11 ms·

If you smoke cigarettes, then yes they’re less terrible. But e-cigarettes are expanding the market by marketing to teens and adding flavors like bubble gum. You

• Fargoan 4y ago
  Adults like candy and different flavors too. Back when e-cigs had to be imported from China, people were on forums and Twitter sharing DIY e-juice recipes that usually used candy flavoring. Flavored e-cigs used to be marketed as electronic hookahs. It doesn't make sense to me that the government goes after flavored nicotine products but they're seemingly ok with a huge variety of fruity alcoholic beverages.
  • encryptluks2 4y ago
    I think the less you try to make sense of it the better of you'll be, because they have no damn clue what they are doing.
• choko 4y ago
  I credit vaping to helping me quit cigarettes and nicotine entirely. The flavors were amazing and were a great alternative to cigarettes. Vaping allowed me to wean myself from nicotine over the course of about a year. Once I worked down to a 0% solution, I quit vaping easily - and I'm not the type of person that gives up habits easily. Taking these tools away from consenting adults is morally criminal. If your main argument is "think of the children" I'm going to doubt your sincerity.
  • Hellbanevil 4y ago
    I completely agree. I don't like the company, but see always saw it as a viable cheap alternative to pricy nicotine gum/patches. I've always felt the reason why most people fail quitting any drug America deems unsafe, is because of this all or nothing approach they have to quitting. American black and white thinking. I've seen so many people quit a drug (Alcohol, nicotine, benzos, opoids, and even meth) by going cold turkey. It has dismal failure rates. Yes there are people whom have one cigarette, and they are up to 4 pack a day. Yes--there are people whom have one beer, and are buying 1.75 L of Jack daily. Those addicts are not typicical. Tapering down over a long period of time seems to make more sence. And then allow the recovering patient access to a very low dose of their drug of choice forever. Sorry about my speech. Personally, I have found cutting way back on a dangerous substance has been successful. And the way our government handled this opioid crisis has me seeing red. Yea--just make it impossible to get any regulated opioid, and then wonder why we have people dying by the hundreds daily due to street fentanyl.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• jgerrish 4y ago
  I used to have a philosophy of, "what happens if my kid screws up worse than me?" What world would they find themselves in? I don't smoke regularly, but if my kids did, could they get a healthier alternative? What if they fell into heroin? It would be terrifying, but could they be safe? I no longer can make that argument. I'm susceptible to the taxation attack. Ten years ago I would have gladly paid all the taxes for my kids and a dozen others. But as some have pointed out, I don't make enough money. It's a good conservative argument, I can't pay for that. So, I'm sorry, I can no longer take part in this discussion. You're right, abstinence is better, because unlike the responsible conservatives who are paying for necessary services like education, I can't help as much. I'm so sorry. I wanted to pay more. We could have had scientific discussions on risks of food grade propylene glycol or something. Would it make a good hair gel? Sorry, some light-hearted kidding. My new dream is to not ever have to engage in this discussion again. Because the idea of others wasting time in this divisive acidic discussion is sadder. Thank you.
• treis 4y ago
  >E-cigarettes are not better than not smoking anything Technically true but there's barely any health risks from vaped nicotine. The number of serious injuries are in the low thousands (total, not per year) and are mostly associated with THC vapes of questionable origin.
  • KingOfCoders 4y ago
    "barely any health risks from vaped nicotine." Heard that for a century from tobacco companies. I guess we will see after 50 years of vaping.
    • Workaccount2 4y ago
      Inhaling combusted plant matter is worlds different than inhaling a nicotine/glycol aerosol.
      • FireBeyond 4y ago
        "The potential hazards of chronic inhalation of propylene glycol or the latter substance as a whole are as-yet unknown." What possible harm could come from chronically inhaling a viscous agent into our lungs?
        • samatman 4y ago
          You mean the one asthmatics have been safely inhaling for sixty years? These are asthmatics, reminder. If propylene glycol was a problem for lungs, we would know.
          • FireBeyond 4y ago
            Which medications? Ventolin does not use propylene glycol: https://www.drugs.com/pro/ventolin.html https://www.drugs.com/pro/ventolin.html Airomir did not. Maxair? Nope: https://www.drugs.com/pro/maxair-autohaler.html https://www.drugs.com/pro/maxair-autohaler.html Even pro-vape sites recognize that this is BS. > There is one study looking at the potential to use PG as a carrier for an inhaled medicine (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18158714 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18158714) and another which mentions that PG or ethanol may be used as a cosolvent (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12425745 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12425745) in nebulizers, but no evidence presented of an asthma inhaler or nebulizer that is actually used today containing PG. There's also a huge difference between 3-4 puffs a day of a smaller amount, than chronic hundreds of puffs a day with vapes.
• pigscantfly 4y ago
  Then why only ban Juul and not all e-cigarette products? The article points out that the company is no longer the most widely used among children (Juul is now fourth in market share among high-school-aged users), and I can assure you that Puff Bars are inferior in quality and probably less healthy.
• krolden 4y ago
  There are no carcinogenic chemicals in vape liquid. So how are they so bad? Yes nicotine is addictive but the only serious health effects come if you consume insane amounts of it daily (usually cardiovascular, it basically just raises your blood pressure).
  • camgunz 4y ago
    There's a sibling comment outlining the negative health effects of nicotine, but there are also significant financial effects: maintaining a nicotine addiction is expensive. Should we really be a society that allows products whose only role in the market is to get consumers addicted to them, providing a profit stream in perpetuity? What's the upside to that?
