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FDA Denies Authorization to Market JUUL Products
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- WalterGR 4y agoYesterday: FDA to order Juul e-cigarettes off U.S. market(wsj.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31835843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31835843 Submitted by kgwgk | 389 points | 662 comments
- xeromal 4y agoYeah, I wonder if we can get these threads merged.
- judge2020 4y agoI don't think this was a good merge, as this is the full official statement. The original post should at least be re-upped, as it's currently not on the front page.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- phabricator 4y agoYeah the first article reports that the FDA "is preparing" to order Juul take its e-cigarettes off market, "according to people familiar with the matter." This article is the FDA doing that.
- nemo44x 4y agoBut you can still buy tobacco cigarettes? How does this make any sense? What if we start seeing teens go back to smoking cigarettes now?
- xeromal 4y agoTeens were already starkly dropping in picking up smoking. JUUL ended up having the opposite effect and wiping out decades worth of reductions.
- pitaj 4y agoOnly if you consider vaping equal to smoking, which it is certainly not.
- willcipriano 4y agoAlso why is "teenagers did something" a good reason to restrict my freedom? I don't vape but teenagers also do dumb things with alcohol so I don't see how that is legal using that line of logic.
- xeromal 4y agoI'd be ok with JUULs available via a prescription or some means of controlling access besides relying on a gas station clerk to ward off fake IDs from a mob of children. Edit: I used the word prescription perhaps incorrectly. I believe something like a dispensary would work too. Just a higher standard than a gas station clerk.
- willcipriano 4y agoThat again holds a lower standard for alcohol, a far more dangerous drug. You want to get a prescription for a bottle of wine?
- ceejayoz 4y agoAlcohol is basically legal due to tradition. If you were starting a fresh-slate society, with no history and all the knowledge/technology we have today, you'd probably ban alcohol and legalize marijuana.
- cupofpython 4y ago"In particular, some of the company’s study findings raised concerns due to insufficient and conflicting data – including regarding genotoxicity and potentially harmful chemicals leaching from the company’s proprietary e-liquid pods – that have not been adequately addressed and precluded the FDA from completing a full toxicological risk assessment of the products named in the company’s applications."
- nerdponx 4y agoWhy is Juul singled out here? Wouldn't all liquid/vapor products be equally suspect?
- giraffe_lady 4y agoBecause they designed and marketed specifically to teenagers and singlehandedly undid decades of progress in public health probably, if I had to guess.
- cupofpython 4y ago>company’s proprietary e-liquid pods I'm guessing this is why it is Juul specifically. Other companies may be next, or maybe the FDA hopes using this mechanism to take down the biggest player will strike enough fear in the market that the other vendors fix the issue overall.
- mmastrac 4y agoMy frustration with vaping is that it's seen as "not smoking", to the point where I had a guy sitting in front of me on an airplane vaping in flight and nobody really cared. Sitting in a cloud of someone's exhaust is really just as gross to me as sitting in a cloud of someone's smoke but it's just not nearly as obvious by smell.
- bluetidepro 4y ago> to the point where I had a guy sitting in front of me on an airplane vaping in flight and nobody really cared For what it's worth (unless you're balling out in a private flight), that's highly illegal and a federal offense in the USA [1]. Not sure if you're in another country, but I do question the legitimacy of that comment if in the US. None the less, I do agree vaping is gross/annoying. [1] https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/vapes-plane https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/vapes-plane
- thesiniot 4y agoAirlines and the FAA have way bigger problems than obnoxious vapers. In practice, you have to behave very poorly to merit any sort of serious response: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-levies-161823-against-eight-passengers-alleged-alcohol-related-unruly-behavior https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-levies-161823-against-eight... They even have a small ad campaign to celebrate their leniency: "You could have spent $35k on a brand new truck, but instead you are paying a fine because you punched a flight attendant": https://www.faa.gov/data_research/passengers_cargo/unruly_passengers/toolkit https://www.faa.gov/data_research/passengers_cargo/unruly_pa...
- mmastrac 4y agoI was in business class on a United flight over the US. I was pretty sure the cabin crew was aware and my partner didn't want me to make a fuss over it.
- dljsjr 4y agoEvery flight I've ever been on in the US indicates that vaping is not allowed on-board. That's quite strange.
- zackees 4y agoThis has nothing to do with public health.
- williamtwild 4y agoOh really? Why is that?
- mushbino 4y agoThink of all the more widespread public health concerns and the fact absolutely nothing is being done about them. Guns, sugar, unhealthy food in general, carbon emissions, toxic chemical emissions, car deaths, crime and deaths related to alcohol use, contaminated water supplies, etc.
- tacheiordache 4y agoThis is frustrating for smokers who jumped to the vaping lesser evil. Vaping did help a lot of people wean their habit to a halt. It's clearly a much better alternative to cigs. Imho FDA is pushing it by doing this, we all know what dirty shenanigans FDA is up to, I'm inclined to believe it's a move meant to make some competitor a lot of money under the guise of caring for people's health.
