[HN Gopher] Juul bought an entire issue of a scholarly journal
___________________________________________________________________
Juul bought an entire issue of a scholarly journal
Author : i_love_limes
Score : 463 points
Date : 2021-07-08 09:51 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (prospect.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (prospect.org)
| excalibur wrote:
| Vaporizers are extremely useful as smoking cessation tools. Juul
| is not really configured correctly for this purpose. You have to
| give your customers control over the nicotine content, there need
| to low-nicotine and nicotine-free options.
|
| But yes, the hysteria over flavors is uncalled for. Flavors are
| useful. If you don't prefer the taste of your vape to the
| cigarettes, you're not going to switch.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| When I switched to vaping, I specifically chose the fruity
| flavors to disassociate tobacco from nicotine. It seemed to
| work, because I quickly found myself becoming disgusted with
| the smell of burning tobacco. So much so that my drunken-bummed
| cigarettes would be extinguished after only one or two puffs,
| and even then I was risking physical nausea. Having access to
| flavors was a huge part of my success with ditching tobacco.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| That's quite outrageous.
|
| If this special issue was peer-reviewed, people donated their
| time for free to publish 11 studies with potentially severe
| conflicts of interest.
|
| If the issue was _not_ peer-reviewed, then the editors handed out
| free publication for money, which is what predatory journals do.
|
| There is no way to spin this as remotely related to good
| scientific practice, which would mean:
|
| - Funding is independent of results
|
| - Double-blind peer review
|
| - Pre-registration wherever possible
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| That photo of the Juul advertisement with the huge government-
| mandated warning
|
| > ,,This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is addictive"
|
| made me wonder...
|
| Maybe social media needs the same?
|
| > ,,This Facebook product contains dark patterns and is
| engineered by a team of psychologists to maximize time spent
| scrolling the news feed. It is highly addictive."
| shusaku wrote:
| > But a Tuesday New York Times article on the subject contained a
| fascinating nugget midway through, which could be described as a
| buried lede (journalese for putting the most explosive part of a
| story in the middle of the piece).
|
| I'm going to come down on the opposite side and say that a
| garbage journal that nobody reads publishing garbage research for
| money isn't news. Though it is certainly a good example of why
| you shouldn't believe something just because it is published.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| The American Journal of Health Behavior apparently has an
| impact factor between 1 and 2, which isn't stellar but also
| isn't "nobody reads".
| shusaku wrote:
| It's pretty hard to find a journal with an impact factor
| below 1 considering how frequently scientists cite their own
| work. Heck just look at the special edition papers and see
| how often they cite each other.
|
| Edit: but I also don't want to argue this point too much
| because impact factor is not a good measure of the quality of
| a journal
| nabla9 wrote:
| Impact factor 2 is bad.
|
| Nature Scientific Reports has 5-year impact factor ~4.5 and
| it's very low quality megajournal with tendency to publish
| junk science. The peer-review is designed to be very low
| quality (scientific importance is not criteria for example).
| Tenoke wrote:
| Yeah, they bought it for $50k. It's like complaining about
| paying for an issue of some 3rd rate magazine.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Okay, but the studies will still end up in meta-analyses and
| potentially skew results.
| Tenoke wrote:
| It depends. I haven't looked at them but good meta-analyses
| have rules for what to include that might preclude those
| studies. Were there even experiments or just general
| reviews?
| uniqueuid wrote:
| It seems the studies are mostly observational, I didn't
| see any randomly controlled trial in there.
| paulcole wrote:
| > I'm going to come down on the opposite side and say that a
| garbage journal that nobody reads publishing garbage research
| for money isn't news.
|
| It's a test to see what they could get away with. If this
| wasn't a story then juul would move up to a non-garbage journal
| and try again.
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| Cigarette smoking is so harmful, in addition to the reasons cited
| by other comments, because you are _inhaling burnt matter_.
| Vaping doesn 't involve this.
|
| Big difference between inhaling a heated liquid vs combusted
| solid. And yes the nicotine is mostly harmless. I rather enjoy my
| nic addiction with good black coffee.
| pope_meat wrote:
| Juul was bought by big tobacco a few years back, and then like
| magic state representatives in a bunch of states all started to
| get lobbied for a vape tax that was very beneficial to pod based
| systems like Juul, and Vuse(also owned by big t) and that's how I
| went out of business.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| So Marlboro buys 35% of Juul and now Juul is advertising
| recklessly and inviting an e-cig ban or heavy regulation.
| Interesting
|
| Well here are some fun facts about the ingredients in tobacco,
| for comparison...
|
| The main* reason smoking causes cancer is the high amount of
| polonium 210, yeah, that same stuff they used to murder
| Litvenchenko. The reason for the presence of polonium 210 is
| flavour. Truly. It sounds far fetched, but while the polonium is
| thought to contaminate the plant from the environment, (Tobacco
| plants have lots of sticky little hairs which attract particles.)
| it could be washed out of the product. However, the manufacturers
| found that the harsh cleaning required, ruined the flavour
| profile of the end product. This was thought to be a disservice
| to the consumer. So the highly radioactive polonium 210
| remains... For Flavour! [0][1]
|
| *Edit: Comments point out it may not be the "main reason". Well I
| thought I read it was. Measurements show that smokers receive
| radiation equivelant to 300 chest xrays a year:
| https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2008/08/29/radioactive-pol...
|
| Another ingredient you may be surprised at is urea. Pig Urine.
| But this one is intentional, and in fact is probably the main
| flavour you pick up from a smoke.
|
| This history of this particular flavour enhancer is very
| interesting. They no longer use real pig urine in stuff any more,
| but a synthesized version. This synthesis was invented in the
| late 19th century by Friedrich Wohler. But the paper that
| introduced urea synthesis to world is regarded as the beginning
| of the field of organic chemistry, and an important moment in
| history. That paper is now part of the western literary canon,
| and is often required reading for numerous academic fields.
|
| [0]:https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/smoking.htm
| [1]:https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2008/08/29/radioactive-
| pol...
| beiller wrote:
| How much polonium in cigarette smoke versus a campfire? It says
| polonium occurs naturally in the soil and air. How much
| polonium then is taken in as a baseline? Other commenters
| mention radiation is not the factor that causes cancer in
| smoking so why does this CDC article even exist?
| Gatsky wrote:
| Although interesting, tobacco is not primarily carcinogenic via
| this mechanism. Smoking related cancers harbour DNA damage
| resulting from chemical carcinogenesis, not radiation.
| AkshatM wrote:
| > The main reason
|
| Neither of the two sources you cite the presence of radioactive
| polonium as the _main_ carcinogenic effect, just FYI. It is a
| contributing factor, but there are about 70 different compounds
| in tar that are known to be carcinogenic, one of which is
| radioactive polonium.
|
| https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-canc...
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Tobacco products killed about 10 of my mom's extended family
| members.. the macho cowboy types who didn't go to doctors.
|
| I say make Juul and cigarettes cheaper and pack _more_ poisons
| in them.
|
| Sooner to get rid of self-absorbed, littering, cognitive
| dissonant, inconsiderate drug addicts, the better for the
| healthcare system, shorter unpleasant dying for their families,
| and other people's health.
|
| Smoking is suicide on the installment plan.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > So Marlboro buys 35% of Juul and now Juul is advertising
| recklessly and inviting an e-cig ban or heavy regulation.
| Interesting
|
| Marlboro know they're above consequences for their product
| safety, and they've done this kind of thing before, so they're
| going to do it no matter how unethical it is.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| > Another ingredient you may be surprised at is urea. Pig
| Urine
|
| This is the kind of stuff that kids get taught in school to try
| and shock them into not smoking. It's marginally correct at
| best.
|
| If that shocks you, then I hope you don't drink beer, because
| urea is commonly used in the brewing industry as a yeast
| nutrient.
| tgb wrote:
| Your citations don't back up your claim that "the _main_ reason
| smoking causes cancer " is polonium 210. They just note that
| polonium 210 is one possible reason for smoking causing cancer.
| From your [1]:
|
| > Do these doses lead to lung cancer? It's hard to say,
| especially since the effects of polonium are only part of a
| wider range of damaging consequences caused by inhaling
| cigarette smoke. But animal studies certainly give us cause for
| concern.
|
| Moreover wikipedia cites two articles saying:
|
| > In contrast, a 1999 review of tobacco smoke carcinogens
| published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute
| states that "levels of polonium-210 in tobacco smoke are not
| believed to be great enough to significantly impact lung cancer
| in smokers."[224] In 2011 Hecht has also stated that the
| "levels of 210Po in cigarette smoke are probably too low to be
| involved in lung cancer induction".[225]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#Radi...
| elliekelly wrote:
| > So Marlboro buys 35% of Juul and now Juul is advertising
| recklessly and inviting an e-cig ban or heavy regulation.
|
| I'm disappointed this transaction didn't get more scrutiny from
| an antitrust perspective.
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| Well whatever they're doing is working.
|
| The amount of juul pod junk under my feet in my city seems to be
| growing exponentially year over year.
|
| At least cigarette butts are biodegradable!
|
| They should be forced to make these things out of cellulose or a
| similarly biodegradable product as their consumers are going to
| treat them as butts and just chuck them on the ground when
| they're done.
| rastapasta42 wrote:
| It's getting worse now.
|
| Disposable vapes are gaining in popularity, and some of those
| disposable vapes even come with a USB charger (even though
| they're not designed to be refilled without fluid).
|
| This means every time someone is done with the vape, they throw
| away much larger piece of plastic (compared to Juul pod).
|
| When comparing the price-point of a refillable vape (or Juul),
| disposables are around the same price or cheaper, without the
| hassle of getting fluid on your hands.
|
| Disposable vape buyers tend to ignore the price of refills is
| cheaper than buying a whole new vape, so most of the clientele
| are kids.
|
| Disposables are also very popular for products such as Delta 8
| - since Delta 8 has higher price point compared to Nicotine -
| the disposable plastic is just a marginal part of the cost.
| 34679 wrote:
| >When comparing the price-point of a refillable vape (or
| Juul), disposables are around the same price or cheaper,
| without the hassle of getting fluid on your hands.
|
| That's only true of the device. JUUL pods contain 2ml and a 4
| pack is ~$20, about the same price as a 30ml bottle of juice
| for refillables.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Cigarette butts are NOT biodegradable. They are made of
| plastic.
| 99_00 wrote:
| Follow the science.
| sva_ wrote:
| This study is pretty interesting:
|
| > Smoking Trajectories of Adult Never Smokers 12 Months after
| First Purchase of a JUUL Starter Kit
|
| https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/png/ajhb/2021/0000...
|
| The survey conveniently only asked about cigarette or "Juul" use,
| take note how it doesn't ask if users switched to a different
| vaping product.
|
| Though the study was described as
|
| > "JUUL customer online survey about JUUL vapor products, vaping
| and smoking."
|
| Makes me wonder if they conveniently left out some questions to
| get their p-value right.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Juul has sabatoshed their product. I quit smoking using the Mango
| flavor (now banned in the USA). I moved onto Virgina Tabbaco
| flavor which did the trick. About 6 months ago, all the pods
| started tasting like laundry detergent (Batch codes JJ25SA20A and
| forward). I had a few of the old to compare with. Waited 6 months
| now and bought another pack and it's still horrible. Now I buy
| mango pods from Russia. I hope that option lasts.
| fromfar wrote:
| I used to be a cigarette smoker who went to juuling and
| eventually "quit" (I still cave to a few puffs of e-cigs every
| month or so when I'm with someone that has one).
|
| I agree if you have no intention to quit, juuling is much safer
| than continuing to inhale smoke.
|
| But you might want to be careful using it as a smoking cessation
| tool. I smoked about 7 cigarettes a day but after I picked up
| juuling the sheer convenience of not having to go outside, being
| able to use it in bed, etc. got me up to 1-2 pods (equivalent to
| 1-2 packs of cigarettes) per day in nicotine consumption.
|
| My lungs caught a break by vaping but my nicotine addiction was
| uncontrollable. I eventually used nicotine gum to quit and it was
| absolute hell. I suspect it would have been much easier if I
| wasn't so used to a constant stream of nicotine 24/7.
| hummusandsushi wrote:
| I have a similar story but with just non-juul vaping. I
| actually started smoking again to stop vaping because I was so
| heavily addicted to the high nicotine availability. At least
| with cigarettes you get a sick feeling if you smoke too much,
| but with vape I would sometimes just puff away until I would
| start jittering from too much nicotine.
|
| Ended up just quitting cigarettes instead which ended up being
| easier after getting over the mental block that makes you think
| it's so much harder than it really is. Everyone's mileage
| varies though of course.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| > Pretty much all the articles take the Juul party line that
| e-cigarettes help convert smokers away from combustible tobacco
| products, and thus aid public health. Pretty much none of the
| articles mention that Juul and other vaping companies make their
| money by attracting countless new people to nicotine addiction.
|
| Well maybe it's because Juul bought the journal or maybe the
| researchers found no correlation between Juul's profits and
| public health.
| possiblelion wrote:
| Well, nicotine addiction is a debatable topic as nicotine
| itself is actually not addictive as a compound.
| struxure wrote:
| Any source for that claim? I can only say from the personal
| experience that people I know and I used to be addicted to
| nicotine (not only in tobacco products)
| possiblelion wrote:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16177026/
| i_love_limes wrote:
| This has been a hot topic of research in the public health
| community, and from more legitimate researchers there is still
| a lot of debate. However this kind of move is striking in it's
| similarity to the known tried and tested maneuvers of the
| tobacco industry to undercut public understanding of the risks
| with their products.
|
| This is the 21st century equivalent of attempting to disprove
| the links between smoking and cancer.
| smolder wrote:
| It's similar but not what I'd call equivalent, because the
| risks of smoking and vaping are different and differently
| understood in their respective PR battles. The science is
| still out on how safe vaping is in the long term, but apart
| from liquids having certain additives like diethyl that are
| known to be unsafe now, it appears to be reasonably safe.
|
| The undercutting of understanding the risks of cigarettes was
| happening when the risks would have been blatantly obvious to
| researchers, unlike with current vaping products. So while
| the PR technique is similarly appalling, the context is
| different.
| tokai wrote:
| Over half of the researchers are employees of Juul. Not funded
| or financed, but employed.
| bserge wrote:
| I mean, yeah they're a smoking cessation tool which has been
| taken up by non-smokers, like any other drug with somewhat
| recreational effects out there.
|
| Vaping for fun can be done without nicotine, though. They could
| place some more visible stickers that say "Smoke only nicotine
| free - same fun, no stupid addiction!" or something.
|
| And locking e-cigarettes behind a prescription would just make
| people continue smoking the freely available tobacco products.
| Nicotine patches failed to gain wide adoption in part because
| of that.
| plank_time wrote:
| We spent decades trying to get rid of cigarettes and it worked
| and now we let this fucking Juul through the front door. It's as
| if we haven't learned a fucking thing in decades, and the fact
| that this founder is celebrated in Silicon Valley sickens me. He
| just found another opportunity to hook kids on nicotine for
| another few generations and now he's a fucking billionaire. Fuck
| that guy.
