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E-Cigarette Maker Juul Labs Is Raising $1.2B

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Re: E-Cigarette Maker Juul Labs Is Raising $1.2B

#31

Post by thatswrong0 »

aphextron wrote: post #16
robertpelloni wrote: post #4

For those who don't know, Juul is the inventor of the "salted nicotine" vaping trend which makes the nicotine spike much faster in the bloodstream than earlier vape juice, which is more like cigarettes. They have a patent but it appears to be ignored by the vape industry as "nicotine salts" are widely available (added benzoic acid). The nicotine level is also much higher, allowing for lower wattage devices and smalle…

> I think this technology is great if it can reduce the harm of smoking and get people off of cigarettes. I think this was the initial hope for e-cigs, but reality has turned out differently. These things are leading to a whole new generation of nicotine addicts at a time when smoking has fallen to all time lows in the US. Juul particularly is getting kids hooked that otherwise would have never touched tobacco, and t…

> Juul particularly is getting kids hooked that otherwise would have never touched tobacco

Do you have evidence of this? From what I've read (the report I saw last had data in 2016), e-cig use is way up but general tobacco use among youth hasn't significantly changed.

Re: E-Cigarette Maker Juul Labs Is Raising $1.2B

#32

Post by kenning »

Nursie wrote: post #8
gringoDan wrote: post #3

I wonder how good it is for public health if Juul is able to grow this market. Do the health benefits from cigarette smokers switching to e-cigarettes offset the young people who never would have dreamt of smoking cigarettes heavily, but regularly use Juul? I had no idea how pervasive Juul was for college students until my sister told me that multiple people were "Juul-ing" in all of her classes. Highly recommend thi…

e-cigs have been proclaimed as between 95 and 99% less harmful than smoking, by some health charities. If these figures are well grounded in evidence then... probably yes.

One thing that bugs me about ecigarettes is that the flavoring chemicals are totally untested. Vegetable glycerin is essentially harmless and is even used in asthma inhalers, and nicotine is way less harmful as well. However it's already been shown that certain flavoring agents like a particular butter flavoring are harmful (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/11/e-cigaret...). I know a couple "juice" makers and they basically just throw in random flavoring chemicals that are meant to be ingested.

It's possible to get unflavored e-cigarette juice, and when I was using an e-cigarette (i switched to gum) i tried to get it as often as I could. But it's really uncommon, most shops don't even have one, and the one i went to was often sold out.

Re: E-Cigarette Maker Juul Labs Is Raising $1.2B

#33

Post by s73v3r_ »

vanadium wrote: post #9
robertpelloni wrote: post #4

For those who don't know, Juul is the inventor of the "salted nicotine" vaping trend which makes the nicotine spike much faster in the bloodstream than earlier vape juice, which is more like cigarettes. They have a patent but it appears to be ignored by the vape industry as "nicotine salts" are widely available (added benzoic acid). The nicotine level is also much higher, allowing for lower wattage devices and smalle…

As someone who quit a 17-year cigarette habit for vaping starting in the early-ish days (2011, and it's come so far since then), nicotine salts might be the answer to those who relapse from trying to quit via vaping because it "didn't feel right." Quite frankly, the narrative to smokers who want to quit from vapers who have has been "it's different, but be patient"; if a closer analogue gets out there that closes the…

There are a lot of people who weren't smoking at all starting to vape as well. I would consider that a pretty big lose.

Re: E-Cigarette Maker Juul Labs Is Raising $1.2B

#34

Post by kenning »

rileyphone wrote: post #14
pm90 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really any better than smoking? I believe nicotine itself is the carcinogen, correct? Not just the ash and other byproducts of burning...

No, nicotine is barely a carcinogen and is essentially on the same level as caffeine in terms of danger.

My impression is that nicotine is "essentially" harmless but caffeine is actually harmless, maybe even good for you (kind of like a glass of red wine a week).

Re: E-Cigarette Maker Juul Labs Is Raising $1.2B

#35

Post by slg »

varjag wrote: post #15
slg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oxycontin is likely a safer drug than heroin. That doesn't mean we should be working on growing the Oxycontin market on the assumption that every new user is someone who might have otherwise used heroin.

Methadone is safer than heroin and is widely used in substitution therapy. Either way, the bulk of health damage from smoking was from the complimentary products of burning. You ain't getting lung cancer from nicotine.

I am not aware of any doctors that would recommend using methadone permanently and and it is only legally available to be prescribed for ongoing substitution therapy by federally certified abuse recovery centers. So my analogy still stands. No one should be actively campaigning to grow the methadone market the way that people are for e-cigarettes.

