year, Juul reported a net loss of $259 million and an 11% decline in sales to $1.3 billion, according to a disclosure the company made to employees. What on earth.
- pineconewarrior 4y ago
  This is so bizarre to me. Accounting and finance on a large scale is all shenanigans I say.
mberning 4y ago
More nanny state shenanigans from a completely impotent administration. What do you think the headline will be a year or two from now? Kids dying from gray market juul pods? Or perhaps kids are vaping way more to get the same fix? They recently crushed the automotive aftermarket cracking down on tuning software for cars and trucks. I can no longer delete an emissions code from my ECU, but I can still put a giant turbo and 4x larger fuel injectors on it no problem. Sadly a large portion of our government is run by fools who accomplish the exact opposite of their aim.
- wollsmoth 4y ago
  I think everyone is just going to use other vapes and move on.
dghughes 4y ago
Anyone I knew who smoked traditional tobacco but then switched to e-cigarettes to help them quit are still quitting years later.
- toolz 4y ago
  I know a handful of heavy smokers that have been off cigarettes and now only vape, varying from being off cigarettes for many years to a few months.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  E-cigarettes are 20 to 100 times less harmful so even if that was true it would be an unalloyed good. I stopped smoking with e-cigarettes.
- kimbernator 4y ago
  So you're saying they haven't been having cigarettes for years? Sounds like a pretty big improvement
jquery 4y ago
I quit vaping a couple years ago and the subjective positive health benefits were immense. It seems nicotine by itself has plenty of negative effects: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/ My vaping usage was out of control, I was heavily vaping daily.
lpa22 4y ago
It blows my mind that they shot themselves in the foot by marketing to kids. They never needed to do that. Kids would've gotten their hands on them just the same. Kids have been smoking cigarettes in school bathrooms since the beginning of time. JUUL was just incredibly incompetent in contrast with the high quality of their product.
43543523435435 4y ago
caymanjim 4y ago
Between this and the White House announcement that they want to limit the amount of nicotine in cigarettes, I'd invest in tobacco companies. People are about to start smoking a lot more cigarettes.
- gkoberger 4y ago
  I mean, sure, "get your bag" as the kids say. But attempting to profit by betting on the deaths of fellow humans just feels like the definition of "late stage capitalism".
  - caymanjim 4y ago
    My point is that these efforts will backfire and people will smoke more cigarettes.
    - gkoberger 4y ago
      Yes, I get it.
- LeafItAlone 4y ago
  Or, alternatively, see the writing on the wall and foresee what next steps will come, like in other countries. Doesn't seem like a long term investment.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    It’s a growth market for suppliers of illegal products. Going to be interesting seeing smuggled Mexican cigarettes appear all over the US.
gerdesj 4y ago
I managed to give up fags over four years ago after 30 odd years of smoking around 20+ a day. I'm still quite surprised that I managed it but in retrospect I did a mental job on myself - you have to be hard but in the end it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be. If I can, you can but you need to find your strategy. Initially I thought that I'd transition to e-fags and climb down from there. Nope. You are trading one habit with another - it doesn't matter if a e-fag cloud is better for you it is still not good and keeps you tethered to smoking. I think it would be quite easy to go back to tobacco if you "allow" yourself to vape as a transition. I rapidly realised that once I started down the abstinence route I had to be very hard with myself. It wasn't actually that bad in the end. I came up with two mantras that I repeated to myself in my head whenever I really wanted to smoke: they were - "I don't want to smell" and "I don't want to die". They are pretty self explanatory. I did and sometimes still have dreams about smoking. It is a very insidious habit. I was a smoker for 30 years so it is obviously still a part of my life at age 52 but it is fading and I rarely have to say my mantras these days. I had another strategy too, which helped in the short term: I started my give up, in the early afternoon of day one (Easter 2018 as it turns out) and had a very long lie in on day two. That got me to over 24 hours with minimal stress. I then progressed to a series of time based targets: A day (tick), two days ... a week ... two weeks ... (tried a drag on daughter in law's fag - no thanks) ... a month ... two months (weird dreams) ... six months ... etc ... four years.
- jakzurr 4y ago
  My dad quit smoking about 50 years ago. (2 weeks chopping wood in backyard, mostly not speaking to anyone.) When my brother-in-law decided to quit about 30 years ago, he asked my dad when the craving would quit - Dad told him, "It's not quite so bad after 2-3 years." I think Mark Twain said it best, "Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it hundreds of times." Or something like that.
  - gerdesj 4y ago
    You are spot on mate. Now imagine how hard giving up heroin might be. I think there are loads of decent approaches to giving up ciggies, from your dad's work out in the woods to my mental thingie. Getting out from fags is really hard - they are sooooo cool etc. Mr Twain is correct for those that don't get it right. Me and your dad did get out and it's really fucking hard. Really hard. Me and your dad have something in common - we are still alive and fucking kicking.
cat_plus_plus 4y ago
It's purely political - you can smoke all the pot you want in California, but vaping tobacco is off limits. Sure any regular use of nicotine is not good for you, but it doesn't make you an unsafe driver, impair you to the point of making bad decisions, start fires or affect strangers (provided that there are vape free restaurants, workspaces and so on). Objectively alcohol causes more harm than either tobacco, pot or guns, but no constituency in US is demanding restrictions so here goes. Middle East is a different matter. In general, I don't want any of these things to be banned, and they have positives as well as negatives. For example, alcohol is a social lubricant that promotes social connection and cooperation that would not have happened before. But especially FDA targeting tobacco users while turning blind eye to a million other unhealthy/socially disruptive things is a clear sign that their decisions are motivated by whoever is in charge of FDA at the moment rather than any imparcial signs. So if anyone is wondering why so many people don't trust what they have to say about masks or vaccines - here you go.