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| 1) I get the sense that millennials (such as myself), having
| not lived through the era of ubiquitous cigarette smoking, kind
| of recognize smoking as more of a legitimate life choice, live
| your truth, healing crystals, class warfare, can't judge, etc.
|
| 2) Juul, being run by a bunch of amateurs, will continue to
| operate in an extremely sloppy manner like this and go bust
| eventually, and Altria & Co. will be there to benefit from the
| mess in the end.
| yeetman21 wrote:
| who cares if people want to smoke, i don't smoke but i don't
| see this kind of hate towards drinking (no one preaching
| Teetotalism) or even weed
| CaveTech wrote:
| When exactly do you think we got rid of cigarettes?
| Centigonal wrote:
| 1. GP said "trying to get rid of cigarettes," implying it was
| not a completed effort.
|
| 2. It was (and is) a fairly successful effort:
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/1717/tobacco-smoking.aspx
|
| https://www.statista.com/chart/20385/cigarette-sales-in-
| the-...
| m10i wrote:
| In full, he said "trying to get rid of cigarettes and it
| worked", implying that it was a completed effort, imo.
| Centigonal wrote:
| alright, I can see how the sentence could be read that
| way.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I don't know about elsewhere but smoking is has been dropping
| for decades in the UK. See figure 4 here: https://www.ons.gov
| .uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
|
| I would say "it's working" rather than "it worked" but his
| point is valid.
| gremloni wrote:
| Is there anything bad about having a nicotine only addiction?
| snarf21 wrote:
| If only we would work on the real health issues in this country
| (world?) and start looking at what is being put into our foods.
| We largely only went after smoking because of its
| externalities. There is no such thing as second-hand sugar,
| sadly.
| gundmc wrote:
| I haven't seen Juul or its founder "celebrated" to any great
| extent in Silicon Valley. Is this a common sentiment?
| macspoofing wrote:
| >We spent decades trying to get rid of cigarettes
|
| We spent decades trying to get rid of carcinogens from
| cigarettes. What's the problem with cigarettes without
| carcinogens?
| missedthecue wrote:
| It's like the people who think smoking a cigarette or Juul is
| one of the seven deadly sins, but also smoke pot every day
| and see no problem with it.
| conductr wrote:
| That's not me, but I can kinda relate conceptually.
| Constantly pumping _anything_ into your body seems bad; to
| use your deadly sin adage, I 'd call it gluttonous. Even a
| daily pot smoker, would likely not be smoking a bowl every
| ten minutes all day long. Sure those people exist, but they
| probably aren't looking down on nicotine users.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Do those exist? Maybe can argue vapes but we don't know
| either way just can guess.
|
| Also aren't there a LOT of other problems from smoking and
| nicotine alone, in terms of lung health and hypertension,
| heart stuff etc
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Also aren't there a LOT of other problems from smoking and
| nicotine alone, in terms of lung health and hypertension,
| heart stuff etc
|
| Probably. Weed isn't good for you either. Neither is
| Alcohol. At some point, you got to let people make some
| decisions.
| gremloni wrote:
| I don't think so. A cursory google search sounds like
| nicotine itself causes minuscule to no damage by itself.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Juul is the largest player in the game and were the first ones
| to use nicotine salts. There are many other companies ready to
| take their place (and they already are).
|
| The only "option" is to ban vaping outright. But then you're
| also banning the best smoking substitute.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > The only "option" is to ban vaping outright. But then
| you're also banning the best smoking substitute.
|
| That's not the only option. So much of the deserved vitriol
| against Juul is because their marketing and everything else
| about their product (e.g. fruit flavors) were specifically
| designed to get kids hooked.
|
| Juul's marketing should be the poster child for the banality
| of evil.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Fruit flavors do not exist because of the need to market to
| kids. Go into any vape shop and watch as grown-ass men, one
| after another, buy vape cartridges with names like Unicorn
| Blueberry Smoothie. Children aren't the only ones that like
| tasty flavors.
|
| As far as their marketing targeting children, I haven't
| seen any examples of that. Using millennials in your
| adverts does not equate to targeting children.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I'm not denying that adult smokers can enjoy fruit
| flavors, but at this point _not even Juul_ is trying to
| deny their early marketing was targeted to youths.
|
| https://www.vox.com/2019/1/25/18194953/vape-juul-e-
| cigarette...
| dntrkv wrote:
| None of the evidence in that whitepaper shows that they
| were targeting kids. They were targeting millennials
| (ages 24-40 now), like most other products out there
| today. Once they caught the attention of the media and
| anti-smoking groups, they made changes to lay low and
| actively avoid many of the usual advertising channels and
| approaches.
|
| Minimalist design, tasty flavors, colorful ads, and using
| social media does not equate to targeting kids.
|
| The kids aren't getting hooked on Juuls because of
| advertising. They're getting hooked on them because they
| give you a buzz and are convenient.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Minimalist design, tasty flavors, colorful ads, and
| using social media does not equate to targeting kids.
|
| Well, we clearly just agree to disagree. That article I
| think shows well how the early Juul marketing followed
| the cigarette marketing _so_ closely, and there is
| voluminous evidence that cigarette marketers _know_ you
| need to target young people because hardly anyone starts
| smoking after their early twenties.
| scottlamb wrote:
| The journal is: "American Journal of Health Behavior".
|
| Why did they agree to this? Why aren't they afraid of damaging
| their reputation? I'm not an health researcher or medical
| professional, but I would think if I were one, I wouldn't want to
| publish in this journal afterward, take seriously articles
| written in it, or be associated with it. They lost three
| editorial board members at least. Maybe AJHB will be an example
| that $51,000 isn't worth trashing a reputation that took decades
| to build.
| lemonberry wrote:
| My father has COPD from over 50 years of smoking. I convinced him
| to switch to vaping and he's been using a Juul for a few years
| now. Awhile after the switch his primary care physician listened
| to his lungs and said they sounded a lot better. She said she
| because the science isn't in "I can't tell you to vape but I can
| tell you to keep doing what you're doing".
|
| Should non-smokers pick up vaping? Probably not. But in this one
| instance it was a good move for a smoker.
|
| I'd like to see more studies in this area and some more
| regulations on the "juice" for vapes. The quality, and I assume
| health effects, vary widely between different juices. For
| example: I bought him a non-refillable vape by another company
| and he started coughing and complaining of soreness in his
| throat.
|
| I also think the arguments against the flavored juices are
| hysterical/hypocritical given the variety of flavors of liquor
| one can find.
|
| Disclaimer: I think all drugs should be legal.
| conductr wrote:
| Something as simple as saline is highly regulated by FDA (in
| US), so vape probably should be just as highly regulated.
| Potentially more so since it's use is continuous.
| ohdannyboy wrote:
| My uncle was a lifelong smoker and survived lung cancer (in
| remission getting close to 5 years). He vapes now and seems to
| be doing a lot better. It seems preferable to cigarettes
| considering his odds of full cessation are basically zero.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I wish this was around for a friend of mine. I might have been
| able to talk him into these vaping products. He didn't want the
| gum, or the patch.
|
| He smoked 4-5 packs of Benson & Henson Menthols/day.
|
| He stopped when he was 64, but it was to late. He didn't die of
| lung cancer, but they just stopped working one night in his
| sleep.
|
| He had some undiagnosed psychological problem that I believe
| added to his constant smoking?
|
| I must have asked him to cut back a 1000x.
|
| I don't like nicotine, but I'm glad these are still legal.
|
| (That said, I had him go a doctor to check his coronary
| arteries. They were completely clean. I think the only thing
| that saved him besides good genes, he didn't eat much.)
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > but I'm glad these are still legal.
|
| This is a great story. But it can be legal and restricted --
| prescription only, just like Nicorette gum was when it was
| first introduced.
|
| > He had some undiagnosed psychological problem
|
| There is definitely a correlation between schizophrenia and
| smoking. I dont know if there are studies on it, but ask any
| psychologist experienced with schizophrenics if they see that
| pattern.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| A Tl;DR of the situation with the FDA:
|
| - "E-Cigs are the greatest public health invention of modern
| times!"
|
| - Oh wait! "Think of the Children(tm)"
|
| - "We need to full on demonize e-cigs a la '90s anti drug
| style!"
|
| This is pretty much what went down. It was recognized as
| miracle, but the fear of kids getting addicted was too great.
| So instead we're going the path of full on propaganda against
| it, while kids get addicted anyway.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| And the most hilarious part? Altria is laughing all the way
| to the bank.
| jjice wrote:
| As an alternative to smoking cigarettes, it seems like a great
| choice. As someone fairly young who was still in high school
| when vaping started to pick up, the amount of people I know at
| my age (recent college graduates) that vape and picked it up as
| a habit without ever having smoked before is insane.
|
| I was out with some friends and two people I had never met
| before, and they immediately hit it off on their shared habit.
| I guess that's kind of like the social aspect of cigarettes.
| It's an interesting thing to see, and it's less intrusive than
| cigarette smoke for sure, so to each their own.
| jlangemeier wrote:
| I'm going to push back on the "less intrusive" than cigarette
| smoke; yes, vaping smoke doesn't stick to your clothes or on
| your breath, but that precludes the weird habit of vapers
| using the product where ever they darn well please because it
| isn't "smoking." The amount of times I've ran into a cloud of
| "banana margherita" is a bit ridiculous, and honestly I'd
| rather sit in a smoking section of a restaurant in podunk
| Wyoming than be randomly accosted by vape smoke, because at
| least with the smoker section I am willingly choosing to be
| there.
|
| Also, as a smoker, I've never "hit it off" with somebody
| because we smoked. Hitting it off with someone in the
| smoker's pit outside a bar is just shooting the shit with
| someone that's in a common area; folks that vape and vegans
| are very similar in that it's a major point of conversation,
| as if they've assimilated it as part of their personality.
|
| All that being said, vaping is fine, but the uptick in high
| schoolers smoking (because it's still smoking under a
| different name) is a bit alarming; and will be interesting to
| see how that consumer pipeline changes as regulation of them
| changes.
| refurb wrote:
| The NHS actually _recommends_ vaping to help stop smoking.
|
| _" In recent years, e-cigarettes have become a very popular
| stop smoking aid in the UK. Also known as vapes or e-cigs,
| they're far less harmful than cigarettes and can help you quit
| smoking for good."_
|
| https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/quit-smoking/using-e-cigarettes...
| afavour wrote:
| I think if Juul was marketed as a smoking cessation product I'd
| have no problem with it. But it's marketed as a lifestyle
| product and a ton of young people with no history of smoking
| have started vaping as a result.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| But it's _not_ a smoking cessation product. It can be used
| effectively as such, but it 's first and foremost a
| _healthier substitute_ to smoking.
|
| People like to go to both extremes wrt. vaping - "but it
| creates new addicts" vs. "but it's effective tool for
| breaking addiction", forgetting about the biggest benefit
| vaping brings: letting smokers who _don 't_ want to quit to
| keep smoking, without risking lung cancer.
|
| I'm definitely against marketing vaping to non-smokers. But
| I'm fine with converting existing smokers to vaping _without_
| any talk about quitting, because smoking e-cigarettes is
| strictly better than smoking analog ones.
| wayneftw wrote:
| Yes, it is a _smoking_ cessation product. It helps you
| cease smoking. Vaping is not smoking.
| rob74 wrote:
| Ok, so it's a _smoking_ cessation product if you take the
| definition strictly - but it doesn 't do anything to get
| you off your nicotine addiction, which people usually
| mean by "smoking cessation product"...
| moftz wrote:
| A vape can be much cheaper than cigarettes and you get
| the benefit of not inhaling smoke and smelling like
| smoke. You can also begin reducing the amount of nicotine
| in your vape juice without reducing the amount of time
| you spend vaping. Most brands offer numerous levels of
| nicotine from something that's a little stronger than
| regular cigarette down to none.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| All the smokers I know want to quit smoking, not
| nicotine.. Smoking is 99% of the problem with cigarettes,
| and nicotine is 1%.
| yCombLinks wrote:
| You've created your own definition and now expect us to
| accept it, which I don't.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Nicotine is the thing people obsess over, but there are
| far more harmful substances than nicotine in tobacco
| cigarettes (for example, radioactive elements
| Polonium-210 and lead-210), and there are MAOIs that make
| the nicotine in tobacco smoke far more addictive.
| leereeves wrote:
| > I'm definitely against marketing vaping to non-smokers.
| But I'm fine with converting existing smokers to vaping
|
| How can a society allow marketing vaping as a _healthier_
| way to smoke without allowing marketing that makes non-
| smokers think vaping is a _healthy_ way to smoke?
|
| (Especially considering that the marketers are eager to
| market to non-smokers.)
| smeej wrote:
| Related: Why is there talk about banning Juul from
| selling its products in the U.S. entirely, but no such
| conversation about banning any of the big tobacco
| companies from selling theirs?
|
| It's all about power.
|
| There are so many things it would be useful to quantify
| and compare:
|
| Does anybody know the difference between the percentage
| of non-nicotine users who begin smoking cigarettes and
| the percentage who begin vaping? It sounds like the
| percentage for vaping is higher, but how much higher? Is
| it as much higher as the risk of dangerous health
| complications smoking has over vaping?
|
| Never mind the question of why nicotine addiction is so
| dangerous it must be prevented on a federal level, but
| alcohol addictions aren't? How much more dangerous is
| nicotine than alcohol?
