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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

#121

Post by Jonovono »

hazz99 wrote: post #86
Jonovono wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone in here is caught up in the physical harm of smoking. Celebrating moving from cigarettes to eCigs. I'll admit that's important. But for me, most of the harm cigarettes have (and also eCigs) is not how bad is it on your physical health.

Legitimate question - if most of the harm of eCigs is not on your physical health, what is it?

It's the mental addiction. The physical health is not really something you deal with every day - usually doesn't get super serious until you get older. But when you are addicted to smoking (cigs or ecigs), it changes you. It interferes with how you live your life. You are now thinking about smoking a lot, when the next time you smoke will be. You will be doing something and then you will think "I wish I had a cigarette" and then that will consume you until you find one. You are less productive because of this. You are less in the moment because of this. You become controlled by the addiction. To me this is much more serious. You might die 10-20 years earlier, sure, that's bad, but if you aren't living to your greatest extent right now, I think that's much worse.

I actually think ecigs are worse than normal cigarettes for this reason. It's now socially acceptable to smoke them, easier to smoke them (you can just hop into a bathroom stall and take a hit).

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

#122

Post by strathmeyer »

arkades wrote: post #101
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand what is really bad about cigarettes. It isn’t the nicotine, but the tar (the burning of it). Heck, nicotine gum has long been used as a safe smoking cessation aide. Not to mention it is present in many new works vegetables. Getting rid of the burning tar is a HUGE win for smokers, healthwise.

(1) nicotine gum is used as a weaning assist, not an ongoing alternative (2) you chose to overlook his point that vapes are also an on-ramp to smoking, not just an off-ramp. (3) people really oversell the whole “vape isn’t combustion” bs. Both the solvent and the flavors form toxic aldehydes when vaped, and their long term safety has not been assessed.

The only reason you could want a smoking-cessation product to not be available is because it causes big tobacco to lose money. Why are you telling lies that other people have to be paid to tell? Why are you doing it for free?

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

#123

Post by arkades »

strathmeyer wrote: post #122
arkades wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) nicotine gum is used as a weaning assist, not an ongoing alternative (2) you chose to overlook his point that vapes are also an on-ramp to smoking, not just an off-ramp. (3) people really oversell the whole “vape isn’t combustion” bs. Both the solvent and the flavors form toxic aldehydes when vaped, and their long term safety has not been assessed.

The only reason you could want a smoking-cessation product to not be available is because it causes big tobacco to lose money. Why are you telling lies that other people have to be paid to tell? Why are you doing it for free?

No, reasons to not want a supposed smoking cessation product to not be available - which by the way, wasn't a position I was taking - is because it has other harms, and the magnitude of those harms has to be weighed against the magnitude of the harm of smoking.

Nor did I lie; nor did you have a single lie to point to.

And suggesting that I'm a paid shill - or worse than that, an unwitting shill - without even having grounds on which to criticize what I said is both a value-less contribution to this discussion, and well below the HN standard.

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

#124

Post by mjcl »

nasredin wrote: post #119
slg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

AFAIK any MD can write a script for methadone.

Only for pain, not as a part of detox/treatment. Source: https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/faq/prescriptions.htm#rx-...

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

#126

Post by flyingcircus3 »

strathmeyer wrote: post #122
arkades wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) nicotine gum is used as a weaning assist, not an ongoing alternative (2) you chose to overlook his point that vapes are also an on-ramp to smoking, not just an off-ramp. (3) people really oversell the whole “vape isn’t combustion” bs. Both the solvent and the flavors form toxic aldehydes when vaped, and their long term safety has not been assessed.

The only reason you could want a smoking-cessation product to not be available is because it causes big tobacco to lose money. Why are you telling lies that other people have to be paid to tell? Why are you doing it for free?

Welcome to the Oppression Olympics, where there are always exactly two points of view.

Back here in the land of analog spectra, there are people who are concerned that an addictive product wildly successful with teenagers is generally problematic, regardless of what it is displacing. Astroturfing with crocodile tears exacerbates these concerns.

It is possible to acknowledge a problem, and, at the same time, criticize suboptimal solutions as kicking the can down the road, while maintaining the general goal of solving the problem.

Stop foisting binary propositions upon your interlocutors.

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

#127

Post by notvplez »

Jonovono wrote: post #121
hazz99 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legitimate question - if most of the harm of eCigs is not on your physical health, what is it?

It's the mental addiction. The physical health is not really something you deal with every day - usually doesn't get super serious until you get older. But when you are addicted to smoking (cigs or ecigs), it changes you. It interferes with how you live your life. You are now thinking about smoking a lot, when the next time you smoke will be. You will be doing something and then you will think "I wish I had a cigaret…

In my personal experience, vaping does not feel very addictive at all. I used to be a heavy smoker, using 3-4 hand rolled cigarettes every hour unless I was somewhere I could not smoke. I'm now a heavy vaper, I vape all day every day, but it feels more like something I do because I enjoy doing it than because I need to.

When I was a smoker, running out of tobacco would induce panic attacks. Every minute spent on an airplane or at the movies I'd devote most of my thoughts to longing for the moment I could have a smoke again. When short on cash, I'd prioritize tobacco over food.

As a vaper, I have on multiple occassions forgot to bring my vaporizer (or charger, or e-juice) when travelling and gone without for days with no problems at all. A bit annoying perhaps, but no more than forgetting to bring my headphones before a flight or something like that, certainly not even close to the cravings I'd get when I couldn't get hold of my precious tobacco during my smoking days.

There's obviously individual differences at play here, but if someone came to me complaining about their horrible vaping addiction I'd have to restrain myself from not going all Bob Saget in Half Baked on that poor vape junkie... ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEberTUvrsE )

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

#128

Post by EpicEng »

tonypace wrote: post #115
trentlott wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it depends. As far as I remember, the vehicle is propylene glycol. It isn't biologically inert, and I'm not sure how much work has been done to study buildup within the lungs or combustion products. Combine that with dodgy sourcing allowing metal contamination. It seems more or less the definition of trading the devil you know for one you don't.

There are a lot of studies about inhaling PG in the context of smoke machines (in bars, generally). It reduces lung function, but not permanently. No more serious harm seems to be indicated.

Also, PG has been used in ventilation systems as an air sanitizer for decades. Not a 1:1 comparison given the massively increased volume papers get, but it's something.

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

#129

Post by notvplez »

tigershark wrote: post #59
singingfish wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How many years of cigarettes smoking and vaping did you have? From what you write it seems to me that either you never smoked for years both of them or now you started vaping and you want to believe in what you write. Sadly the things that you write are extremely dangerous for all the young people that start vaping.

I managed to break a seventeen year old cigarette habit by switching to vaping (after dozens of failed attempts either going cold turkey or with nicotinine gum/snus), and have now vaped exclusively for almost seven years. In my opinion his comment is 100% spot on.

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

#130

Post by singingfish »

tigershark wrote: post #59
singingfish wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How many years of cigarettes smoking and vaping did you have? From what you write it seems to me that either you never smoked for years both of them or now you started vaping and you want to believe in what you write. Sadly the things that you write are extremely dangerous for all the young people that start vaping.

> Sadly the things that you write are extremely dangerous for all the young people that start vaping.

Got any evidence for that assertion? Just saying it doesn't make it true, and the big problem with this research area is there are two different powerful groups (tobacco copmanies and public health policy makers). So the entire literature needs to be treated with great care. David Nutt, the british addiction specialist is a sober, sensible guy, and I'd go to what he has to say about it as a first port of call.

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