shmoe 4y ago
Cold turkey after 10 years on 1/2/2007 -- the money is what did it for me.
capybara_2020 4y ago
As someone who quit smoking using ecigs this saddens me. Yes Juul was one of the worst options out there, but it was the flavored tasty ejuices that got me off cigs. I did a pack or two for 10-15 years. Could not stop cold turkey, hands used to shake so bad I could not even hold a full cup, plus a whole host of other issues. Tried 3 times. Started with nicotine and then gradually reduced with ecigs at the peak of covid. Covid also helped in that I was stuck at home. Took me 3 months but I stopped. Now I just tell people I am not a smoker. That mindset shift also helped keep me off cigs. But ecigs can be equally/more addictive. On rare occasions, I want a nicotine hit, I do not think of smoking cigs, I want to vape. It is sad to see others will not have the option with ecigs being banned across countries.
djohnston 4y ago
With the baby formula failures, approvals of basically useless and extremely expensive Alzheimer's medication, and this, I'm pretty sure the FDA is completely compromised at this point and should be circumvented.
FractalHQ 4y ago
My Juul is the only thing that helped me stop smoking after 10 years. My health has improved by orders of magnitude from years with a Juul. If the government takes this away from me I’m going to sue them and move to Canada.
EricE 4y ago
That the government is going after nicotine and handing out crack pipes and legalizing weed says volumes.
sealthedeal 4y ago
I mean honestly how many adults just decide "Im going to start smoking cigs". If I had to bet, I would say 80% of all smokers began smoking when they teenagers. Teens are still developing and cannot make proper "adult" decisions. Big tobacco whether they want to admit it or not knows they must go after teens because if they don't trying to convince a 35 year old with three kids to start doing something that they have never done is damn near impossible... Its the same strategy that some companies use where they work with the earliest stage companies, i.e. Stripe, and they grow with them. In an extremely perverted view, big tobacco just wants to grow with their customers hahaha.
aurizon 4y ago
The question is:- Is this the lobbying result of big tobacco (BT)who see vaping/juul as an 'existential threat' We know nicotine is a mild and slightly habit forming drug that is deemed so mild in risk and effect as to attract no limiting regulations, like Rx needed and driving while.... It seems to me that Juul initially wanted to mimic smoking cosmetically as well as pharmacologically viz:- the vapor cloud additives initially added to create clouds of white smoke when used - like the outlawed red tipped candy cigarettes sold until some decades ago that kids put in their mouths until adult attention was drawn - whereupon 'you et it' Ha Ha. So Juul acted idiotically IMHO and all their efforts came to nought - as we saw today. BT smiles and girds it's loins for the battle to come!! All that is needed is a safe delivery vehicle - suckable pills seem to work, same with holders you draw through that disperse a metered amount into the air stream. None of these involve vapor clouds - some have heated filaments that volatise a carrier solvent along with nicotine (a risk as it involves inhaling the volatiles - which has already hurt some people. The thing is:- does the FDA want less combustion based smoking for safety (= a good) or do they want less vaping with inhaled additives (= a good for BT) So nicotine content will be limited, and pepperminty Kools will also be limited.(= Bad for BT). I do not smoke at all, but tend to be live and let live in the case of pills/lozenges by mouth. I am warier about anything that gets nicotine into the inhaled air stream with a carrier solvent unless that solvent is carefully assessed and tested to be 100% safe. Some of the earlier carriers caused deaths via carrier solvent! https://www.healthline.com/health-news/lung-vaping-disease-now-called-evali https://www.healthline.com/health-news/lung-vaping-disease-n... There is some linkage to THC vaping as the same diluent/carrier is often used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_vaping_lung_...
tlhunter 4y ago
I look forward to not finding hard plastic empty Juul pods discarded on the ground.
jgerrish 4y ago
Maybe some very fucking smart people at the FDA know this will backfire. Thus increasing demand for e-cigarettes. Of course, that's crazy talk. Ignoring that different young smokers will have different authority relationships and will require different guidance methods. Which is not an insignificant factor and not fucking lost on me. I'd have to accept something like that reputations matter. Whether you're respected in the community. Whether you're a rebel or a straightedge. And whether you're the right kind of rebel... Man, what if that was true? And then you were told your own reputation doesn't matter. Just be proud. It'd be like a kick in the teeth. Somehow we got condoms to be acceptable (to most groups, again setting aside bug chasers, certain populations mistrustful of public health and edge cases) without resorting to this. It's just insane looking at the future, because we are moving backwards.
BryanBeshore 4y ago
So, let me get this straight. Our government is ok with Marijuana but not ok with nicotine? Amazing times we live in.
- dvtrn 4y ago
  MJ is still illegal at the federal level, though?
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  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. https://tobaccofreelife.org/resources/marijuana-vs-tobacco/ https://tobaccofreelife.org/resources/marijuana-vs-tobacco/
  - radlad 4y ago
    It's worth noting that tobacco is not nicotine, and Juul is not tobacco.
    - FreqSep 4y ago
      And Juuls additionally are not “smoking” - it operates at a much lower temperature than combustion in a typical cigarette.