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| > How much more dangerous is nicotine than alcohol?
|
| If you divorce nicotine from its problematic delivery
| systems, nicotine itself is a pretty good drug (albeit
| very addictive). It's potentially protective against
| diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, it's
| associated with weight loss, and it improves short term
| memory and attention.
|
| It's also great in combination with caffeine, and it
| speeds up caffeine metabolism.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| Replace nicotine with amphetamine and your statement
| still holds true.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Exactly. Whatever positive effects nicotine has are
| completely overshadowed and undermined by its
| addictiveness.
| sarsway wrote:
| Wouldn't be so sure about that. Nicotine alone has
| problematic effects on the heart and vascular system,
| especially since the addictiveness leads to constant
| admission. Vaping isn't all that great delivery system
| either.
| vimacs2 wrote:
| This is one of the main reasons why I vape.
|
| I first got interested in the nootropic properties of
| nicotine long before I took up the pen when I came across
| Gwern's article on it. In particular, the possibility of
| reinforcing habits using it was the biggest thing that
| made me look into it. However, he uses gum instead.
|
| https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine
| leereeves wrote:
| > Related: Why is there talk about banning Juul from
| selling its products in the U.S. entirely
|
| Important distinction: I didn't say anything about
| banning _sales_ , just marketing, which we've already
| done for both smoking and alcohol.
|
| > How much more dangerous is nicotine than alcohol?
|
| According to the CDC, "cigarette smoking is the leading
| cause of preventable death in the United States...causes
| more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States"
| while "excessive alcohol use is responsible for more than
| 95,000 deaths in the United States each year, "
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/h
| eal...
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-
| death...
|
| Edit: as for vaping specifically, the risks are not yet
| fully known, but some health authorities argue "a growing
| body of evidence shows that smoking e-cigarettes, or
| vaping, may be even more dangerous than smoking
| cigarettes".
|
| https://www.nm.org/healthbeat/healthy-tips/emotional-
| health/...
| mcguire wrote:
| That last article says, " _The Centers for Disease
| Control and Prevention (CDC) suspects that exposure to
| THC, as well as a mix of THC, nicotine and vitamin E, an
| additive in many vape carriages, is causing serious lung
| injury._ "
|
| Would you agree that exposure to THC, in itself, causes
| serious lung injury?
|
| (Yes, I know, vitamin E acetate (an oil) in cannabis
| vaping products was likely the cause of a number of cases
| of lung injury.)
|
| Also, " _An FDA analysis of e-cigarettes from two leading
| brands found that the samples contained carcinogens and
| other hazardous chemicals, including diethylene glycol,
| which is found in antifreeze._ " Diethylene glycol is
| also used as "a humectant for tobacco, cork, printing
| ink, and glue. It is also a component in brake fluid,
| lubricants, wallpaper strippers, artificial fog and haze
| solutions, and heating/cooking fuel" as well as an
| industrial solvent. This statement is largely meaningless
| unless you know _how much_ is in there: "The U.S. Code
| of Federal Regulations allows no more than 0.2% of
| diethylene glycol in polyethylene glycol when the latter
| is used as a food additive. The Australian government
| does not allow DEG as a food additive; it is only allowed
| at less than 0.25% w/w of DEG as an impurity of
| polyethylene glycol (PEG) even in toothpaste."
| (Wikipedia)
| tialaramex wrote:
| However note that's comparing _smoking_ not nicotine.
|
| Inhaling smoke is _very bad for you_. Lots of people die
| this way in fires. Like, you cut the victims open and
| there is _soot_ in their _lungs_. So, no surprise smoking
| cigarettes is also a bad idea even if it 's less bad than
| being in a literal burning building.
|
| Nicotine is poisonous, but so is booze. There may be
| other things about vaping which are bad for you, but it
| seems pretty clear that the main problem is the nicotine,
| which is why people are doing it anyway, so, fine.
|
| Booze has another important difference though: The ones
| drinking aren't always the ones dying. That can be
| because they're impaired while operating machinery (e.g.
| someone has "a few beers" then drives home, next morning
| they don't remember anything about how they got home, but
| there's a blood red stain on the bumper and someone else
| is found dead in a ditch) or they might just become
| violent and cause deliberate harm to others.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > According to the CDC, "cigarette smoking is the leading
| cause of preventable death in the United States...causes
| more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States"
| while "excessive alcohol use is responsible for more than
| 95,000 deaths in the United States each year,
|
| The question was about nicotine; it is not generally the
| _nicotine_ in cigarettes that kills you. That's what
| keeps you smoking them (to a large extent) but it's not
| what kills you.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Related: Why is there talk about banning Juul from
| selling its products in the U.S. entirely, but no such
| conversation about banning any of the big tobacco
| companies from selling theirs?
|
| Juul is a product of one of those big tobacco companies.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Hot take. Ban marketing/advertising?
|
| These are conversations that belong in a physicians
| office. Advertising is a scam on both sides and destroys
| instead of creates value for humanity. Historians will
| look back upon advertising the way many look back upon
| slavery.
| franga2000 wrote:
| Is it not already? Genuine question. In all of the
| coutries I'm familiar with, both smoking and vaping are
| illegal to advertise. Even alcohol in some cases,
| although more commonly it's allowed but strictly
| regulated (must be purely factual, no glorification,
| mandatory health disclaimer...)
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Banned, in theory? Enforced? Nah.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/health/juul-vaping-
| lawsui...
| janeroe wrote:
| > How can a society allow
|
| What's the lastname of this Society guy?
|
| It's kind of hypocritical to wrap your personal wishes
| and desired in the veil of common good, care for others,
| etc.
| leereeves wrote:
| > What's the lastname of this Society guy?
|
| Legislature would be its lastname, I suppose. As in
| [nation] legislature, [state] legislature, etc.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Yeah but that kind of defeats the consent manufacturing
| illusion to say the actual entity instead of the vague
| "society" to brainjack people with presumed social
| pressures.
| leereeves wrote:
| Presumed social pressures? There's plenty of very real
| social pressure against marketing vaping to non-smokers.
|
| Alarmingly there are also many people, especially young
| people, who believe that vaping is safe, and if educating
| them is "consent manufacturing" then let's manufacture
| some consent on this issue.
| egeozcan wrote:
| Healthier substitute to smoking practically means a smoking
| cessation product. Impossible meat, likewise, is a meat
| "cessation" product.
|
| If impossible meat makes vegans start eating burgers, you
| can't just argue "well, it's still better than meat".
|
| > I'm definitely against marketing vaping to non-smokers.
|
| But this is the whole point, they do attract non-smokers.
| They should explicitly detract them instead.
| dgfitz wrote:
| > Impossible meat, likewise, is a meat "cessation"
| product.
|
| No it's not. Meat isn't addictive. People don't "quit"
| meat and develop a habit of impossible burgers. People
| don't wake up every morning feeling shitty about enjoying
| meat.
|
| I fully support vegan and vegetarian lifestyles. To
| compare tobacco to meat is foolish.
| nohuck13 wrote:
| > But this is the whole point, they do attract non-
| smokers. They should explicitly detract them instead.
|
| This is magical thinking. Do we apply this requirement to
| healthier alternatives in any other market?
|
| For example: I really like McDonalds fries, but I mostly
| don't eat them because they're unhealthy. However
| anecdotally some "heavy users" eat them 3 to 5 times a
| week.
|
| Imagine if McDonalds introduced "Beyond Fries" tomorrow,
| equivalent in every salient way, but less unhealthy (say,
| baked potato-level healthy). Would anyone apply the
| standard above, calling for it to be _only_ a "fry
| cessation product" for heavy users, and expecting it to
| explicitly repel the abstaining-for-health-reasons users
| like me?
|
| I can't see how it's even possible to achieve both goals
| at once. A healthier alternative to _anything_ is going
| to draw some former abstainers-for-health-reasons into
| the market. And smoking has a _lot_ of abstainers-for-
| health-reasons.
|
| By all means let's call vaping a smoking cessation
| product, but I'm not sure it's reasonable to assume that
| we can have our cake and eat it too here.
|
| Edit: sense
| michaelt wrote:
| I suppose in a very literal sense, if you replace
| addiction A with addiction B, you could say that B is an
| A cessation product.
|
| But by that logic, smoking could be called a weight loss
| product.
|
| Other people have a more complex definition, which
| precludes cigarettes from being considered a health
| product, despite their appetite-suppressing properties.
| thebean11 wrote:
| > smoking could be called a weight loss product
|
| And it was! The difference is that smoking isn't really
| healthier than obesity, so it's not a very good way to
| lose weight overall.
| ReGenGen wrote:
| Its easy to forget that heart-disease kills as many smokers
| as Cancer. Vaping is still ingesting mystery compounds &
| heavy metals directly into the blood stream for the body's
| immune system to freak out on. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/
| data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...
| https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2018/study-lead-
| and...
| Semaphor wrote:
| > letting smokers who don't want to quit to keep smoking,
| without risking lung cancer.
|
| I started smoking when I was 18 (2004), picked up some of
| the first vapes in 2009 (they were horrible), and finally
| stopped smoking in 2012. But I don't want to stop vaping. I
| don't like the modern mainstream ecigs like juul (I mix my
| own liquid and build my own coils on a dual 18650 battery
| device), but I'm just glad that vaping exists, because, if
| all my fruitless attempts at quitting were any indication,
| otherwise I'd still be smoking a pack a day.
| boredtofears wrote:
| Is it accurate to say you quit smoking when you've really
| just switched the device that delivers the substance
| you're addicted to?
| yCombLinks wrote:
| 100% accurate, he didn't say he wanted to quit being
| addicted to nicotine. He wanted to quit smoking, which he
| has done.
| boredtofears wrote:
| You haven't really overcome your main addiction in that
| case though. I don't think that people colloquially
| interpret that as "quitting smoking" when that term gets
| used in this context, even if the meaning is literal.
| dude187 wrote:
| When you quit smoking, you quit smoking. Vaping is not
| smoking. What's inaccurate is to insist that someone
| still smokes when they do not, because you insist on
| calling something that is not smoking "smoking".
| cwkoss wrote:
| If we accept that addiction is an evil in and of itself,
| social media addiction should warrant significantly more
| societal attention that nicotine addiction: it's much
| more prevalent, both in general population and among
| children in particular.
| yCombLinks wrote:
| I think people have mixed definitions, but I really think
| smokers just want to avoid the lung cancer and emphysema.
| It's not my place to judge them as failures because they
| don't meet my criteria of not being addicted to nicotine.
| rsynnott wrote:
| But is that the _point_? I think many people are pretty
| much okay with being addicted to nicotine if it's not
| going to kill them.
| prepend wrote:
| It's not the addiction that causes lung cancer, it's the
| smoke. So the goal of stopping smoking should have
| positive health outcomes.
| bmj wrote:
| My understanding is that the proverbial jury is still out
| on whether vaping truly is less harmful to the lungs that
| smoking[0][1]. That would mean that vaping (instead of
| smoking) isn't necessarily a positive health outcome.
|
| [0] https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2020/05/risks-vaping
|
| [1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-
| preventi...
| mcguire wrote:
| [0]: " _Studies suggest nicotine vaping may be less
| harmful than traditional cigarettes when people who
| regularly smoke switch to them as a complete
| replacement._ "
|
| [1]: " _Vaping Is Less Harmful Than Smoking, but It's
| Still Not Safe_ "
|
| [1] has some problems. It seems to be conflating the
| vitamin E acetate issue with vaping in general. ("
| _However, there has also been an outbreak of lung
| injuries and deaths associated with vaping. As of Jan.
| 21, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
| (CDC) confirmed 60 deaths in patients with e-cigarette,
| or vaping, product use associated lung injury (EVALI)._
| ") The section on " _Research Suggests Vaping Is Bad for
| Your Heart and Lungs_ " focuses on nicotine. Which raises
| your blood pressure. And not much else, according to
| other sources.
| intuitionist wrote:
| Nicotine is great, I would be incapable of functioning in
| society without it, and if the US Government makes it
| impossible for me to get a nicotine fix without giving
| myself cancer I will be tempted to turn to direct action.
| jimbilly22 wrote:
| It is. Their advertising is extremely strictly regulated and
| literally all of their ads and marketing material focus on
| smoking cessation.
|
| Note: this came after initial warnings from the FDA years ago
| that they were going to ban the product unless.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| There is no incentive to sell it as something to make you
| quit
| shadilay wrote:
| Somehow "It kills you slower than cigarettes" isn't an
| attractive slogan.
| gremloni wrote:
| But it is not a cessation product. It is for people that want
| to continue to smoke nicotine at a fraction of the risks. Is
| nicotine bad by itself?
| coryfklein wrote:
| _smoking_ cessation product
| pope_meat wrote:
| Fun fact, if you claim to be a smoking cessation product you
| get the FDA at your door going "oh, so this is a medical
| product" and you're now obligated to prove that your product
| works as a medical cessation product, and requires a doctor's
| note to pick up. You can't market yourself as a smoking
| cessation product without getting the hounds of hell being
| unleashed on you by the regulators.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| > you're now obligated to prove that your product works
|
| And that's a bad thing?
