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Federal Prosecutors Conducting Criminal Probe of Juul

wsj.com

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Re: Federal Prosecutors Conducting Criminal Probe of Juul

#181

Post by mathemagics »

ribosometronome wrote: post #179
mathemagics wrote: post #176

E-cigs should be banned. Same as cigarettes of any kind. In fact, any airborne addictive substance should be blanked banned. I used to rent an apartment that had a shared ventilation system. It was a no-smoking building. My neighbors decided to ignore this. The smell would get so bad it would make your head spin. The building management did nothing, because it was hard to prove which neighbor was the culprit. I ultim…

>In fact, any airborne addictive substance should be blanked banned. So long to baking cookies.

Sure, if they emit an addictive airborne substance. Thanks for clarifying.

Re: Federal Prosecutors Conducting Criminal Probe of Juul

#182

Post by stingrae »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #138
ganitarashid wrote: post #116

Vaping under 18, I get it, you’re young and dumb and succumbed to peer pressure. It happened to the best of us. But vaping after 30? It’s like they’re saying: Hey I want you to take me seriously while I am willfully destroying my body in front of you. If you don’t care about yourself, you can’t be trusted to care about anything.

Isn't the whole argument for Juul is that it's a smoking cessation device? Practically nobody starts smoking after college age, but there are a lot of 30+ people who became smoking addicts when they were young, and for them Juul is at the very least an option to get their nicotine fix without all the tar and worse negatives in cigarettes.

One issue is that they aren't certified by the FDA as a smoking cessation device.

Re: Federal Prosecutors Conducting Criminal Probe of Juul

#183

Post by codr7 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #88
navd wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why I see this popping up throughout the comments. Nicotine BY ITSELF is extremely addictive.

Maybe because of this list of research papers collected by Gwern claiming that nicotine alone doesn't have strong addictive properties (not beyond caffeine level): https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine#addictiveness . Apparently in most popular, educational and health-related communication, nicotine is treated as synonym to tobacco, leading to confusion.

I've smoked tobacco for 30-ish years. Organic, additive-free tobacco is definitely less problematic for me. Lately I've been growing my own Nicotiana Rustica [0], which contains plenty more nicotine than regular tobacco but is nowhere near as addictive.

I know what I would do if I was selling drugs and didn't give a crap about anything but profits, I would make them as addictive as possible.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotiana_rustica

Re: Federal Prosecutors Conducting Criminal Probe of Juul

#184

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Kudos wrote: post #130
morpheuskafka wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a 19-year old investor/employee at a tobacco company isn't illegal. Not really sure what the prosecutors could glean from this in terms of hard evidence of a crime.

> Not really sure what the prosecutors could glean from this in terms of hard evidence of a crime. That's why it's called an investigation, you follow leads not knowing whether they will pay off.

19 year old kids are still of age, there would be nothing really to investigate.

Re: Federal Prosecutors Conducting Criminal Probe of Juul

#185

Post by Simon_says »

jacobolus wrote: post #85
navd wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why I see this popping up throughout the comments. Nicotine BY ITSELF is extremely addictive.

Nicotine by itself doesn’t seem categorically different than caffeine (coffee, tea, yerba mate, guarana, ...) or other stimulants (khat, coca leaves, ginseng, cinnamon, ...). Yes these are generally addictive, but not necessarily life ruining. Dosage, frequency of use, etc. matters a lot. Frequent long-term use of any stimulant is probably not great for you; e.g. my mother has a pretty severe coffee addiction (she ty…

Technically, your example shows that not using coffee is not great for your mom.

Re: Federal Prosecutors Conducting Criminal Probe of Juul

#186

Post by Fjolsvith »

zelly wrote: post #111
numair wrote: post #73

True story: I have two very close younger friends who are practically my little brothers. They come from an established family in Hollywood, and have a very famous actor-dad. The younger brother is about 20 now, and is friends with half of the teen “influencers” on Instagram/YouTube; the older brother is about 22, and hangs with a group of LA kids who are obsessed with the movie American Psycho and dress/look the par…

I want the movie rights to your post

Call the movie "Up in Smoke". No, wait, that name's taken.

Re: Federal Prosecutors Conducting Criminal Probe of Juul

#187

Post by seanmcdirmid »

t-writescode wrote: post #39
bsder wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it easier to buy juul pods than a pack of cigarettes? There are non-nicotine pods. And they have all of the social addictiveness even if they don't have actual nicotine in them.

if there’s no nicotine, then who cares? Magic the Gathering cards and pogs were addicting back in the day, but kids could still buy them.

Nicotine is not what mainly makes smoking addictive or even dangerous. There are plenty of bad chemicals that are much worse than nicotine that vaping could (and shouldn’t) include.

Re: Federal Prosecutors Conducting Criminal Probe of Juul

#188

Post by andrepd »

fcarraldo wrote: post #148
colechristensen wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government banning tobacco from sale is the same sort of free-will exercise by humans for humans as is me banning tobacco from my own body, just on different levels. The government can just as well have "addiction" problems with things that are bad for the population which are supported by the population. The difference isn't free-will or not, it is only the level on which it is applied. I prefer personal free wi…

I can’t get behind this argument when we live in an economy driven by a massive industry of personalized marketing and advertising. You espouse free will as if it’s some absolute, but studies show that human behavior is primarily the product of environment and is, to an extent, easy to predict the likelihood of someone becoming a smoker based on their age, race, income and zip code. How can we justify giving mega cor…

Just want to say you've summed up the entirety of the way I think about "buyer freedom" in our advertisement infested world.

Re: Federal Prosecutors Conducting Criminal Probe of Juul

#189

Post by dcposch »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #184
Kudos wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not really sure what the prosecutors could glean from this in terms of hard evidence of a crime. That's why it's called an investigation, you follow leads not knowing whether they will pay off.

19 year old kids are still of age, there would be nothing really to investigate.

The question at hand is whether Juul intentionally marketed nicotine to people below 18.

There's pretty strong circumstantial evidence that they did. Building relationships w teenage social media influencers is part of that.

The unfortunate fact is that Juul achieved explosive popularity among high schoolers. It spearheaded a U turn in youth nicotine use rates, which had been declining for a long time and are now way up.

The investigation is here to determine to what extent this was the result of a deliberate strategy.

Re: Federal Prosecutors Conducting Criminal Probe of Juul

#190

Post by seanmcdirmid »

dcposch wrote: post #189
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

19 year old kids are still of age, there would be nothing really to investigate.

The question at hand is whether Juul intentionally marketed nicotine to people below 18. There's pretty strong circumstantial evidence that they did. Building relationships w teenage social media influencers is part of that. The unfortunate fact is that Juul achieved explosive popularity among high schoolers. It spearheaded a U turn in youth nicotine use rates, which had been declining for a long time and are now way…

That they marketed the investment to a 19 year old kid says nothing about whether they marketed anything to those under 18. It isn’t a lead that they FTC could use in any kind of reasonable investigation.

High schoolers during my day smoked a lot, and did a lot of pot. They didn’t need to be marketed to, they will find the bad stuff on their own. Marketing to them directly would actually have the opposite effect (eg nothing promoted drug use more effectively than DARE). I feel like we’ve all become old fogeys that remember nothing about what it was like to be teenagers.

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