      - maxbond 4y ago
        After around (some number of) people died from vaping Vitamin A Acetate, I don't think we should really make a distinction anymore. (I originally said 1k, which appears to have been misremembering.)
        pizza 4y ago
        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.
bm3719 4y ago
If you ever wondered whether the tobacco industry still has plenty of politicians in their pockets, now you know.
- LeafItAlone 4y ago
  Juul is owned by in part Altria, formerly Philip Morris Companies, Inc.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altria How does this help them?
- Veen 4y ago
  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.
  - mjthrowaway1 4y ago
    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.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- mattkrause 4y ago
  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).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
pclark 4y ago
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.
- lumost 4y ago
  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.
mrtksn 4y ago
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.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  Congrats on quitting smoking!
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    Thanks! Starting smoking was the worst thing I did to myself and I'm very happy about successfully quitting.
- otabdeveloper4 4y ago
  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.
  - pizza 4y ago
    Why do you think this?
    - otabdeveloper4 4y ago
      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.
_bohm 4y ago
https://archive.ph/J5JqF https://archive.ph/J5JqF
- adamrezich 4y ago
  wow, that is a comically short article to hide behind a paywall. three meager paragraphs more than the preview!
willcipriano 4y ago
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?
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  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.
  - SkyBelow 4y ago
    >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.
fosk 4y ago
Let me get this straight: the FDA is banning e-cigarettes but not actual cigarettes? What a bunch of clowns.
- dilap 4y ago
  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.)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - 0des 4y ago
    Europe has about half the nicotine of american cigarettes and maybe double the smokers. That makes no sense to me.
  - sbcd 4y ago
    >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.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
water554 4y ago
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.
- silksowed 4y ago
  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?
  - dkn775 4y ago
    Try jewel mint
- pc86 4y ago
  You should just stop smoking instead. 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.
  - johnisgood 4y ago
    > You should just stop smoking instead. 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?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
atomicbeanie 4y ago
My god, about time. Given the war on drugs' history this is just astonishing.
sudden_dystopia 4y ago
But let me guess, RJ Reynolds’s vape device is not being pulled…
_spduchamp 4y ago
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/ https://edgeguides.solidus.io/
humanistbot 4y ago
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.
- phabricator 4y ago
  No that isn't the reason, from TFA: > 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.
- krolden 4y ago
  I see paywalls here quite often and it drives me nuts
drugstorecowboy 4y ago
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.
- wollsmoth 4y ago
  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.
  - drugstorecowboy 4y ago
    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?
    - wollsmoth 4y ago
      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.
winternett 4y ago
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.
- vdnkh 4y ago
  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.
rhexs 4y ago
Can’t wait to see which senators family members shorted Juul recently.
sinsdflkjf 4y ago
weezin 4y ago
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.
- betwixthewires 4y ago
  1) many states have already raised the vaping and smoking age to 21, 2) I don't know a single human being who drinks who did not drink in high school. Same applies to smoking and vaping.
  - mywittyname 4y ago
    > 2) Maybe I'm just a lame nerd, but I didn't drink in high school.
    - notRobot 4y ago
      Same. Also holds true for many friends of mine.
    - vonseel 4y ago
      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.
  - weezin 4y ago
    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.
ChrisArchitect 4y ago
stop breathing your juul all over me in an airborne pandemic. Smoking flat out sucks in public, anywhere.
- parenthesis 4y ago
  Getting a waft of cotton-candy-ass-flavoured vape air somehow offends me more than regular John-Wayne-armpit cigarette smoke.
- millzlane 4y ago
  Everyone is breathing all over you in an airborne pandemic. With vapes it's visualized. It's like wind tunnel fog but from peoples mouths.
- samatman 4y ago
  Because you can see an exhalation, you think it's more dangerous. This is just witchcraft. You aren't a serious person.
  - dang 4y ago
    Whoa—you've been breaking the site guidelines a ton lately. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31843933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31843933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31834903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31834903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31824727 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Consultant32452 4y ago
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?
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > 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.)
  - Consultant32452 4y ago
    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.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Why specifically go after tobacco when we're moving towards legalizing/decriminalizing everything else? Why impose standards on tobacco when we are moving towards standards rather than prohibition on everything else?
      - int_19h 4y ago
        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.