    • krolden 4y ago
      Its only expensive because the regulations made it that way. I was buying a litre of unflavored pg+VG with the nicotine already mixed in (I got to pick my own flavors to mix in) and it coat me pennies on the dollar compared to buying a 100ml bottle of shitty premixed juice at the store. They put an end to that when they made shipping nicotine to consumers through the mail illegal.
  • KingOfCoders 4y ago
    Many chemicals that kill you do not have carcinogenic elements.
  • betwixthewires 4y ago
    You have no way to know that there are no carcinogenic compounds in vape fluid, unless you make it yourself. If you're serious about ensuring that you know what goes into your body, just mix nicotine with USP food grade vegetable glycerin at desired concentrations and vape that, no flavors.
  • bowsamic 4y ago
    I think it's mostly a moral panic from seeing so many kids using it, rather than an accurate assessment of the dangers
• bmelton 4y ago
  The idea that a flavor like bubble gum is ~only~ attractive to minors seems wildly off-the-mark to me. Adults enjoy bubble gum, and also enjoy flavors that are not tobacco-like. I've never paid attention to Juul marketing, so perhaps they were committing faux pas in their targeting, but the existence of a bubble gum (or other enjoyable flavors) should probably not meet the threshold as readily as we allow it.
  • jcranberry 4y ago
    It's consistent with the FDAs current stance to also ban menthol cigarettes.
    • encryptluks2 4y ago
      Yes... hypocritical in almost every way. They should just ban cigarettes and alcohol and caffeine and sugar.
  • kvetching 4y ago
    100% I am an old man and all I vape is bubble gum juice
  • chrisseaton 4y ago
    ‘Bubble gum flavour’ is just a less common variant of mint. We have some of it growing in our garden - wintergreen. There’s nothing inherently childish about mint.
    • zwily 4y ago
      I've had lots of mint gum, but not sure I've ever had a mint bubble gum.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    • CharlesW 4y ago
      > ‘Bubble gum flavour’ is just a less common variant of mint. "Bubble gum" flavor is a combination of fruity flavors. No mint. https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/what-is-bubblegum-flavor https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/what-is-bubblegum-flavo... > People think it’s a made-up flavour but it isn’t. It is a made-up flavor, originally created by Thomas Adams.
• doublerabbit 4y ago
  Don't forget environmental waste. The amount of pen-plastic vapes that get tossed is so polluting. There is nothing recyclable in those products.
• cmelbye 4y ago
  The funny part is that JUUL discontinued their "fruity / sweet" flavors years ago. Meanwhile, that market has been taken over by dozens of competitors that have every dessert flavor you could imagine at every gas station in the country. These devices are single-use which means you throw away the entire device (including the battery) when it's empty. This is worse for the environment, easier for high schoolers to use discreetly and, importantly, enables evasion of regulations that were written specifically to target pod + rechargeable battery systems like JUUL. Tobacco-flavored JUUL pods are mainly used by former smokers as an alternative to cigarettes. High schoolers are vaping hot pink, mint bubblegum flavored, one-time-use Puff Bars now. They won't even notice when JUUL is banned.
  • jorgesborges 4y ago
    This is spot on. There’s an abundance of disposable e-cigarette brands here in Canada that resemble something I could manufacture in my garage. It’s scary. When I was using them — to quit smoking — some clearly had a worse and almost immediate impact on my lungs than others. There’s no consistency. How did banning Juul help us here? There’s other rechargeable vapes available now like Stlth, which seem far better than the disposables, but it’s still madness.
  • easrng 4y ago
    My sample size is not large but I know more people at my high school who vape weed than nicotine.
  • ProjectArcturis 4y ago
    So ban those too, what's the problem?
    • rnjesus 4y ago
      ban all the things! think of the children!
• anotheracctfo 4y ago
  Cigarettes are directly marketed to kids and have been for decades. I still remember the DARE posters from high school THAT WERE MADE BY THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY, and were specifically designed to have the opposite effect. I also remember that a solid quarter of the student population smoked. So good luck with your abstinence policies, they have such a strong track record. Speaking of which, does abstinence only education result in less teen pregnancy, or more? I can't quite remember.
  • AdamH12113 4y ago
    Smoking prevention has been going well for decades. This graph[1] shows a consistent year-over-year decline in adult per capita cigarette consumption since about 1970, bringing it to around a quarter of its peak level in the 1960s. I had more trouble finding good graphs for teenagers, but it looks like teen smoking had a resurgence in the 1990s and has been in decline since then, with a sharp rise in vaping in recent years. (See Figure 2 here[2].) Before e-cigarettes came along, it sure looked like the United States was well on its way to eliminating tobacco smoking altogether. [1] https://kottke.org/14/07/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-smoking https://kottke.org/14/07/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-smoki... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/su/su6901a7.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/su/su6901a7.htm
    • AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
      Vaping is not smoking. This should be obvious, but you apparently are totally unaware that vaping is not smoking.
      • AdamH12113 4y ago
        Oh, give me a break. It's nicotine, it's inhaled, it's made by corporations who market it to children so they'll become addicted before their brains finish developing. Vaping might do less damage to the lungs, but aside from that the problematic parts are the same.
        • deleted 4y ago
• Bud 4y ago
  I don't think anyone can say, in good faith, that Juul didn't mean to market to kids. That doesn't even pass the laugh test. Every single facet of their brand design, products, and marketing were clearly and obviously intended to appeal to kids from the very beginning. Let's just be honest about that, at the very beginning of the debate, and move forward from there.
• Jistern 4y ago
  You are correct.