| elif wrote:
| See marijuana if you believe regulators will actually
| listen to a preponderance of evidence. FDA/pharma
| executives are a revolving door, and therefore concerned
| chiefly with the health of pharma rather than humans.
| folli wrote:
| Recent developments (see aducanumab) have shown that the
| FDA mainly cares about safety but much less so about
| efficacy.
| [deleted]
| rmellow wrote:
| For business? Absolutely
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Also bad for the people who might benefit from the
| product even though it didn't help a statistically
| significant portion of people in an expensive clinical
| trial.
| [deleted]
| mumblemumble wrote:
| There's an interesting tradeoff there. Getting through
| clinical trials to prove it works is expensive, though
| that's realistically more an annoyance to the company
| than a problem for the public. But once you have gone
| through all of that, you're probably looking at the
| product now being sold for a higher price (increased
| barriers to entry means more competition), and possibly
| only by prescription. Which might severely reduce
| availability to less-wealthy smokers. Which, I think at
| this point, is most smokers. On the other hand, that
| would also severely reduce availability to kids who
| aren't already addicted to some other tobacco product. So
| there's that.
|
| Long story short, I can imagine a lot of valid arguments
| pointing in every which way here.
| theli0nheart wrote:
| > _And that 's a bad thing?_
|
| If your product causes harm in any way--regardless of the
| benefits--you're going to have a difficult time getting
| regulatory approval. It will also greatly affect access
| to the product, as not everyone has access to good
| doctors, and most items that are FDA-regulated requires
| prescriptions.
|
| For a product which is a superior, healthier option to
| cigarettes, it's a massive regulatory burden that could
| kill the business. I can't imagine anyone would defend
| that as preferable to the status quo.
| [deleted]
| acituan wrote:
| > If your product causes harm in any way--regardless of
| the benefits--you're going to have a difficult time
| getting regulatory approval
|
| Question stands, is that a bad thing?
|
| Besides not everything FDA approved becomes a
| prescription medication. On topic; nicotine gums and
| patches as smoke cessation products are widely available
| as OTC.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > Nicotine gums and patches as smoke cessation products
| are widely available as OTC.
|
| The first nicotine gum, Nicorette, began as a
| prescription-only product in the US.
| twojacobtwo wrote:
| I think the implication is that a product can do some
| harm, while reducing the overall harm in the system. In
| this case, vaping might cause some harm, but it
| potentially reduces the overall harm by doing much less
| harm than cigarettes. I believe the comment is saying
| that, by pushing for regulatory approval, the product may
| never enter the market and would thus not be able to
| reduce the overall harm being done.
|
| In this case, we would certainly have to consider the
| potentially increased harm of non-smokers taking up
| vaping to assess the overall harm being done, but I see
| the merits of the basic argument at least.
| [deleted]
| tw04 wrote:
| *these statements have not been validated by the FDA
|
| There are countless products from weight loss to joint pain
| to "improve your memory" that sidestep the issue with those
| 9 simple words. I don't see why it would be any different
| for Juul.
| billh wrote:
| Because that language is for dietary supplements which
| have a specific legislative carve out from falling under
| FDA regulation.
| folli wrote:
| These products can do that because they contain no
| substances that need approval in any way, so they are
| likely just food supplements without any active
| ingredients.
|
| Nicotine will count as an active ingredient, you can't
| just slap these 9 words to any random drug and just sell
| it over the counter.
| ouid wrote:
| Working as intended: moved to won't fix.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| But... you get to charge 10x more and make the insurance
| companies or government pay.
| prepend wrote:
| > requires a doctor's note to pick up.
|
| I don't think this is true. I can buy Nicolette all over
| the place without a doctors note. In the US at least.
| pope_meat wrote:
| That's the case now, initially the product was
| prescription only.
|
| Oh and it tastes like shit, to save the children.
| egeozcan wrote:
| Getting licensed for vaping is easier? (really asking)
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| No. The only companies eligible in the PMTA License
| process for vape had to have been manufacturing in 2015
| or 2016 when the FDA began its moratorium on new players
| entering the market.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| They're both incredibly expensive and laborious. Like
| millions of dollars per sku expensive. The fda has put
| all the good vape shops out of business and extortionate
| taxes are killing the rest as people revert back to
| cigarettes. The fda is actively hurting Americans by
| shifting these costs onto retailers which was a Coup
| d'etat for big tobacco who had been completely blindsided
| by the success of startup vape companies.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > The fda has put all the good vape shops out of business
| and extortionate taxes are killing the rest as people
| revert back to cigarettes
|
| I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I'll just point out
| the observation that there are a lot of perverse
| incentives to keep the tobacco money flowing, public
| health be damned. Hell, remember back 2019 public health
| officials were running made-up 'e-cigarettes are causing
| lung injury' scare which turned out to be entirely caused
| by contaminated black market THC cartriges? SF _still_
| hasn 't walked back their e-cigarette ban that led to a
| doubling of tobacco use by high schoolers[1].
|
| To give an idea of where priorities are, the state of
| California does 10x the number of checks to make sure
| stores are paying their cigarette taxes as they do to
| make sure stores aren't selling to minors.
|
| [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fulla
| rticle/...
| OptionX wrote:
| Several "Citation needed" in that comment.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Here's a good primer. I was a bit off, it's not millions
| per sku, more like hundreds of thousands, but all the
| combinations of products also need to be accounted for
| and approved at great cost.
|
| https://vaping360.com/vape-news/105656/how-will-the-pmta-
| dea...
|
| If that's not enough detail let me know, I'm happy to dig
| up other old articles for you. This small business
| destroying charade by the fda has been well documented
| and publicized. Though not as well as the fear mongering
| about children juuling.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > fear mongering about children juuling.
|
| Why is that fear-mongering? My anecdotal evidence is that
| it's rampant with teens. Do you have any stats that are
| not anecdotal so I can educate myself?
| markzzerella wrote:
| When I was growing up all the teens were smoking and
| drinking. Considering how bad we know alcohol and
| cigarettes are for a developing brain, I'm inclined to
| not panic over the newest trend.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Because the stories are pushing an agenda and ignoring
| the broader scope of the issue that is children using
| addictive substances. Conversations about children vaping
| should be had, but in comparison to the rate of other
| tobacco and nicotine use. If it's really about the kids
| shouldn't we also be looking at alcohol and other drugs
| like marijuana too as reference? I don't see articles
| about the high school kids that start drinking, taking
| opiates, or smoking cigarettes and marijuana every year.
| These are expected behaviors, vaping is new, and the
| preponderance of evidence says is far less dangerous than
| smoking, so a lot of ignorant and easily frightened
| people got caught up in the rhetoric and forgot how to
| rationalize about new risks. The fear mongering about
| juul was little more than a perfect excuse to quash
| outcry over the ridiculous legislation against vaping
| products on the state and National level.
| pope_meat wrote:
| It was rampant with teens, but then we "fixed" things.
|
| They went back to cigarettes.
|
| Mission accomplished I guess.
| mcguire wrote:
| Do you have any (non-anecotal, ideally) evidence that
| it's dangerous?
| pope_meat wrote:
| I'm a living citation. Was a small business owner, retail
| vape shop. Did fine for 5 years. Then the regulations to
| save the children and hit pieces in the news. All the
| small independent shops went under and now you can only
| buy the vuse, and juul, both owned by...you guessed it,
| the same folks who sold cigarettes.
|
| Basically, the wrong people were making money, and the
| regulators fixed that. Now the money is flowing to the
| right people and no one gives a shit that teen smoking
| rates went back to higher than they were before vaping.
| Harm reduced, a slow clap to our regulators.
| soperj wrote:
| Philip Morris owns 35% of Juul.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| What about marketing as a smoking replacement product? There
| are people who smoke and don't plan to quit. I recommend them
| to switch to vaping.
| [deleted]
| rchaud wrote:
| > I think if Juul was marketed as a smoking cessation product
| I'd have no problem with it.
|
| This is precisely how I remember e-cigarettes being marketed
| when I first heard about them 10 years ago. I was a smoker
| then, so my ears perked up.
|
| They clearly switched their marketing to target kids who
| didn't even smoke to begin with. 'Juul' was synonymous with
| teenagehood during the mid-2010s, at least if my recollection
| of IG memes from that time are accurate.
| swiley wrote:
| Someone who was involved with the early founding of that
| company has posted here before. It's as rotten as the
| cigarette companies. They're on a level bellow even consumer
| electronics OS vendors.
| egeozcan wrote:
| Exactly. The false dichotomy they bring forward anytime
| people mention the adverse health effects is really
| impossible to swallow.
|
| There have always been products to battle nicotine addiction.
| They should compare this to those.
| krrrh wrote:
| > They should compare this to those.
|
| Or we could trust the adults who chose one product over the
| other to make those decisions.
| egeozcan wrote:
| False marketing does need government intervention. If you
| think otherwise, that's a whole different kind of
| discussion.
| replicatorblog wrote:
| Ecigs are likely one of the most impactful public health
| interventions of the last 50 years. They provide a substitute
| that is less dangerous _and_ pleasurable which keeps compliance
| high.
|
| Juul and their competitors were genius product managers paired
| with irresponsible to the point of malevolent product
| marketers.
|
| I would like someone to do a "Years of life saved" calculation
| that tallies the expected years save by switching smokers to
| vaping balanced against those who were attracted by vaping who
| eventually went to smoking. My guess is even with the new
| entrants the years of life saved would be extraordinary.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > I would like someone to do a "Years of life saved"
| calculation that tallies the expected years save by switching
| smokers to vaping balanced against those who were attracted
| by vaping who eventually went to smoking. My guess is even
| with the new entrants the years of life saved would be
| extraordinary.
|
| My understanding is entire high schools are getting addicted
| to vaping, where before smoking was a relatively minor
| phenomenon. I suspect vaping is causing multiple times as
| much harm as it is providing relief, especially since they
| target young people for new customers.
|
| I know plenty of people that have never smoked in their lives
| that vape regularly. I actually don't know a single smoker
| that switched to vaping, but I think that latter part is rare
| and unique to me.
|
| So, if I'm correct, I don't think it should be "years of life
| saved" but "years of life lost," and I'd bet it's
| astonishingly high since many of those high school kids will
| be addicted for life. Don't forget Juul got billions (not
| millions) in funding from the cigarette companies in exchange
| for 35% ownership, so it's all the same to them - addiction
| is money.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Yes, it seems like the elder generations are benefiting
| greatly from vaping but the "kids these days" are having
| huge issues with it. I agree that majority of a high school
| will just suddenly be all in on vaping, the social pressure
| is just waayyy too high in a place like that and a bunch of
| people get pulled in that wouldn't just cause a couple of
| the more influential ones picked up something they view as
| a toy, but that they can portray as a status symbol, at
| least within the high school.
|
| I will say that when those juul kids come to college, very
| specifically my college, they hit the reality that everyone
| there still looks down on it and that they're basically
| just broadcasting their "highschoolness", and then they
| realize how hard it is to quit. We had smoking at my non-
| smoking campus, just behind one of the buildings, but it
| was by definition not popular. Vaping existed but if you
| were walking around blowing huge clouds of cotton candy
| shit, people would both actively avoid you and look down on
| you. It was the culture at the time.
|
| Disclaimer: I left a couple years ago, that was my
| experience, things could've greatly changed by now
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I suspect you are right about the age division, but would
| love to see some real numbers and studies about each side.
| Every study I have seen about the youth pushes your
| sentiment that "entire high schools are getting addicted",
| but when you look at the questions, they are typically very
| misleading and something along the lines of "have you ever
| tried a vape".
|
| OTOH, being older, I have never met someone who vapes that
| didn't smoke before, and know several smokers who quit and
| switched over.
| lolc wrote:
| So what's the harm of vaping? As far as I know, there is
| some evidence of harm, but it compares very favorably to
| smoking. It's a different class.
|
| To talk about "years of life lost" is quite off from what I
| know about it. And I never vaped, just smoked.
| ehnto wrote:
| It's still a product using nicotine to form addiction so
| that you'll be reliant on their product, it's an evil
| practice. You can vape without nicotine, and it's a great
| way to quit smoking, but that's not what's happening with
| all the Juul hype. It's just teenagers getting hooked on
| nicotine again because marketing has told them it was
| cool.
|
| It gets a pass because of it's relationship with smoking,
| giving them a believable reason to keep the nicotine, but
| if I started putting nicotine in bottled water there
| would be a class action in a week.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| We don't have as much data on vaping as we do for
| smoking, but this reminds me of what cigarette companies
| said for decades: "where is the data showing our products
| are harmful?"
|
| We already know vaping causes popcorn lung. I suspect 1:1
| between vaping and smoking that vaping is safer, but who
| knows? We won't know until we have decades of data about
| mortality related to vaping. It seems plausible that it
| increases lung cancer rates and we just don't have enough
| data to know yet.
|
| https://www.cancertherapyadvisor.com/home/cancer-
| topics/lung...
| dntrkv wrote:
| > We already know vaping causes popcorn lung.
|
| Not true. The data we have shows that it was being caused
| by Vitamin E acetate, which was used by off-brand THC
| cartridges. None of the major nicotine vapes used this
| chemical.
|
| Also, this attitude of "oh we don't know" could be
| extended to any new product anywhere, including the
| vaccines we are using now. All of the current data
| supports vaping to be significantly safer than
| cigarettes, so let's proceed with that data and if the
| data later changes, we can update our guidelines.
|
| Otherwise, you are killing people in the meantime.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > The data we have shows that it was being caused by
| Vitamin E acetate, which was used by off-brand THC
| cartridges.