418 points by kgwgk 4y ago

What's the excuse of the FDA then to allow tobacco?

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.

nathias 4y ago

well they wouldn't want people to stop smoking now would they

dustractor 4y ago

Looking forward to not seeing gutters full of those usb-stick-looking cartridges.

cwkoss 4y ago
Looking forward to seeing 20x more cigarette butts instead?

scarface74 4y ago

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.

keithwhor 4y ago

It's truly surprising to me how cartoonishly evil everybody in the tobacco / nicotine industry seems to be.

xtracto 4y ago
I think it is a matter of "optimization" ... Private companies are known to be relentless optimizers. A company that sells substances/products that do not have any objective whatsoever other than generate addiction, will attract the worse kind of people. Like, people who are in "known" Evil companies like Oracle, Nestle, Northrop Grumman, and others, can find a "good light" justification/spin to what they are doing. We make databases, we bottle water to send to people, we sell Freedom. But tobacco/nicotine? There's no other reason why someone will get a job in that supply chain other than "I want to make money while fucking up people's lives"
- ausbah 4y ago
  repeat customers are a highly sought after business outcome, users that are literally addicted to your product seems like something every business would desire

standardUser 4y ago

I wish we would stop arguing about what is "safe" and "not safe" and instead focus on the actual issue here, which is addiction. Nicotine is wildly addictive to a lot of people and that addiction is the primacy cause of the harm done from all nicotine products. Taking a drag off a cigarette isn't bad for your health in any measurable way. It's the compulsively dragging of a cigarette throughout each and every day for years, due to an acute addiction, that results in the actual harm down the line.

xanaxagoras 4y ago
Now do alcohol.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

At this point the effects of obesity are probably much worse than smoking at the moment. In our live and let live - don’t judge anyone culture, who cares if people are smoking this?

