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Juul Labs CEO to Step Down

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101–110 of 151 posts

Re: Juul Labs CEO to Step Down

#101

They reached out to me on LinkedIn. Don't know why they need software engineers, but I don't think I'm aligned with their mission -- whatever it may be.

Who cares if you're "aligned with a mission"? It's a paycheck.

In addition to the paycheck, some people like to be rewarded with the knowledge (or at least hope) that their work is somehow making the world a slightly better place, or at least not making things worse for somebody.

Re: Juul Labs CEO to Step Down

#102

Smokers switching to ecigs is a good thing. Significantly proved health outcomes. But kids adopting flavored ecigs and beginning smoking is horrible. So we need to limit ecigs to the first use case and minimize the second otherwise ecigs/vaping could be an overall net negative. So I do strongly favor no advertising at all and no flavors or colors except mentol or something else which appeals to existing smokers.

I'm curious why you feel that restricting all flavoring in e-cig juice would be a good thing. You do realize that would just push things underground and out of a somewhat regulated market even more... It doesn't take a rocket scientist to make their own flavored juice at home after ordering the supplies... Not to mention the disrupt that would have on local business with the tens of thousands of vape shops that have…

here in Germany distilling your own spirits is illegal (I think there's an exception for very small personal amounts), and yet I don't think I've ever seen some sort of early 20th century moonshine market.

I've seen these arguments about enforcement frequently but we're talking about modern governments here. If Uncle Sam wants to stop flavoured smoking they will be successful. They can go after online platforms that don't shut these exchanges down, they can go after individual sellers with harsh punishments, and so on.

I very much doubt the margins on vaping products are so high that someone is going to risk their neck over it. Menthol cigarettes in the EU were banned a few years ago and I can't remember having seen one in a long time.

Re: Juul Labs CEO to Step Down

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this. I have struggled with addiction my whole life and switched to a tank based e-cig seven years ago and have not had a full cigarette since. I say fill cigarette because I use fruit flavored liquids and it helped me develop an aversion to the taste of Tobacco and smoke. A few years ago I had a few drags of a cigarette at a party and it made me want to throw up. Not saying what I do is harmless, but i…

When I smoked, I was addicted to (Korean) menthols while normal cigarettes would make me puke. So there is definitely something going on there. I don’t vape, but if they banned flavored liquids, they better ban menthol cigarettes as well.

I believe in the case of NY it was all flavors except menthol that were banned.

Re: Juul Labs CEO to Step Down

#104
post #17
post #5

Also, (forgive me if I get the jargon wrong here...) isn't the vaping health crisis the article mentions due to sketchy THC vaping solutions that have Vitamin E oil in them? Not Juul's nicotine stuff? I.e. because THC isn't water-soluble, it has to be suspended/dissolved in some oil-based thing. Lipids + lungs = BAD.

There's two vaping crises. One is THC vaping solutions that are killing people. The second is that we're currently living through a meteoric rise in nicotine addiction among teenagers. For a very long time, teenage nicotine use was going down, due to declines in smoking rates. Smoking rates still continue to decline, but nicotine vaping rates have gone up and to the right. 1 in 4 high school students are now vaping n…

Is caffeine addiction a serious public health crisis?

Nictoine on its own is no more harmful than caffeine.

https://news.sky.com/story/nicotine-no-worse-than-cup-of-cof...

Re: Juul Labs CEO to Step Down

#105

And he is being replaced by a former Marlboro employee. I am sure the public will feel so much safer knowing that the advertising will be handled by a Big Tobacco veteran moving forward.

The public should probably feel a bit better about having a tobacco veteran who knows better than to get the bosses in trouble by deliberately market to kids. Juul's former CEO took the startup strategy: disruptfluence the vape market by winnovating a "let's just sell them in high schools directly" strategy.

Kevin Burns was only CEO for about 1.5 years, so I would put the blame on marketing to kids on his predecessor.

Re: Juul Labs CEO to Step Down

#106
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two vaping crises. One is THC vaping solutions that are killing people. The second is that we're currently living through a meteoric rise in nicotine addiction among teenagers. For a very long time, teenage nicotine use was going down, due to declines in smoking rates. Smoking rates still continue to decline, but nicotine vaping rates have gone up and to the right. 1 in 4 high school students are now vaping n…

Is caffeine addiction a serious public health crisis? Nictoine on its own is no more harmful than caffeine. https://news.sky.com/story/nicotine-no-worse-than-cup-of-cof...

Quitting caffeine is as easy as a few days, maybe a week of feeling like shit. Take an aspirin or two, and move on with your life.

Quitting nicotine is a fucking struggle.

It doesn't kill you, but it has negative impacts on your life, when you aren't using. Addicts become really shitty to be around, when they haven't had their hit for a few hours.

What exactly is the public benefit to getting children addicted to a substance that is incredibly difficult to kick?