|
| That's a different, less well understood respiratory
| problem. Some ecigarette liquid contains (or used to
| contain; it's banned in Europe but maybe not in the US?)
| diacetyl as a flavouring; that causes popcorn lung and
| various other problems.
|
| Regardless, neither of these are a concern where not
| present, which they generally aren't.
| deftnerd wrote:
| Well, there also incidents about 5 years of people making
| vape juice with Diacetyl, a food additive that gives a
| creamy buttery taste. Turned out that while it was food
| safe, bringing it to the temperature necessary for vaping
| did bad things to it and it also caused "popcorn lung"
| dntrkv wrote:
| I'm sure there were even more sketchy recipes used
| before, but it's not an argument against vaping, it's an
| argument against those recipes.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Otherwise, you are killing people in the meantime.
|
| What? I'm arguing vaping is more dangerous than not
| vaping. I specifically said I believe vaping is safer
| than smoking.
|
| For what it's worth, I believe _all_ drugs should be
| legal. I don 't care if you want to vape or not. I don't
| care if you want to inject fentanyl into your veins or
| not. It's your body.
| dntrkv wrote:
| "I suspect 1:1 between getting vaccinated and not, that
| getting vaccinated is safer, but who knows?"
|
| See the problem with this type of rhetoric? There have
| been tons of studies done at this point with regards to
| vaping. Everything shows it as being safer. This is not
| equivalent to the tobacco companies lying to the public.
| Juul never makes any claim as to their product being 100%
| safe, just look at the packaging.
|
| On top of that, you also repeated a known falsehood that
| vaping causes popcorn lung.
|
| My point is that repeating these arguments and casting
| doubt on vaping being safer further promotes these bans
| on vaping, which in turn will kill more people.
|
| > I'm arguing vaping is more dangerous than not vaping.
|
| There is no need to argue an obvious fact that 100% of
| people will agree with.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| You're comparing vaping to getting vaccinated. You've
| clearly got an axe to grind.
|
| > There have been tons of studies done at this point with
| regards to vaping. Everything shows it as being safer.
|
| I haven't seen them, but there were also lots of studies
| that cigarette companies touted to show how safe their
| product was until they could no longer deny it. And
| seeing as how those same companies just invested a
| shitload of money into Juul, it doesn't seem crazy to
| think they'd use the same playbook. We also have no
| reason to believe vaping isn't purposefully designed to
| get people hooked on nicotine only to later sell them
| another product like cigarettes or something else they
| later develop. In fact, there are studies suggesting
| exactly that
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6652100/).
| There are many ways vaping could prove to be more harmful
| than we can currently see because it's a relatively new
| product.
|
| I get your point about vaping potentially being helpful
| by getting people off smoking if it's safer, but it's
| simply unproven. Like I said if people want to vape let
| them, but I'll wait for the data before concluding
| whether or not it's safer. I suspect it's more dangerous
| and I'm sticking to that until the data proves otherwise.
| Similar to how you suspect it's less dangerous and will
| stick to that until the data proves otherwise. The common
| thread is we're lacking data and neither of us can
| confirm our hypotheses.
|
| In other words we disagree and it's impossible to know
| who's right until we have more data. From my perspective
| your stance is just as harmful as you perceive mine to
| be.
| dntrkv wrote:
| > You're comparing vaping to getting vaccinated. You've
| clearly got an axe to grind.
|
| Not sure what you mean by this, but I think everyone
| should be vaccinated unless you have some health
| condition that prevents you from doing so.
|
| The reason I'm making that comparison is that there is an
| ongoing public debate about vaccines and long-term health
| effects that use very similar arguments to yours. All of
| our current data shows that getting vaccinated is a
| better risk tradeoff than potentially getting covid. Just
| like all of our current data shows that vaping is safer
| than smoking. Both of the counter arguments center around
| "but we don't know what the long term effects are" and
| can be applied to both these new vaccines and to vaping.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| I understand the point you're making but I don't think
| you understand the point I'm making. If it turns out
| vaping is a net positive for society then I will
| genuinely be happy that you were right and I was wrong.
|
| Let's just agree to disagree.
| dntrkv wrote:
| I've seen countless people replace smoking with vaping
| and the massive benefits it has had on their physical
| health. So yeah, it pains me to see the push to ban the
| only working smoking alternative.
|
| Not implying that you wanna ban it, but that's the reason
| why I'm so in favor of it.
|
| > Let's just agree to disagree.
|
| Agreed.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _We already know vaping causes popcorn lung._ "
|
| We know that vaping fluid with a particular flavoring
| chemical caused popcorn lung. That chemical is now rare.
|
| " _The chemical that gave this condition its nickname is
| diacetyl. After workers at a factory that packaged
| microwave popcorn were found to have bronchiolitis
| obliterans more often than other people, some companies
| stopped using diacetyl as a flavoring. But it 's still
| used in some electronic cigarette flavors in the US. Many
| e-cigarette makers state they aren't using this chemical
| in their products and its use in e-cigarettes is banned
| in Europe._" (https://www.webmd.com/lung/popcorn-lung#1)
| mcguire wrote:
| " _My understanding is entire high schools are getting
| addicted to vaping, where before smoking was a relatively
| minor phenomenon. I suspect vaping is causing multiple
| times as much harm as it is providing relief, especially
| since they target young people for new customers._ "
|
| I think I'd want a citation for that. It's been a long time
| since I was in high school, but smoking was incredibly
| common (if reasonably well concealed) back then. I can see
| vaping as being somewhat more popular (if not "entire high
| schools"), but...
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Congratulations on your father's change of habit, I hope he
| continues to recover and has a long life!
|
| That aside, the collective balance is: - how many cigarette
| smokers will switch (benefit)
|
| - how many people will start vaping instead of smoking
| (benefit)
|
| - how many people will switch from vaping to smoking (harm)
|
| - how many people will start vaping but wouldn't have started
| smoking (harm)
|
| Perhaps someone with expertise can explain the current state of
| research. IIRC I saw a study arguing that the beneficial
| effects were less frequent and vaping as an entry to smoking
| was shockingly prevalent.
| grasshopperpurp wrote:
| Isn't it also about the amount of harm or benefit for each?
|
| The articles I saw (years ago) claimed that vaping was a
| gateway to smoking, but the data showed that vaping just
| replaced smoking for teens. That is, once e-cigs became
| available, the same amount of teens were doing one or the
| other, but more were using e-cigs than cigarettes. So, if the
| amount of teens doing one or the other remained stable, but
| e-cig use largely replaced cigarette use, I think you have to
| consider the teens using the e-cigs. If you removed e-cigs as
| an option, would they smoke cigarettes or abstain altogether?
| It seems to me that they'd be more likely (as a group) to
| smoke cigarettes.
|
| Disclaimer: I switched from smoking to vaping in 2013 and
| haven't smoked a cigarette since. I use unflavored e-liquid
| for a few reasons, but, as I understand it, inhaling
| flavorings meant to be ingested is the primary health risk
| with vaping. Last I checked, this issue was still under
| debate.
| symlinkk wrote:
| We don't know that vaping is harmful. It's addictive, yes,
| but not necessarily harmful.
| user-the-name wrote:
| We do know that nicotine is harmful, whether vaped or
| smoked or ingested in any other way. No mysteries there.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Is it? I thought it's basically addictive.
| vidarh wrote:
| Pretty much. I've never smoked, and tried picking up
| nicotine at one point (via patches and gum) because it's
| one of the safest nootropic substances we know with a
| clear effect next to caffeine. (My tolerance was too low
| and in the end I couldn't be bothered to figure out the
| dosing).
|
| Even the physical addictiveness of nicotine is not that
| strong when separated from the rituals of smoking
| compared to e.g. caffeine (where addiction is also
| massively affected by rituals).
| symlinkk wrote:
| That's incorrect.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine
|
| > Nicotine is classified as a poison. However, at doses
| used by consumers, it presents little if any hazard to
| the user.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| I don't know (not my area of expertise), but aren't there
| some reliable meta-analyses on the effects of vaping?
|
| I would be surprised to see that inhaling _any_ kind of
| smoke or non-water aerosol is good for your lungs, so I 'd
| expect at least a minor harmful effect.
|
| This study, for example, claims increased risks for heart
| disease [1] (disclaimer: I'm not a medical doctor and
| cannot evaluate its credibility)
|
| [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40138-020-00
| 219-0
| kortex wrote:
| Anything going into the lungs besides atmospheric air,
| and specific medications, is potentially inflammatory. At
| best, the VOCs (in vaping) do absolutely nothing in
| either direction. At semi-worst, they cause low-grade
| inflammation, and worst-case they cause chemical
| pneumonitis.
|
| However, by comparison, tobacco smoke is like "what if we
| could engineer the perfect lung assailant."
|
| Tar causes inflammation, damages DNA directly,
| intercalates DNA and induces replication errors,
| collapses alveoli, and paralyzes cillia, making clearance
| of all those chemical assailants from the lungs even
| harder.
| viraptor wrote:
| If something is addictive (as in actually creating a
| physical and mental dependence on continued use in
| significant number of people) - why would you not classify
| that as harmful?
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| I mean, coffee is an addictive stimulant which isn't
| usually classified as harmful.
|
| Vaping might have social and physiological benefits which
| outweigh the harm also.
| TheFreim wrote:
| Caffeine?
| hnzix wrote:
| Gwern (an active user on HN) wrote a compelling paper
| presenting nicotine as a potential nootropic.
|
| https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine
| lelanthran wrote:
| > If something is addictive (as in actually creating a
| physical and mental dependence on continued use in
| significant number of people) - why would you not
| classify that as harmful?
|
| You want to classify sugar as harmful? It's
| physiologically addictive (go a few days without carbs
| altogether and tell us how it goes).
|
| What about caffeine?
| lupire wrote:
| Yes, of course they are. It's well established.
|
| But some harmful things are worth the tradeoff if you can
| maintain a low enough dose (sugar or caffeine)
| viraptor wrote:
| Yes, sugar is slightly addictive for some people. It's
| also slightly harmful. (Go sugar free and see how your
| dental health improves; dropping sugar / most carbs from
| diet is enough for me to get back to ideal weight)
|
| Caffeine is also addictive and if you drink enough,
| stopping gives you withdrawal headaches. But in my
| experience not drinking caffeine at all makes me just as
| alert as getting used to the daily dose I thought I
| needed before.
|
| So yeah, I'd totally classify both as slightly harmful.
| re-al wrote:
| Just think, the science isn't in for vapes. But it is in for
| rna vaccines!
| kenjackson wrote:
| It's certainly not in for mRNA vaccines, but I also wouldn't
| say to take an mRNA vaccine just for kicks.
| dkersten wrote:
| > "I can't tell you to vape but I can tell you to keep doing
| what you're doing".
|
| > Should non-smokers pick up vaping? Probably not
|
| Yeah, I imagine that its a lot better than smoking cigarettes,
| but still worse than not smoking at all. So for your father,
| its a benefit because its something he finds sustainable (I
| assume quitting would be even better, but maybe rather
| difficult), but for a non-smoker, they would do themselves
| damage (even if not as much as smoking cigarettes would). So
| definitely good for smokers, but maybe not the best for non-
| smokers (although I'd love to know how it compares to other
| common unhealthy things we do like alcohol or fast food)
|
| I have heard some negative things about vaping, but I assume
| its like you say: the quality and health effects vary widely
| between the "juice".
|
| In any case, regardless of overall "good" or not, it seems to
| be a benefit for smokers, so that's a good thing!
| totalZero wrote:
| > the arguments against the flavored juices are
| hysterical/hypocritical given the variety of flavors of liquor
| one can find.
|
| I would assume a significant difference in impact between
| putting flavor substances in your lungs and putting flavor
| substances in your esophagus/stomach.
| smolder wrote:
| I think the argument they are referring to is the one that
| because there were tasty flavors, the products were targeting
| youth... as if adults do not enjoy tasty flavors. That's one
| way regulators rationalized bans on vaping products. No one
| is making similar arguments to ban tasty liquor.
|
| I haven't ruled out that they were trying to target youth
| with their products, but having nice juice flavors is the
| furthest thing from a smoking gun, and yet it was presented
| as one.
| aliasEli wrote:
| Many ex-smokers try tobacco flavors when they start vaping.
| Many switch to other flavors after a while, because tobacco
| does not really taste nice.
| dmurray wrote:
| > No one is making similar arguments to ban tasty liquor.
|
| People do make these arguments, and they catch on from time
| to time. There was a moral panic about alcopops in the
| 1990s in the UK [0]. They weren't banned by regulators but
| several supermarket chains stopped selling them.