cma 4y ago
Both probably combine badly. Nicotine with obesity is probably way worse if it messes with circulatory system or heart.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  Maybe their goal isn’t to live forever?

betwixthewires 4y ago

Juul 1000% marketed their products to children. Altria (formerly Phillip Morris) also did the same thing with cigarettes for generations. Juul then goes on to lobby the government to pull the ladder up behind them, successfully, by accusing it's competitors of doing what it did and drumming up fear of problems it created. This company and it's parent company are poster children for what's wrong with the corporate world. If you vape, you should seriously consider ditching all these disposable finished products and just making coils and fluid yourself. It's cheaper (on the order of $100 a year) and you'll throw away less plastic and actually be able to know what it is you're inhaling. And as a bonus, these scum companies won't get any of your money.

CharlesW 4y ago
> Juul […] marketed their products to children. And there's lots of data to back this up: https://tobacco-img.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/21231836/JUUL_Marketing_Stanford.pdf https://tobacco-img.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/...
julienb_sea 4y ago
Juul has taken a lot of active steps to eliminate this portion of their business. At this point there are myriad fruit-forwards disposable competitors eating their lunch. See elf bars etc. Banning Juul is utterly irrelevant at this point and nothing more than retroactive punishment.
- abracadaniel 4y ago
  What would non-retroactive punishment look like? Allowing corporations to suffer actual consequences for their actions seems like something we could do with a lot more of.
soared 4y ago
I trust juul more than literally any online (or in store) nicotine juice seller.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.ph/QHDHl https://archive.ph/QHDHl

altgeek 4y ago

This is a gift to the mafia and the DEA. The cat is way out of the bag at this point.

ethagknight 4y ago

>> Last year, Juul reported a net loss of $259 million and an 11% decline in sales to $1.3 billion, according to a disclosure the company made to employees. What on earth.

pineconewarrior 4y ago
This is so bizarre to me. Accounting and finance on a large scale is all shenanigans I say.

mberning 4y ago

More nanny state shenanigans from a completely impotent administration. What do you think the headline will be a year or two from now? Kids dying from gray market juul pods? Or perhaps kids are vaping way more to get the same fix? They recently crushed the automotive aftermarket cracking down on tuning software for cars and trucks. I can no longer delete an emissions code from my ECU, but I can still put a giant turbo and 4x larger fuel injectors on it no problem. Sadly a large portion of our government is run by fools who accomplish the exact opposite of their aim.

wollsmoth 4y ago
I think everyone is just going to use other vapes and move on.

dghughes 4y ago

Anyone I knew who smoked traditional tobacco but then switched to e-cigarettes to help them quit are still quitting years later.

toolz 4y ago
I know a handful of heavy smokers that have been off cigarettes and now only vape, varying from being off cigarettes for many years to a few months.
barry-cotter 4y ago
E-cigarettes are 20 to 100 times less harmful so even if that was true it would be an unalloyed good. I stopped smoking with e-cigarettes.
kimbernator 4y ago
So you're saying they haven't been having cigarettes for years? Sounds like a pretty big improvement

jquery 4y ago

I quit vaping a couple years ago and the subjective positive health benefits were immense. It seems nicotine by itself has plenty of negative effects: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/ My vaping usage was out of control, I was heavily vaping daily.

lpa22 4y ago

It blows my mind that they shot themselves in the foot by marketing to kids. They never needed to do that. Kids would've gotten their hands on them just the same. Kids have been smoking cigarettes in school bathrooms since the beginning of time. JUUL was just incredibly incompetent in contrast with the high quality of their product.