- newaccount74 4y agoI think it's the opposite: Vaping is keeping people who want to quit smoking addicted to nicotine. For most people I know the problem aren't the physical effects of addiction (those are over in a few weeks) but the peer pressure from all your friends who are still smoking. Since they banned smoking in bars and restaurants in Austria, I saw A LOT of people quit smoking. It's really not that hard when everybody looks at you in disgust when you suck on your cigarette outside a bar. If you offer vaping as a socially acceptable form of smoking, these people have a lot less incentive to give up nicotine, and will stick with it. So I think that vaping is slowing the decline of nicotine, and it absolutely should be banned. (At some point cigarettes should probably be banned as well, but it's probably too early for that)
- causi 4y agoNicotine doesn't kill you. It doesn't make everything you own smell like burnt asshole. It doesn't make you cough up black goo when you lay on an inversion table or gasp for breath after a flight of stairs. Vaping is the greatest weapon ever created in the fight against smoking-related health damage.
- newaccount74 4y agoYou make the assumption that people who vape would smoke if they couldn't vape. If vaping was the only way to quit smoking I would agree with you. But when I look around me, I see that a lot of people have managed to quit smoking without vaping. Marketing vaping as a way to give up smoking is very disingenious, because you are just trading one addiction for another. I know that you can give up smoking without starting another addiction. I did it, my girlfriend did it, my sisters did it, my best friend from high school did it. It took a few attempts, but we all managed to kick the habit. All of us used to smoke a pack a day, and now we're free. Juul was a last ditch attempt by tobacco companies to keep everyone addicted so they keep paying their idiot tax for their daily dose of nicotine. I'm glad someone is doing something against it.
- danappelxx 4y agoUnsurprisingly, this is out of touch. Juul has been dead among teenagers for years, basically immediately after the FDA banned flavors. Its now been replaced by, as far as I can tell, completely unregulated disposable e-cigarettes which have been growing in price, size, and strength. Ask your interns when the last time they saw a Juul at their college was.
- publicola1990 4y agoAlso why don't FDA just pull cigarettes off the market if they can do something like this?
- qzx_pierri 4y agoBecause the FDA wants the public to support big tobacco. I realize this sounds sarcastic, but how could anyone possibly refute?
- JohnTHaller 4y agoJuul is 35% owned by Altria aka Philip Morris.
- aaomidi 4y agoThat’s just basic diversification. Tobacco is still king for them.
- gamblor956 4y agoJuul deliberately marketed their product toward minors. That is why their are being removed from the market and their competitors are not. They also provided incomplete and fraudulent data about the ingredients in their liquids, which is the actual justification for the FDA revoking authorization (FTA).
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- nperez 4y agoThey played a major part in helping me quit cigarettes when my lungs were really not feeling great, and I quickly started breathing better and am now cutting down on vaping. For that reason, I think I have a slight bias toward e-cigarette manufacturers. This is probably a good thing though. It sounds like Juul will still be able to operate in this market but will just have to provide better data in future applications. Having high standards for FDA approval is something I'm in favor of, as long as they're not setting such a high bar that there aren't any options for people who are trying to quit cigs.
- edmcnulty101 4y agoIts odd that the federal govt banned a single company.
- sealthedeal 4y agoI 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.
- vngzs 4y agoMonoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) in tobacco smoke increase the effectiveness and addictiveness of nicotine, which practically means tobacco is dramatically more addictive than nicotine alone [0]. By switching to an alternative that contains nicotine while keeping physical sensations essentially unchanged, tobacco users can remove MAOIs from their system and then focus on the behavior (hand fiddling, inhaling) and chemical addiction (gradually reduce dosage) separately. Beyond that, vaping is so obviously safer than smoking. It strikes me as profoundly hypocritical to ban the less dangerous alternative, while keeping the unbelievably deadly cigarettes on the market. [0]: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/38/8593 https://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/38/8593
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- AlwaysRock 4y agoWow. Pretty incredible. I don't support this industry but its pretty insane to me that a company can be regulated away in an instant like this.
- 999900000999 4y agoWhy does the FDA have the authority to do this ? They'd save more lives by removing all Mc Donald's from the market. Same thing with the DEA telling me what substances I can consume. Now instead of having a legal option, your encouraging underground, unregulated options. How about this, slap a big label on everything from fattening foods to recreational drugs, with " This will fucking kill you, here for a good time not a long time". Then either raise the enlistment age to 21 or drop the age of consumption to 18. It's pretty fucking absurd you can enlist at 18 ,but can't consume recreational substances until 21.
- aaomidi 4y agoBecause the cigarette lobby is pretty strong.
- bleachedsleet 4y agoCan someone here more up to date than I on the subject give me a good jumping off place to see the real research on vaping vs smoking nicotine? Last I heard vaping was generally considered to be safer overall because it lacked the extra carcinogens found in cigarettes, but it came out in the wash as people tend to vape far more frequently than they used to smoke and vapes are also a more direct punch of nicotine. I’ve heard that a pipe is probably the best way to smoke if you have to do it: Tends to have a more pleasant smell to those around you, is a much purer tobacco product, and it generally isn’t inhaled. I think pipes raise the rate of various mouth cancers though.
- jjmorrison 4y agoBut let's keep the disposable flavored e-cigarettes from China...
- jcranberry 4y agoSo as I'm reading this, there are apparently other approved "electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS)"[1], but Juul in particular failed to provide data proving the safety of their products. Which is kind of interesting. 1. https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/premarket-tobacco-product-applications/premarket-tobacco-product-marketing-granted-orders https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/premarket-tobacco-produ...