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23502892
| Symbiote wrote:
| Some supermarkets not selling them didn't last very long.
|
| The government increased the tax on alcopops several
| times, but in the 00s the big drink companies started
| promoting Swedish i.e. sugary cider. Now your 1990s
| alcopop has some os in the name and 10% added apple
| juice.
| Talanes wrote:
| Somehow every anti-vape campaign I've seen that tries that
| argument only makes vaping look more desirable. "Flavors so
| good that kids don't find them gross" is a pretty decent
| draw.
| hwayne wrote:
| Juul's advertising was specifically targeted at teens:
| https://www.vox.com/2019/1/25/18194953/vape-juul-e-
| cigarette...
|
| (Referenced paper: http://tobacco.stanford.edu/tobacco_main
| /publications/JUUL_M...)
|
| Juul bought ads on socialstudiesforkids,
| dailydressupagames, and collegeconfidential:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/health/juul-vaping-
| lawsui...
| k__ wrote:
| My girlfriend switched to vaping 10 years ago.
|
| It saved her thousands of Euros and she is much fitter, and her
| breath smells delicious, haha. But she doesn't use big brands,
| she mixes her liquid at home and tries to lower the dose over
| years.
|
| But every time she can't vape, because her machine broke, or
| she lost it, or whatever, she get's quiet angry and smokes a
| few regular cigs.
| 83457 wrote:
| Teenagers vaping then switching to regular cigarettes is one
| of the big concerns.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| How often does this happen?
| refurb wrote:
| Probably high when vaping is banned.
| ilikecakeandpie wrote:
| From what I've seen, as soon as their expensive-ish vape
| breaks or they run out of juice and there's a pack of
| cigs at the gas station for which they don't have to wait
| k__ wrote:
| She was smoking as a teenager and switched to vaping in her
| twenties.
| aliasEli wrote:
| But I really wonder if that happens frequently. Cigarettes
| really taste and smell awful. I discovered how terrible
| they really are only after I quit smoking. As long as
| e-cigarettes remain available, I doubt that many people
| would switch to real cigarettes.
| twojacobtwo wrote:
| Anecdotal evidence: My girlfriend has been smoking since
| she was 14. She had no motivation to quit, no matter how
| many times I annoyed her about it. After she switched to
| vaping, she can't even bring herself to smoke again
| because the smell and taste are much more obvious to her
| now, even with flavored cigarettes.
|
| In a separate but similar case, the same thing happened
| to me with marijuana smoking. I never had an issue with
| the 'smoke' aspect of consuming cannabis, but now that I
| have tried cannabis vaping products (e.g. precision
| heating dry plant material or liquid concentrates), I
| nearly gag when I try smoking it again and I am
| immediately aware of and irritated by the awful smell
| that clings to me afterward.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Ive seen it go two ways, you start with the vape pod or
| all in one systems, get bored and you
|
| 1. Buy a big boy vape, roll your own coils, maintain and
| clean it, the whole shabang. Or 2. Smoke cigarettes
|
| I have seen many people choose option 2. The big vape
| systems are sometimes large, heavy, and clunky, require
| sometimes very publicly dis and re assembling a little
| contraption, carrying juice on you, lots of things that
| put fellow people off. Ive seen people be ridiculed for
| carrying around so much vape stuff. It kinda falls into
| the neckbeardy categories at least for my place/time,
| just because the first people to do it made it their
| whole lives and refused to talk about anything else, it
| got a reputation. It's both easier and less socially
| risky to just buy some cigarettes.
|
| Though I will say smoking cigarettes is not without
| social risk. Typically women will heavily dislike the
| habit except for the ones that do it themselves. I've
| seen whole houses get addicted to cigarettes just because
| one person went out to smoke when they drank every
| weekend. I have never seen the same phenomena with
| vaping. Though I very nearly missed the target generation
| for things like juul.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| That was case years ago. Nowadays people just buy
| refillable tanks with disposable coils that perform on
| par or better with what an above average person can
| create. The devices are inexpensive when amortized over
| months-years depending on how well taken care of. 30-200
| is the range for devices with the sweet spot around
| 60-100. Tanks are 20-50, but a lot of devices include
| them. Coils are about $2 or less wholesale/from China,
| and retail for 5-15/ea depending on how greedy/low volume
| the shop is. Coils last for 1-4 weeks. Juice costs about
| $0.01-0.04/ml to make and 60ml bottles previously sold
| online for $5ish, they go for 20-60/ea in retail stores
| including taxes. Yeah, $0.6-2.40 in product is being sold
| for 10-30x the cost to manufacture. At most half of that
| is tax, the rest is profit and funding asinine marketing
| or paying for lawyers and lobbyists to pull the ladder
| up. This ain't about children, it's about a cash cow.
|
| Source: I'm friendly with a few people that have run vape
| shops/companies and got out because they can't afford to
| lobby against Phillip Morris or comply with pmta with
| annual revenue in the tens to low hundreds of thousands
| of dollars. Blame Juul for the vaping crisis in schools,
| and shut them the duck down. Then let adults have their
| safer and less expensive alternative to cigarettes back.
| I'll take cotton Candy clouds over cigar smoke every
| single time.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I quit smoking with Juul, and still use Juul - better
| experience and more convenient than smoking. I quit
| smoking because it was inferior to the juul experience
| AND had health benefits AND juuling is significantly less
| antisocial - it wasn't a challenge because it was better
| in about every way. Nicotine gum or previous generations
| of vapes didn't scratch the itch well enough, juul
| scratches the itch better.
|
| Apparently juul can no longer ship to private addresses
| in my state, so I guess I'll have to start looking at
| other alternatives or go to the tobacco shop to pick up
| refills regularly.
|
| I'd like to step down my nicotine dosage gradually, but
| juuling is unfortunately not very conducive to that -
| only 5mg or 3mg, so I'll probably have to roll my own
| solution, which is less convenient so I worry about
| compliance.
| fromfar wrote:
| Anecdotal, but all my friends juul'd in university (some
| quit some still use it daily). Probably about 30% of them
| at some point tried to quit juuling by smoking cigarettes
| instead thinking that the bad taste would deter them for
| smoking and therefore cause them to consume less nicotine
| overall. Needless to say that did not work and a few of
| them now use both cigarettes and juuls.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I can't speak for Juul but I credit my smoking cessation
| entirely to vaping. I've not had any nicotine since 2020,
| vaping or smoking!
|
| I think there's a real attitude among a small number of non-
| smokers that quitting without some form of sustained suffering
| is "doing it wrong" and that addicts of any kind deserve pain
| to atone for the sin of being an addict. This attitude is
| extremely unhelpful and should be condemned along with all
| other types of moral puritanism in my opinion.
| ehnto wrote:
| I don't think anything along those lines but I am extremely
| disappointed that another generation is hooked on nicotine
| through vaping. You hear kids bragging about how much 'nic'
| they go through.
|
| I was always confused about that particular part of smoking
| culture, it's got this mixed message of bad-boy persona and
| defiance yet it's very much a corporate curated habit. Nobody
| should have ended up addicted to nicotine, it was entirely
| unnecessary, and now here we are again even after all those
| lessons learned.
|
| I am glad it's not nearly as harmful as cigarettes, but
| people are once again being sucked into an addiction in order
| to buy product and that stinks.
| kevincox wrote:
| It may not be "doing it wrong" but different people work in
| different ways. I know one friend who tried to quit a couple
| of times by easing off with no luck. However one time they
| decided to just stop and it worked. They felt like crap for a
| week or two but then they were off it.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Whether easing off is more or less effective than cold
| turkey, and for whom, is a technical matter. GP is talking
| about something orthogonal: some people believe that
| breaking addiction _requires suffering_ , so if you found a
| way to avoid it, you've somehow cheated, or hadn't really
| quit.
| [deleted]
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I'm not against people quitting cold turkey if that's what
| works for them, addiction is different for everyone and if
| that's the most effective way of quitting for a person then
| fair enough. What I'm against is non-smokers preaching that
| it's the _only_ way as opposed to something like vaping
| when they 're in no position to make such a claim.
| cmckn wrote:
| Congrats! Quitting smoking is really difficult; I feel lucky
| to have kicked it myself. I started in high school, like many
| folks (especially in the southern US); and was on-and-off
| through college. A Juul really helped me power through times
| of stress without buying a pack of cigarettes. I remember
| e-cigs were initially pitched to consumers as a way to quit
| smoking, and I think it's unfortunate that part of the
| message seems to have fallen off. I think it was a huge part
| of tapering the dependence, for me.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| Cheers! And yeah I started around the same sort of time in
| my life, about 17 years old. When I was at uni me and my
| mates bought vapes because around the time they hadn't been
| banned by most pubs yet so we could use them inside, West
| Wales is a bastard of a place to be a smoker in the winter!
| I was the only smoker at my current job when I started
| though, so I went on just the vape as not to be the only
| one reeking of cigarettes. Once the social aspect of
| smoking was gone it just became a bit of a shackle rather
| than a break for me so I decided to taper down and quit by
| the start of 2020 which turned out to be an outstanding
| move!
| 908087 wrote:
| My main issue with Juul personally is that they seem to have
| absolutely no quality control at all in their production
| process. Before I quit using them, you never knew until you
| opened them whether a pack of pods would be okay, or dark
| yellow and taste/feel like smoking burnt plastic.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Yeah there's the interesting issue of popcorn lung, which comes
| from inhaling a certain chemical, diethyl. I don't think it's
| in juul.
| KuiN wrote:
| Most manufacturers haven't used Diacetyl in their juice for
| years (like 7+ years by now).
| techrat wrote:
| The 'popcorn' issue is pretty much linked to one artificial
| flavor... Diacetyl... anything that involves a buttery taste.
| Often found in microwave popcorn, hence popcorn lung.
|
| Custards, a popular group of vape flavors, was the main
| source of it.
|
| The catch?
|
| Diacetyl is also a byproduct of cigarette smoking.
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10408444.2014.88.
| ..
|
| The risk was not considered to be noteworthy among cigarette
| smokers and food workers who had higher exposure to the
| chemical diacetyl...
|
| > Further, because smoking has not been shown to be a risk
| factor for bronchiolitis obliterans, our findings are
| inconsistent with claims that diacetyl and/or
| 2,3-pentanedione exposure are risk factors for this disease.
|
| So basically... vaping causes popcorn lung = FUD.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I'm also a former smoker who switched to vaping as a step
| toward eventually quitting nicotine products. It's been a huge
| improvement (I no longer smell / taste like cigarettes), and I
| hope it's doing less damage to my body.
|
| Poor behavior by Juul, marketing to youth, makes me wary that
| I'll have this stopgap regulated away. I wish they'd stop
| bringing negative publicity to vaping as a whole. The temp ban
| on delivery doubled prices when they were only available in
| retail shops. I'm always concerned it'll be taken from former
| smokers who want to quit.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _I also think the arguments against the flavored juices are
| hysterical /hypocritical given the variety of flavors of liquor
| one can find._"
|
| If you have a product that people enjoy using and has
| associated dangers, some people will use it anyway. If you have
| a second product that replaces the first product with less
| danger[1], more people will use it. That's simple economic
| reasoning.
|
| The hysteria over vaping is largely a product of a puritanical
| mindset---the horror at the thought of someone, somewhere,
| enjoying themselves. People have made their peace with tobacco
| itself[2], alcohol[3], and marijuana[4].
|
| [1] " _Evidence so far indicates that e-cigarettes are far less
| harmful than smoking as they don't contain tobacco or involve
| combustion. There is no smoke, tar or carbon monoxide, and
| studies looking at key toxicants have generally found much
| lower levels than in cigarettes. They do contain nicotine,
| which is addictive, but isn't responsible for the major health
| harms from smoking._ "
| (https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-
| professional/awarene...)
|
| " _In September, a paper in The Journal of Clinical
| Investigation described mice exposed to e-cigarettes for 4
| months, nearly one-quarter of their life span. Farrah
| Kheradmand, a pulmonologist at Baylor College of Medicine in
| Houston, Texas, who led the work, says that, at first, "There
| was absolutely no emphysema, nothing" in the animals that
| inhaled aerosol from e-cigarettes. That finding jibes with
| earlier research showing combustion products are the cause of
| airway inflammation in smokers._"
| (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/11/how-safe-vaping-
| new-...)
|
| [2] Ever seen one of the bans on the sale of vaping products
| associated with a similar ban on cigarettes? I didn't think so.
|
| [3] Here's a toast to those who collect the statistics on the
| externalized costs of anything.
|
| [4] Smoking marijuana has exactly the same dangers as smoking
| tobacco. (You do have a filter on that reefer, right?) The same
| particulates, the same "tar", and the same assortment of
| combustion by-products, right?
| JohnDoerian2 wrote:
| As someone who vapes and has tried out some different products.
| Atleast here in Europe Juul was the only "pre-filled"
| cartridges product which contains nicotine salt instead of
| freebase nicotine.
|
| Nicotine salt is much easier to vape and feels less harsh. I.e
| I can easily vape 50mg/ml nicotine salt, while above 10mg/ml
| freebase gets uncomfortable for my throat. That might have been
| the reason for your dad coughing.
|
| But I still agree, besides the salt/freebase aspect there can
| be different aspects of the ingrefients, each affecting health
| differently.
| dude187 wrote:
| Why "more regulations"? The market is just fine as is it. That
| feels like one of those things that people just feel obligated
| to say.
| Bayart wrote:
| I was a smoker for 14 years and vaping is the _only_ thing that
| could get me off of it. And I do feel quite a bit better.
|
| The only issue I've had was with propylene glycol, a main
| ingredient of most juices, to which I've got a mild allergic
| reaction (it essentially gives me bronchitis). Your dad may
| have something similar, it's quite common.
|
| Anyhow, all the FUD in the US about vaping, its cultural
| association there with irritating types, the rush here in the
| EU to tax it as if it was cigarette (it isn't), and the growth
| of corporate trash on top of it has been incredibly
| discouraging. It's putting a barrier in front of smokers for
| something that's for all intents and purposes the most
| effective medication.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| I agree that vaping is _far_ safer than smoking cigarettes.
|
| > I'd like to see more studies in this area and some more
| regulations on the "juice" for vapes.
|
| Remember the media chaos when the "vaping lung disease" was
| making the cycle? This was likely due to the juice they were
| using. It contained vitamin E acetate and was found primarily
| in THC vape juice. Normal e-cigs have standard VG/PG, nicotine
| and food grade flavoring. And that's it.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/s...
| trophycase wrote:
| The only person I know that vapes regularly has a persistent
| cough as long as she is vaping and goes away immediately when
| she stops. I don't think it is as safe as everyone is
| claiming.
| rastapasta42 wrote:
| I don't get why Americans target their own companies when it
| comes to vaping. A couple of years ago regulators banned all the
| popular flavors of Juul while other brands still have plenty of
| vaping flavors.
|
| The flavor ban completely destroyed Juul as a company, and I
| would argue Juul is already dead, and more sinister products are
| taking its place.
|
| Vaping (and Delta 8) markets are now ran by a bunch of Chinese
| companies now, and their safety standards are much lower than
| American companies.