43543523435435 4y ago

caymanjim 4y ago

Between this and the White House announcement that they want to limit the amount of nicotine in cigarettes, I'd invest in tobacco companies. People are about to start smoking a lot more cigarettes.

gkoberger 4y ago
I mean, sure, "get your bag" as the kids say. But attempting to profit by betting on the deaths of fellow humans just feels like the definition of "late stage capitalism".
- caymanjim 4y ago
  My point is that these efforts will backfire and people will smoke more cigarettes.
  - gkoberger 4y ago
    Yes, I get it.
LeafItAlone 4y ago
Or, alternatively, see the writing on the wall and foresee what next steps will come, like in other countries. Doesn't seem like a long term investment.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  It’s a growth market for suppliers of illegal products. Going to be interesting seeing smuggled Mexican cigarettes appear all over the US.

gerdesj 4y ago

I managed to give up fags over four years ago after 30 odd years of smoking around 20+ a day. I'm still quite surprised that I managed it but in retrospect I did a mental job on myself - you have to be hard but in the end it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be. If I can, you can but you need to find your strategy. Initially I thought that I'd transition to e-fags and climb down from there. Nope. You are trading one habit with another - it doesn't matter if a e-fag cloud is better for you it is still not good and keeps you tethered to smoking. I think it would be quite easy to go back to tobacco if you "allow" yourself to vape as a transition. I rapidly realised that once I started down the abstinence route I had to be very hard with myself. It wasn't actually that bad in the end. I came up with two mantras that I repeated to myself in my head whenever I really wanted to smoke: they were - "I don't want to smell" and "I don't want to die". They are pretty self explanatory. I did and sometimes still have dreams about smoking. It is a very insidious habit. I was a smoker for 30 years so it is obviously still a part of my life at age 52 but it is fading and I rarely have to say my mantras these days. I had another strategy too, which helped in the short term: I started my give up, in the early afternoon of day one (Easter 2018 as it turns out) and had a very long lie in on day two. That got me to over 24 hours with minimal stress. I then progressed to a series of time based targets: A day (tick), two days ... a week ... two weeks ... (tried a drag on daughter in law's fag - no thanks) ... a month ... two months (weird dreams) ... six months ... etc ... four years.

jakzurr 4y ago
My dad quit smoking about 50 years ago. (2 weeks chopping wood in backyard, mostly not speaking to anyone.) When my brother-in-law decided to quit about 30 years ago, he asked my dad when the craving would quit - Dad told him, "It's not quite so bad after 2-3 years." I think Mark Twain said it best, "Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it hundreds of times." Or something like that.
- gerdesj 4y ago
  You are spot on mate. Now imagine how hard giving up heroin might be. I think there are loads of decent approaches to giving up ciggies, from your dad's work out in the woods to my mental thingie. Getting out from fags is really hard - they are sooooo cool etc. Mr Twain is correct for those that don't get it right. Me and your dad did get out and it's really fucking hard. Really hard. Me and your dad have something in common - we are still alive and fucking kicking.

cat_plus_plus 4y ago

It's purely political - you can smoke all the pot you want in California, but vaping tobacco is off limits. Sure any regular use of nicotine is not good for you, but it doesn't make you an unsafe driver, impair you to the point of making bad decisions, start fires or affect strangers (provided that there are vape free restaurants, workspaces and so on). Objectively alcohol causes more harm than either tobacco, pot or guns, but no constituency in US is demanding restrictions so here goes. Middle East is a different matter. In general, I don't want any of these things to be banned, and they have positives as well as negatives. For example, alcohol is a social lubricant that promotes social connection and cooperation that would not have happened before. But especially FDA targeting tobacco users while turning blind eye to a million other unhealthy/socially disruptive things is a clear sign that their decisions are motivated by whoever is in charge of FDA at the moment rather than any imparcial signs. So if anyone is wondering why so many people don't trust what they have to say about masks or vaccines - here you go.

shmoe 4y ago

Cold turkey after 10 years on 1/2/2007 -- the money is what did it for me.

capybara_2020 4y ago

As someone who quit smoking using ecigs this saddens me. Yes Juul was one of the worst options out there, but it was the flavored tasty ejuices that got me off cigs. I did a pack or two for 10-15 years. Could not stop cold turkey, hands used to shake so bad I could not even hold a full cup, plus a whole host of other issues. Tried 3 times. Started with nicotine and then gradually reduced with ecigs at the peak of covid. Covid also helped in that I was stuck at home. Took me 3 months but I stopped. Now I just tell people I am not a smoker. That mindset shift also helped keep me off cigs. But ecigs can be equally/more addictive. On rare occasions, I want a nicotine hit, I do not think of smoking cigs, I want to vape. It is sad to see others will not have the option with ecigs being banned across countries.

djohnston 4y ago

With the baby formula failures, approvals of basically useless and extremely expensive Alzheimer's medication, and this, I'm pretty sure the FDA is completely compromised at this point and should be circumvented.