Re: Juul Labs CEO to Step Down

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you feel that restricting all flavoring in e-cig juice would be a good thing. You do realize that would just push things underground and out of a somewhat regulated market even more... It doesn't take a rocket scientist to make their own flavored juice at home after ordering the supplies... Not to mention the disrupt that would have on local business with the tens of thousands of vape shops that have…

here in Germany distilling your own spirits is illegal (I think there's an exception for very small personal amounts), and yet I don't think I've ever seen some sort of early 20th century moonshine market. I've seen these arguments about enforcement frequently but we're talking about modern governments here. If Uncle Sam wants to stop flavoured smoking they will be successful. They can go after online platforms that…

My understanding is while some EU States have taken it upon themselves to implement a ban sooner, the EU directive banning them doesn't come into effect till 2020. You can still happily buy Menthol cigarettes in the UK, for example.

Re: Juul Labs CEO to Step Down

#108

I have a very mixed reaction to all the e-cigarette shenanigans. There's part of me that feels like it's a health corollary to the Jevons Paradox, if you make nicotine delivery potentially less damaging, it would stand to follow you lower the risk barrier and might end up with more nicotine users than you started with. I'm def not in high school anymore, and maybe for that reason, the messaging I've personally seen f…

I've noticed a major cognitive bias most people have regarding vaping. Basically along the lines of "smoking's very bad for health, therefore vaping (or nicotine consumption) is probably pretty bad too".

Here's the facts. Smoking is bad because smoldering organic compounds are very damaging. It doesn't matter what is being burned, all smoke is bad in roughly equal proportion to the volume of smoke being inhaled. It's why sitting by a wood-burning fireplace does as much damage as a pack of cigarettes.

(As an aside, we generally don't see the same health problems with cannabis smokers as we do with tobacco smokers. That's primarily because cannabis smokers consume significantly less volume than tobacco smokers. A pack-a-day smoker is smoldering 140 grams of dried organic material. A very heavy cannabis user might go through 7 grams of high-THC weed per week.)

So the fact is we don't really know much about the long-term health consequences of vaping. It simply hasn't been widespread for long enough for us to gather any large-scale epidemiological data. It's possible it may be very harmful. It's also possible that it may be basically harmless.

But the fact that smoking is unhealthy tells us nothing about vaping. There are no smoldering organic compounds involved in vaping. Therefore if it is unhealthy it would be because of a totally separate mechanism. In general there are very very few human activities that are as unhealthy as smoking. Heavy smoking literally quadruples all cause mortality.

There are many many activities that push humans' physiological baseline. High-altitude living, exotic or restricted diets, mega-doses of vitamins, scuba diving, high salt consumption, high-dose hallucinogens, keeping a nocturnal schedule, heavy caffeine consumption, drinking too much or too little water, being a radiation worker, artificial sweeteners, heavy manual labor, tons and tons of synthesized dyes and chemicals. Most of them are basically harmless, and none of them have anywhere near the health impact of smoking.

It would quite unexpected if vaping just coincidentally happened to be one of the few human activities that had a smoking-magnitude effect. Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? Not at all.

As for nicotine consumption, the balance of the evidence is that it's very slightly unhealthy at worse, and potentially beneficial for neurological health.[1]

[1]https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine

Re: Juul Labs CEO to Step Down

#109
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is caffeine addiction a serious public health crisis? Nictoine on its own is no more harmful than caffeine. https://news.sky.com/story/nicotine-no-worse-than-cup-of-cof...

Quitting caffeine is as easy as a few days, maybe a week of feeling like shit. Take an aspirin or two, and move on with your life. Quitting nicotine is a fucking struggle. It doesn't kill you, but it has negative impacts on your life, when you aren't using. Addicts become really shitty to be around, when they haven't had their hit for a few hours. What exactly is the public benefit to getting children addicted to a s…

I'm also not forced to consume caffeine merely by standing next to you.

Re: Juul Labs CEO to Step Down

#110
post #17
post #5

Also, (forgive me if I get the jargon wrong here...) isn't the vaping health crisis the article mentions due to sketchy THC vaping solutions that have Vitamin E oil in them? Not Juul's nicotine stuff? I.e. because THC isn't water-soluble, it has to be suspended/dissolved in some oil-based thing. Lipids + lungs = BAD.

There's two vaping crises. One is THC vaping solutions that are killing people. The second is that we're currently living through a meteoric rise in nicotine addiction among teenagers. For a very long time, teenage nicotine use was going down, due to declines in smoking rates. Smoking rates still continue to decline, but nicotine vaping rates have gone up and to the right. 1 in 4 high school students are now vaping n…

> This is a public health crisis.

No, no it's not. It's a manufactured hysteria which is now used by the government to squeeze tobacco companies by the nuts. It's the new 'ear sexing' that dem kids are doing. Its parents too busy to monitor their kids and schools stretched too thin to monitor their bathrooms and hallways. No amount of regulation will fix that. Remember when Marijuana was illegal? Yeah, the kids were totally not smoking it. Thank God for the war on drugs to cut down on teens getting high.

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