|
| With Delta 8 exploding in popularity, I would much rather prefer
| large and established American companies (such as Juul) making
| the product with American safety standards.
|
| But after most of the Juul flavors have been banned, Juul is now
| an empty shell of a company compared to what it once used to be,
| while Chinese are still cracking out those flavorful vapes, but
| now they're also disposable (which is even more appealing to
| kids) so you throw out a battery and plastic shell when the
| cartridge runs out of vaping juice.
|
| I miss the days of DYI vaping where you would have to build your
| own coil and cotton - maybe even mix your own fluid - and the
| whole thing was more akin to a hobby.
| esseeayen wrote:
| Wait, as someone overseas who hasn't seen any of the Juul
| advertising what are some of the examples of them "blatantly
| advertising to children"? Is it just the fact that they are
| making flavoured nicotine products or has it been more nefarious
| than that. As an adult I kind of like some of the flavoured
| tobacco products from smoking shisha (argile, hookah etc) and
| they have had flavours forever and not been in the spotlight to
| marketing to children?
| TchoBeer wrote:
| >they have had flavours forever and not been in the spotlight
| to marketing to children?
|
| I think my mum would disagree
| hwayne wrote:
| Here ya go!
| http://tobacco.stanford.edu/tobacco_main/publications/JUUL_M...
| samizdis wrote:
| This article seems to give a fair discussion of the issue, with
| some examples:
|
| https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-24/hiltzik-ju...
|
| Edit to add this article, too:
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2018/11/16/t...
| nathias wrote:
| I have followed the story of e-cigarettes and can only say it's
| eye opening, its probably very symptomatic to how things are
| done. It went from innovators and communities to being large
| enough that the cigarette companies responded by a smear
| campaign, disinformation and panic, that was then used to
| regulate in a way that benefited only the cigarette companies.
| What a transparently corrupt world we live in.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| And everyone who doesn't want funny smells in their face.
|
| While since some decades cigarette smokers go outside, many
| ecigarette users spread funny smells without any empathy.
| mgr86 wrote:
| in Connecticut beginning 1 OCT 2021 business will require no
| smoking in public spaces. I know it specifically targets
| e-cigarette use indoors. But believe it also means no smokers
| outside the front of the office, or outside of the bar.
| nathias wrote:
| Yea lets put the same heavy regulation on shoes because some
| people are not taking their off when coming to visit ...
| MayeulC wrote:
| I much prefer "funny smells" to regular cigarette smoke, be
| it for the smell of the cloud, the one it leaves on your
| clothes, or the aggressiveness of the smoke on your lungs.
| Tenoke wrote:
| The smell from vaping is not comparable and it goes away
| quick, at least if you are not using some fancy liquid. Even
| if it doesn't, it's no worse than the smell of kebab which
| people are allowed to eat indoors.
| [deleted]
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| So vaper says, non-vaper should not be annoyed by what they
| is doing?
|
| "Even if it doesn't, it's no worse than the smell of kebab
| which people are allowed to eat indoors."
|
| Shouldn't it be me to decide instead of you?
| leoedin wrote:
| Vaping indoors for any length of time leaves a sticky
| residue over everything - perhaps either nicotine or
| propylene glycol residue. Even ignoring the air quality
| issues for people who didn't sign up for it, it's not
| completely impact free.
|
| Maybe kebab also creates poor air quality and sticky
| residues, but in my experience people don't tend to eat
| kebabs continuously every 5 minutes through the day.
|
| I'm all for e-cigarettes as an almost-certainly-better
| alternative to real cigarettes (banning vaping but not
| smoking is ludicrous to me) - but allowing using them
| indoors does have a real impact on everyone else. Perhaps
| some are discreet, but the cloud chasing guys ruin it.
| Tenoke wrote:
| I believe residue is just from big cloud VG. I certainly
| don't see any around my flat, if there's any it must be
| slower to build up than dust.
|
| If the impact is big enough sure, but it makes little
| sense to me to treat them harsher than anything else.
| richthegeek wrote:
| But if my colleague was sat at his desk eating a kebab for
| 8 hours a day, I'd find it problematic.
|
| Not everyone is as able to ignore sounds and smells as you
| might be.
|
| In particular the sound of someone vaping over a
| headset/phone makes me shiver.
| objclxt wrote:
| > the cigarette companies responded by a smear campaign,
| disinformation and panic, that was then used to regulate in a
| way that benefited only the cigarette companies
|
| That and the cigarette companies just bought into the industry.
| Altria (AKA Philip Morris) owns 35% of Juul.
| cmauniada wrote:
| I can't read this stupid website on my phone. The content keeps
| shifting up and down for some weird reason, and like every other
| bloated website it asks me allow cookies as soon as I visit it.
| So frustrating......
| MayeulC wrote:
| Use Firefox's reader mode.
| blfr wrote:
| Scientism has become the state religion and companies are paying
| for indulgences.
|
| At least they made it open access. At first I thought they bought
| out the entire issue so that people couldn't read it.
| ud_0 wrote:
| _> Scientism has become the state religion and companies are
| paying for indulgences._
|
| I was unfamiliar with that term and googled it: it's described
| as " _excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and
| techniques_ ". I'm struggling a bit to understand how a belief
| in the importance of scientific knowledge and techniques
| equates to a religious mindset.
|
| In an ideal world, I would absolutely prefer my government to
| make decisions based on facts and methods of finding out more
| facts. Currently, that's only one small part of our
| governmental decision making process, with the other notable
| parts being powerful special interests and public opinion.
|
| Could you elaborate a bit on what exactly you meant by this?
| wccrawford wrote:
| I'm not who you replied to, but I've experienced this with
| some of my friends.
|
| Some people _believe_ in science. They don 't take the facts
| and understand them, they just say "Science says this is
| true. Anyone who disagrees needs to be shouted down." They
| will shame people for expressing any doubt against a
| "scientific consensus". This is actually the opposite of
| science.
|
| For instance, the Theory of Gravity. I know people who take
| it to be a _law_ , even though science itself hasn't moved it
| into that category. If you dare to suggest that there might
| be some as-yet-undiscovered mechanism for gravity, they will
| literally get louder and louder until you stop arguing. They
| won't provide any evidence, they'll just keep saying the same
| thing over and over.
|
| And it happens for this that are much less certain, too.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| > Some people believe in science. [...] This is actually
| the opposite of science.
|
| Adding to this, belief in science actually means believing
| in the _process_ of scientific discovery, i.e. believing
| that _eventually_ the "truth" will be discovered.
|
| As you correctly point out, questioning the current
| consensus is a fundamental part of the process, but not all
| challenges to scientific knowledge are legitimate. Many
| (most?) concerns you hear in the mainstream media are not
| legitimate but based on logical fallacies, strawmen, ad
| hominem attacks, etc. I found this list [1] quite useful to
| guard against such unfounded attacks.
|
| [1] http://utminers.utep.edu/omwilliamson/ENGL1311/fallacie
| s.htm
| enkid wrote:
| I don't think science is about "the truth", as the
| scientific process shouldn't allow definitive claims.
| Rather, there should always be an understanding that
| whatever is being said comes with a probability of being
| true. We can make a prediction and assign a likelihood
| the prediction will be accurate, but we can never say
| "this is the truth" using the scientific method. There
| are going to be things that are so close to true that
| they can be taken at face value, but science doesn't
| determine what that level is, that's a personal decision.
| It's up to the individual to determine what they accept
| as truth given the data they have, including
| nonscientific sources of information, such as expert
| opinion. Science has to reject expert opinion as a source
| of information, and yet the individual ( including
| scientists when not performing science) must accept
| expert opinion in order to live their lives.
| pietrrrek wrote:
| Since is not about finding "the truth" as you put it, but
| it is about finding the current, most fitting truth. As
| circumstances change "the truth" also changes, as such
| science will never be able to find anything but "the
| current best bet".
| enkid wrote:
| Sure. I just don't think it's accurate to think science
| comes to a definitive conclusion. It is a process of
| constant discovery and coming closer and closer to the
| truth, but will never arrived at a final answer.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| The idea that science is about finding the "less wrong",
| rather than the absolute truth, is actually fairly
| recent, only really becoming mainstream during the 20th
| century.
| ud_0 wrote:
| Thank you for answering. I agree that "scientific
| consensus" is an elusive thing in practice: interpretations
| change, new data comes in, sometimes it turns out data was
| held back or falsified. On top of that, what is consensus
| and what isn't is often distorted in the public view. There
| is no established quorum process (which is a good thing).
|
| > _For instance, the Theory of Gravity. I know people who
| take it to be a law, even though science itself hasn 't
| moved it into that category. If you dare to suggest that
| there might be some as-yet-undiscovered mechanism for
| gravity_
|
| There is no scientific consensus on the mechanism that is
| causing gravity, at least not on the level you suggest.
| There is consensus on how gravity _behaves_ , in regimes we
| can currently observe.
|
| The problem with suggesting "some as-yet-undiscovered
| mechanism" is that you can generate arbitrary many such
| mechanisms, because there aren't good options yet for
| experimental corroboration. We all have favorite ideas for
| how gravity might work behind the scenes, and it absolutely
| is fun to speculate. But if your goal is to actually make a
| contribution, your need to come up with an idea that can be
| falsified.
|
| In my opinion you are completely within your rights to make
| claims that contradict empirical findings or theoretical
| frameworks. There often are holes in our knowledge, and
| continuously re-examining established science is absolutely
| part of the process. Of course, the burden of proof is on
| you in that case. But science is absolutely _meant to be_ a
| living process.
| lupire wrote:
| "theory" and "law" are synonyms in science. the difference
| is that a law is a simple one line general statement
| (F=gMm/r^2) and a theory is fleshed out model with details.
|
| "Theory" does NOT mean "unproven". That's "conjecture".
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >For instance, the Theory of Gravity. I know people who
| take it to be a law,
|
| You mean Newton's Law of gravity [1]?
|
| I'm not sure where you get the idea there are "theories"
| and "laws" in science and science moves things from one
| category to the other.
|
| The closest I can find is this distinction: "Scientific
| theories explain why something happens, whereas scientific
| law describes what happens." [2]
|
| By this description, laws generally happen first, then
| theory, because observation makes it clear what happens
| before we understand why it happens.
|
| In which case law and theory go hand in hand in pretty much
| every single law and theory I can think of (and the page
| lists zillions)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_univers
| al_gr...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law
| wccrawford wrote:
| https://ncse.ngo/gravity-its-only-theory
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| Satire isn't making your case.
|
| What exactly is this link demonstrating?
| justanotherguy0 wrote:
| Horrible example but the basic idea is right. Social
| sciences are probably a better place to point to.
| lilgreenland wrote:
| A law in science isn't used the same as how you are using
| the word. A law isn't a really good theory. Laws are
| mathematical predictions based on data collected.
|
| Often it's just an equation that fits some data for a range
| of values.
|
| Almost all laws are found in the physical sciences. Some
| examples are: Ohm's Law, Universal Gravitation, Coulomb's
| law, and Kirchhoff's laws. None of these are perfect
| descriptions of reality.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| >For instance, the Theory of Gravity. I know people who
| take it to be a law, even though science itself hasn't
| moved it into that category. If you dare to suggest that
| there might be some as-yet-undiscovered mechanism for
| gravity, they will literally get louder and louder until
| you stop arguing. They won't provide any evidence, they'll
| just keep saying the same thing over and over.
|
| What a strange example. Has this ever happened to you?
| Additionally, does General Relativity count as "an
| underlying mechanism for gravity"?
| vincent-toups wrote:
| Gotta ask: is this gravity example real? You really have
| friends who have some sort of mystical commitment to the
| idea that gravity is somehow entirely epistemologically
| self-grounded?
|
| Almost literally every physicist since Newton has believed
| that there is some sort of underlying theory which explains
| gravity. Its hard to imagine how anyone could get the idea
| that the matter was somehow settled.
|
| I'd love it if you could share more context.
| bena wrote:
| Most people think we understand gravity better than we
| actually do.
|
| To compare it to an actual hot-button issue, we know more
| about the mechanisms of evolution than we do about the
| mechanisms of gravity.
|
| We know kind of how it behaves at various scales, but we
| don't know why it does. We don't know what makes gravity.
| Why do denser objects have more of it. Why is it weaker
| than other forces, yet felt on larger scales? Does it
| actually exist or is it an emergent property kind of like
| the centripetal force (or is it centrifugal, I keep
| getting those flopped)?
| 542354234235 wrote:
| > They will shame people for expressing any doubt against a
| "scientific consensus".
|
| Doubt based on what? This is the classic "my ignorance is
| just as good as your knowledge". The scientific consensus
| absolutely can be wrong on something, but people that read
| a few Facebook articles and think they're argument holds
| any weight whatsoever deserve to be shamed. You want to
| question the scientific consensus? Conduct a study or get
| in a lab, have it peer reviewed. If you want to say "I
| think the major experts and accumulated understanding in
| this field are wrong " then you are going to have to bring
| more to the table than some random doubts and suggestions.
|
| > For instance, the Theory of Gravity.
|
| Wonderful example. As almost every physicist has stories of
| people that send them their pet theories about theoretical
| physics models. Have they done mathematical models? Of
| course not. But they are sure their theory is going to
| crack this unifying theory wide open. Maybe ask yourself
| "if I disagree with all the experts, have they all
| misunderstood what I am seeing or do I not understand the
| subject as much as I think I do?" Shame is the cousin to
| humility.
| nly wrote:
| We have pretty reasonable models for how gravity might
| work.
|
| A suggestion that there may be a yet undiscovered mechanism
| for gravity isn't useful to science. It's imaginative
| perhaps, but without a piece of math, or a suggestion for
| an experiment by which to test it, it's just science
| fiction. Ideas are cheap.
| TheFreim wrote:
| > A suggestion that there may be a yet undiscovered
| mechanism for gravity isn't useful to science.
|
| How do you know the impact of something that's
| undiscovered? Also how do discover new things but by
| looking where others aren't?
| ilikecakeandpie wrote:
| Anecdotally, I've seen this too. I think people look for
| something to believe in, and they take almost everything a
| celebrity scientist they agree with tweet or share as
| gospel without much scrutiny of the research. It's
| ridiculous
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I actually agree with your first paragraph, and agree that
| "science" is treated religiously by many currently.
|
| But you misunderstand what the words "theory" or "law" mean
| in scientific usage such as the "theory of gravity".
|
| https://www.livescience.com/21457-what-is-a-law-in-
| science-d...