FractalHQ 4y ago

My Juul is the only thing that helped me stop smoking after 10 years. My health has improved by orders of magnitude from years with a Juul. If the government takes this away from me I’m going to sue them and move to Canada.

EricE 4y ago

That the government is going after nicotine and handing out crack pipes and legalizing weed says volumes.

sealthedeal 4y ago

I mean honestly how many adults just decide "Im going to start smoking cigs". If I had to bet, I would say 80% of all smokers began smoking when they teenagers. Teens are still developing and cannot make proper "adult" decisions. Big tobacco whether they want to admit it or not knows they must go after teens because if they don't trying to convince a 35 year old with three kids to start doing something that they have never done is damn near impossible... Its the same strategy that some companies use where they work with the earliest stage companies, i.e. Stripe, and they grow with them. In an extremely perverted view, big tobacco just wants to grow with their customers hahaha.

aurizon 4y ago

The question is:- Is this the lobbying result of big tobacco (BT)who see vaping/juul as an 'existential threat' We know nicotine is a mild and slightly habit forming drug that is deemed so mild in risk and effect as to attract no limiting regulations, like Rx needed and driving while.... It seems to me that Juul initially wanted to mimic smoking cosmetically as well as pharmacologically viz:- the vapor cloud additives initially added to create clouds of white smoke when used - like the outlawed red tipped candy cigarettes sold until some decades ago that kids put in their mouths until adult attention was drawn - whereupon 'you et it' Ha Ha. So Juul acted idiotically IMHO and all their efforts came to nought - as we saw today. BT smiles and girds it's loins for the battle to come!! All that is needed is a safe delivery vehicle - suckable pills seem to work, same with holders you draw through that disperse a metered amount into the air stream. None of these involve vapor clouds - some have heated filaments that volatise a carrier solvent along with nicotine (a risk as it involves inhaling the volatiles - which has already hurt some people. The thing is:- does the FDA want less combustion based smoking for safety (= a good) or do they want less vaping with inhaled additives (= a good for BT) So nicotine content will be limited, and pepperminty Kools will also be limited.(= Bad for BT). I do not smoke at all, but tend to be live and let live in the case of pills/lozenges by mouth. I am warier about anything that gets nicotine into the inhaled air stream with a carrier solvent unless that solvent is carefully assessed and tested to be 100% safe. Some of the earlier carriers caused deaths via carrier solvent! https://www.healthline.com/health-news/lung-vaping-disease-now-called-evali https://www.healthline.com/health-news/lung-vaping-disease-n... There is some linkage to THC vaping as the same diluent/carrier is often used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_vaping_lung_...

tlhunter 4y ago

I look forward to not finding hard plastic empty Juul pods discarded on the ground.

jgerrish 4y ago

Maybe some very fucking smart people at the FDA know this will backfire. Thus increasing demand for e-cigarettes. Of course, that's crazy talk. Ignoring that different young smokers will have different authority relationships and will require different guidance methods. Which is not an insignificant factor and not fucking lost on me. I'd have to accept something like that reputations matter. Whether you're respected in the community. Whether you're a rebel or a straightedge. And whether you're the right kind of rebel... Man, what if that was true? And then you were told your own reputation doesn't matter. Just be proud. It'd be like a kick in the teeth. Somehow we got condoms to be acceptable (to most groups, again setting aside bug chasers, certain populations mistrustful of public health and edge cases) without resorting to this. It's just insane looking at the future, because we are moving backwards.

BryanBeshore 4y ago

So, let me get this straight. Our government is ok with Marijuana but not ok with nicotine? Amazing times we live in.

dvtrn 4y ago
MJ is still illegal at the federal level, though?
iancmceachern 4y ago
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. https://tobaccofreelife.org/resources/marijuana-vs-tobacco/ https://tobaccofreelife.org/resources/marijuana-vs-tobacco/
- radlad 4y ago
  It's worth noting that tobacco is not nicotine, and Juul is not tobacco.
  - FreqSep 4y ago
    And Juuls additionally are not “smoking” - it operates at a much lower temperature than combustion in a typical cigarette.
    - maxbond 4y ago
      After around (some number of) people died from vaping Vitamin A Acetate, I don't think we should really make a distinction anymore. (I originally said 1k, which appears to have been misremembering.)
      - pizza 4y ago
        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.

bm3719 4y ago

If you ever wondered whether the tobacco industry still has plenty of politicians in their pockets, now you know.