Re: E-Cigarette Maker Juul Labs Is Raising $1.2B

#36

Post by fizwhiz »

wtvanhest wrote: post #7
gringoDan wrote: post #3

I wonder how good it is for public health if Juul is able to grow this market. Do the health benefits from cigarette smokers switching to e-cigarettes offset the young people who never would have dreamt of smoking cigarettes heavily, but regularly use Juul? I had no idea how pervasive Juul was for college students until my sister told me that multiple people were "Juul-ing" in all of her classes. Highly recommend thi…

Absolutely not good for public health long-term. Their recruiter reached out to me last December and it was a hard no for me based on what I understood about the industry. People use them for starting to smoke just as much as stopping and they are also heavily used for non-nicotine products as well. I don't hold any moral judgements on the brand, or customers, but I was not going to spend my effort helping that becom…

The virtue signaling was unnecessary, tbh.

Re: E-Cigarette Maker Juul Labs Is Raising $1.2B

#37

Post by GW150914 »

magissima wrote: post #10
gringoDan wrote: post #3

I wonder how good it is for public health if Juul is able to grow this market. Do the health benefits from cigarette smokers switching to e-cigarettes offset the young people who never would have dreamt of smoking cigarettes heavily, but regularly use Juul? I had no idea how pervasive Juul was for college students until my sister told me that multiple people were "Juul-ing" in all of her classes. Highly recommend thi…

High schools too, it's amazing how many kids use juul. I think a lot of them aren't even aware it's nicotine.

They know, they don’t care. It was hard enough to convince people, especially kids, that smoking was bad for you and that was with something that made you hack up yellow slugs, and stank. I would guess that convincing people that vaping nicotine is harmful decades before the harm is readily apparent, in ways that are not well studied will be essentially impossible.

Juul is just the perfect intersection of portable, concealable, and apparently consequence-free. Kids will use it, and I don’t see a way around it. Good luck to the poor little bastards.

Re: E-Cigarette Maker Juul Labs Is Raising $1.2B

#38

Post by ada1981 »

fizwhiz wrote: post #36
wtvanhest wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not good for public health long-term. Their recruiter reached out to me last December and it was a hard no for me based on what I understood about the industry. People use them for starting to smoke just as much as stopping and they are also heavily used for non-nicotine products as well. I don't hold any moral judgements on the brand, or customers, but I was not going to spend my effort helping that becom…

The virtue signaling was unnecessary, tbh.

Using the phrase “virtue signaling” seems to be a sort of “virtue signal”.

Does it make you uncomfortable that someone would make a decision from a place of values and ethics? Or that they’d discuss it?

Re: E-Cigarette Maker Juul Labs Is Raising $1.2B

#39

Post by gervase »

singingfish wrote: post #25
aphextron wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this technology is great if it can reduce the harm of smoking and get people off of cigarettes. I think this was the initial hope for e-cigs, but reality has turned out differently. These things are leading to a whole new generation of nicotine addicts at a time when smoking has fallen to all time lows in the US. Juul particularly is getting kids hooked that otherwise would have never touched tobacco, and t…

I'm not able to accept this without decent evidence. There's some pretty clear psychopharmacology related to burning tobacco that is absent for ecigs. Specifically one of the byproducts of burning tobacco is a compound related to early anti-depressants - a mono amine oxidase inhibitor. The effect of this compound seems to be to potentiate the addictiveness of nicotine. That is move its addictiveness from O(n) similar…

I doubt we will see much research on the potentiation effects of tobacco on nicotine, since broadly it seems as if tobacco is "on the way out", so to speak.

However, there is quite a bit of research available [0, 1] that suggests that an addiction to one substance can prime the brain's neurological pathways to more easily become addicted to a second, unrelated substance.

By reducing the use of addictive substances overall, it might produce some decrease in addictions to more damaging substances (i.e. meth, heroin, etc).

Of course, the same argument could be said about alcohol or caffeine, and I don't think we're likely to see those go away any time soon. However, I think that's a false dilemma fallacy, as we're much closer (in % of population, at least) to reducing the use of nicotine than either of those.

[0]: https://harvardmagazine.com/2000/03/deep-cravings.html [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn1578

Re: E-Cigarette Maker Juul Labs Is Raising $1.2B

#40

Post by ergh »

You should be aware that many people stereotype vapers as being less intelligent, more impulsive, and generally trashier than non-vapers, similar to how those with tattoos, ear gauges, or other noticeable body modifications are stereotyped.

In other words, unless you're already a smoker, vaping is a habit you should avoid taking up, because it can have negative social and economic consequences for you.

And stereotypes generally (but not always) have a kernel of truth to them. For example, tattooed people probably are less intelligent on average than the non-tattooed: http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?p=5616

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