LeafItAlone 4y ago
Juul is owned by in part Altria, formerly Philip Morris Companies, Inc.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altria How does this help them?
Veen 4y ago
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.
- mjthrowaway1 4y ago
  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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mattkrause 4y ago
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).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

pclark 4y ago

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.

lumost 4y ago
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.

mrtksn 4y ago

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.

barbazoo 4y ago
Congrats on quitting smoking!
- mrtksn 4y ago
  Thanks! Starting smoking was the worst thing I did to myself and I'm very happy about successfully quitting.
otabdeveloper4 4y ago
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.
- pizza 4y ago
  Why do you think this?
  - otabdeveloper4 4y ago
    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.

_bohm 4y ago

https://archive.ph/J5JqF https://archive.ph/J5JqF

adamrezich 4y ago
wow, that is a comically short article to hide behind a paywall. three meager paragraphs more than the preview!

willcipriano 4y ago

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?

shadowgovt 4y ago
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.
- SkyBelow 4y ago
  >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.

fosk 4y ago

Let me get this straight: the FDA is banning e-cigarettes but not actual cigarettes? What a bunch of clowns.

dilap 4y ago
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.)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 0des 4y ago
  Europe has about half the nicotine of american cigarettes and maybe double the smokers. That makes no sense to me.
- sbcd 4y ago
  >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.
dragonwriter 4y ago

water554 4y ago

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.

silksowed 4y ago
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?
- dkn775 4y ago
  Try jewel mint
pc86 4y ago
You should just stop smoking instead. 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.
- johnisgood 4y ago
  > You should just stop smoking instead. 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?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

atomicbeanie 4y ago

My god, about time. Given the war on drugs' history this is just astonishing.

sudden_dystopia 4y ago

But let me guess, RJ Reynolds’s vape device is not being pulled…

_spduchamp 4y ago

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/ https://edgeguides.solidus.io/

humanistbot 4y ago

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.

phabricator 4y ago
No that isn't the reason, from TFA: > 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.
krolden 4y ago
I see paywalls here quite often and it drives me nuts

drugstorecowboy 4y ago

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.

wollsmoth 4y ago
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.
- drugstorecowboy 4y ago
  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?
  - wollsmoth 4y ago
    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.

winternett 4y ago

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.

vdnkh 4y ago
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.

rhexs 4y ago

Can’t wait to see which senators family members shorted Juul recently.

sinsdflkjf 4y ago

weezin 4y ago

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.

betwixthewires 4y ago
1) many states have already raised the vaping and smoking age to 21, 2) I don't know a single human being who drinks who did not drink in high school. Same applies to smoking and vaping.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  > 2) Maybe I'm just a lame nerd, but I didn't drink in high school.
  - notRobot 4y ago
    Same. Also holds true for many friends of mine.
  - vonseel 4y ago
    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.
- weezin 4y ago
  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.

ChrisArchitect 4y ago

stop breathing your juul all over me in an airborne pandemic. Smoking flat out sucks in public, anywhere.

parenthesis 4y ago
Getting a waft of cotton-candy-ass-flavoured vape air somehow offends me more than regular John-Wayne-armpit cigarette smoke.
millzlane 4y ago
Everyone is breathing all over you in an airborne pandemic. With vapes it's visualized. It's like wind tunnel fog but from peoples mouths.
samatman 4y ago
Because you can see an exhalation, you think it's more dangerous. This is just witchcraft. You aren't a serious person.
- dang 4y ago
  Whoa—you've been breaking the site guidelines a ton lately. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31844250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31843933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31843933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31834903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31834903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31824727 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Consultant32452 4y ago

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?

dragonwriter 4y ago
> 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.)
- Consultant32452 4y ago
  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.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Why specifically go after tobacco when we're moving towards legalizing/decriminalizing everything else? Why impose standards on tobacco when we are moving towards standards rather than prohibition on everything else?
    - int_19h 4y ago
      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.