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I think scientism is best summed up as the fallacious idea
| that science is a priesthood rather than a process. Some
| people really struggle separating the politically neutral
| idea of using the scientific method to inform policy with
| the politically charged idea that a scientific technocracy
| is a desirable state of affairs in my opinion, a problem
| that's only got worse in recent years.
|
| Science is a powerful contributor to the sum of human
| knowledge, but it's absolutely not the _only_ pillar of
| human knowledge and there 's a lot of people who think that
| scientific advancement means we can just do away with
| philosophy, politics, and other fields like that
| altogether, as though one day with the right equations all
| of ethics or culture is just going to pop out of physics.
| These people don't just throw the baby but the whole
| nursery out with the bathwater in my opinion!
| toxik wrote:
| Science is myopic by construction. Science does not consider
| what questions to answer, but rather tries to answer what can
| be answered. Science cannot tell you how to run a country or
| city. It can, at best, tell you how NOT to.
|
| Over reliance on science as guidance has also lead to some of
| the darkest chapters of human history, like phrenology and
| its use to justify racial supremacy.
| mclightning wrote:
| Exactly this. Science has too much emphasis on the "now",
| on present knowledge.
|
| Take 17th century science... most of it would be ludicrous
| by any standard today. Now imagine applying that science
| onto humans/society... Science as a tool to deal with
| present knowledge, should not be used solely to manage
| societies or human situations with irreversible
| consequences.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Then propose another way of getting reliable, robust and
| explainable guidelines for managing societies?
|
| But of course, evidence-based decision making should not
| be turned into decision-based evidence making; science
| alone is not a basis for politics.
| mclightning wrote:
| In your very last sentence there; you summed up what I
| meant. I don't know why you expect me to come up with a
| solution on how to manage societies in a comment section.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Sorry, that was needlessly aggressive. Glad we agree
| then.
| justanotherguy0 wrote:
| Well it would be helpful if you did.
|
| Maybe some nice corp would be willing to buy an issue of
| a journal so that you can publish and distribute the
| solution!
| mclightning wrote:
| hahaha indeed! issue of a journal seems to go pretty
| cheap these days :D
| TchoBeer wrote:
| I don't think they expected you to come up with a
| solution to managing societies; I assume if you know of a
| better way to come up with reliable guidelines for
| running society you wouldn't have thought of it yourself.
| Maybe you could link to a book that contains the
| methodology that you think is better than science.
| mclightning wrote:
| Dude, we (me and other commenter) are already in
| agreement. Other commenter summed it up pretty
| succinctly. So I just didn't want to start a flamewar on
| semantics, except for pointing out that I can't come up
| with a solution in a short form here.
|
| I have a medium article in draft over 3 months on this
| exact topic. That's why my wording of the issue came out
| sounding more complicated. But other commenter saying
| "science alone" and me saying "using science solely" are
| basically pointing to same understanding.
|
| There are many examples in history for the said situation
| leading to social catastrophes; see Malthus (or Thanos'
| ideology if you like pop-cult), or Darwinian take on
| managing societies. Some lead to racism, some eugenics
| etc etc.
|
| Like the original commenter said; science is myopic and
| highly focused on the present body of knowledge
| available. But once we applied those results onto people
| and cause suffering, and 10 years later find some of
| those were wrong, we can not undo the human suffering.
|
| There needs to be a balance; when science is treading
| closely to the human dignity, well-being, life in
| general.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Over reliance on science as guidance has also lead to
| some of the darkest chapters of human history, like
| phrenology and its use to justify racial supremacy.
|
| Could you clarify this? I understand that humans committed
| terrible atrocities in the name of "racial supremacy". I
| also understand that the same people used science as a fig
| leaf to justify their actions. But you seem to be saying
| that over reliance on science lead to these atrocities.
|
| I simply can't imagine someone saying "I like these people
| and normally wouldn't hurt them, but the scientific
| consensus is so strong therefore I will kill/maim/throw
| them into a concentration camp." It sounds more likely that
| the racist ideology was there first, which caused both the
| racist science and the atrocities both. In other words
| racist people wanted to commit atrocities and they
| manufactured excuses for themselves to do so.
|
| But I'm far from an expert on human history, so please
| correct me if I'm wrong.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I'm not the person you're replying to (and I agree with
| your) but thinking about your question the closest thing
| I could come up with is _maybe_ lobotomies? Even then I'm
| not really sure about the chicken and the egg. Was it
| ever about treating the patient or was it meant to make
| caring for an "embarrassing" patient easier for the
| family by turning the patient into a shell of a human?
| [deleted]
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Also, unlike e.g. phrenology, I wouldn't say lobotomies
| were one of the darkest chapters in the history of
| mankind. Sorely misguided and tragic, but not that.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| Eugenics was a mainstream science for a large part of the
| 20th century, not just amongst white supremacists, and
| was often carried out with "good intentions", as opposed
| to simply being a way to legitimise white supremacist
| ideologies.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| The problem is that there's facts and there's facts; if a
| company basically buys their way into a reputable journal and
| publishes peer-reviewed papers, are you trusting that as
| fact? I mean if you religiously believe in science /
| scientism, you would take the Word of a scientific paper as
| the Word of God, even if you should do your own research into
| the sources, citations, reviewers, and who paid for it.
|
| I mean the current slew of flat earthers, anti-
| vaxxers/maskers, bleach eyeballers andsoforth also cite
| Science as their source - lending credibility to their
| arguments, making their thing not just emotional or gut
| feeling.
|
| And religious people will take (parts of) the bible as a
| scientific fact as well.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Not OP, but I find it important to mention:
|
| Science is not a state of knowledge.
|
| Science is a process for getting better (or less bad)
| knowledge. Eventually.
|
| I think we all agree that many studies are flawed and/or
| wrong. But I also think most people agree that there is a
| realistic expectation that we will find out over time [1]
|
| [1] Caveat emptor: With sensible scientific methods, see my
| other comment on this post.
| iseethroughbs wrote:
| > I'm struggling a bit to understand how a belief in the
| importance of scientific knowledge and techniques equates to
| a religious mindset.
|
| The scientific method doesn't include the word "belief" at
| all. If you reduce it to belief, it's not science anymore,
| it's religion.
|
| > In an ideal world, I would absolutely prefer my government
| to make decisions based on facts and methods of finding out
| more facts.
|
| Science is a process, not a collection of hard facts. The
| only hard facts (or the claim of them more accurately) come
| from religion.
|
| Science concerns itself with building speculative models that
| have predictive power, and trying to match observation with
| prediction of the models. Redundancy (peer review) is used to
| REDUCE (not ELIMINATE) errors. Social and cultural factors
| can result in false positives and false negatives in peer
| review.
|
| That's it in a nutshell. The models don't reflect reality,
| they only reflect an approximation of aspects of reality in
| given contexts.
|
| Anyway, the problem is that people do have a religious
| instinct. And when they're incapable of perceiving science
| with all its subtleties, they simply reduce it to a religion,
| which requires the belief that it's basically flawless, it
| provides hard facts, the best solutions, and that it's
| uniform (and any contradictions are just examples of
| "interests" corrupting it).
|
| While politics are very corrupted and often result in
| incompetence rising to the top, even it weren't the case,
| those competent politicians have no single place to turn to
| to understand what "science" thinks on any given problem of
| society. Science isn't a guy, so it has no opinion.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| I don't know what parent meant exactly, but I personally
| think that scientific methods are only useful for people who
| are smart/educated enough to interpret them.
|
| There were so many studies for example about cancer along the
| lines of "eating apples reduces cancer by 5%" and then you
| see people start eating apples for this reason. Somebody
| wrote a paper to get a publication with questionable results
| and people blindly believe in the power of science.
|
| Don't forget that a lot of the papers are also written in
| unintelligible scientific jargon and that scientists would
| massage numbers because their writings directly affects their
| job prospects and salaries.
|
| Religion didn't necessarily start from being a highly
| politicised power-hungry beast it became in middle ages.
| Bible says a lot about being a better human being. So is
| science - the scientific method does allow us to learn new
| things; but academia is a political entity which is only
| going to be growing in it's power and thus corruption.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| > There were so many studies for example about cancer along
| the lines of "eating apples reduces cancer by 5%" and then
| you see people start eating apples for this reason.
| Somebody wrote a paper to get a publication with
| questionable results and people blindly believe in the
| power of science.
|
| This is the problem with interpreting results... you can
| set up a study witn n=100k people, and find out that people
| who eat apples die 5% less from cancer, correlation is
| shown, and somewhere in the conclusion "more research is
| needed to find exact cause".
|
| In practice, people who eat more fruits probably take care
| of themselves better, eat better diet,... etc.
|
| I understood the parent as people believieng in something,
| without actually looking at data itself, thinking about it,
| considering other posibilities, and of course, declaring
| others (opposers) as heretics... for example, spring, last
| year, my government (and our scientists, and probably yours
| too, depending on where you live) said that masks are
| useless for fighting covid, even detrimental, so
| "believers" called the people who bought and wore them
| fearmongering paranoics.... then a random saturday came,
| masks became mandatory "from monday on", and those same
| people called the "antimaskers" conspiracy-theorists and
| worse for not wanting to wear masks.
|
| Reality is of course a mixed bag... cotton masks prevent
| you from spitting everywhere, but don't actually block a
| lot of virus in the air. Surgical masks were practically
| impossible to buy back then. Masks outside, away from
| people are useless. etc.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > how a belief in the importance of scientific knowledge
|
| You quoted it yourself: scientism is "excessive", or, more
| correctly, it treats scientists as authoritative sources of
| truths that should not be questioned. This form of blind
| trust goes against the scientific method.
|
| Also scientism can make categorical error in the type of
| questions that can be answered e.g. journalists asking
| physicists about "god particles" and such
|
| > I'm struggling a bit to understand how a belief in the
| importance of scientific knowledge and techniques equates to
| a religious mindset.
|
| I think the poster refers to dogmatic mindset. Assuming that
| all religions are dogmatic is incorrect.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| >e.g. journalists asking physicists about "god particles"
| and such
|
| Can you give an example? There is something called "the god
| particle" but a journalist asking about it wouldn't be a
| categorical error.
| blfr wrote:
| In an ideal world, maybe. In the real world it means treating
| a study on 31 American undergrads as scripture (the studies
| that failed to replicate its result go unpublished),
| regulation based on a study sponsored by the regulated, or a
| diet recommendation for half a century based on a hypothesis
| that saturated fat causes heart disease.
|
| This policy by science simply doesn't seem very effective. It
| largely provides cover for bureaucrats who can say that they
| followed science while doing what they wanted to do in the
| first place.
| ud_0 wrote:
| Sorry I missed your reply amongst the other comments.
|
| _> In the real world it means treating a study on 31
| American undergrads as scripture_
|
| My opinion is that scripture shouldn't be treated as
| scripture to begin with.
|
| _> This policy by science simply doesn 't seem very
| effective._
|
| As a tool for making policy decisions, science gives you
| access to solutions that might work based on the evidence.
| Now, that evidence may be completely bogus, so there is no
| getting around the need for evaluation. But saying that
| data is a bad basis for goal-oriented action planning is a
| self-defeating position.
|
| Policy by science is not a meaningful concept on its own,
| policy action requires a component we haven't talked about
| yet: a value system. Science can give you the data, but
| your goals determine what actions should follow. You're
| certainly correct when you say that politicians are getting
| _some_ cover from improper data, but overall I find they
| seldomly hide their motivations.
| mrtksn wrote:
| The problematic part is not the belief in science but in the
| absence of good science relying on or outright exploiting the
| things that resemble science. With bad science and statistics
| you can justify pretty much anything. When challenged simply
| say "Ah sorry, the science says so".
| xgb84j wrote:
| I think scientism relates to beliefs that equate the current
| state of scientific knowledge with absolute truth and
| ignoring unknown unknowns and limits of scientific methods
| like statistics.
|
| A common fallacy is that "absence of evidence is evidence of
| absence". For a government this might mean "There is no
| definite scientific evidence that substance X causes cancer,
| so we do not ban it.".
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Should we ban everything until we don't have solid proof
| that they don't cause cancer? Not banning something isn't
| acting like the substance is benign, it's acting like we
| don't know.
| xgb84j wrote:
| There is a middle ground that exists only when you
| combine science with common sense.
|
| Let's say a chemical X is used in baby food production.
| There are no studies that show that it is harmful,
| because no studies have been done yet. Many chemicals
| with similar structure have been shown to be harmful.
|
| Scientifically speaking you would be correct to say that
| there is no evidence that chemical X is harmful. There is
| no way yet to accurately model the interaction of any
| chemical with your body without any actual
| experimentation. You can make an argument that chemical X
| might be harmful because similar chemicals are harmful,
| but that would not be science.
|
| I would not buy that baby food with chemical X if given a
| choice. Best case I don't lose.
|
| Finding conclusive evidence in science often takes lots
| of time to gather enough data because there are so many
| different variables to consider. So absence of evidence
| means a lot more when you have been looking for a long
| time and invested lots of resources.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| >Scientifically speaking you would be correct to say that
| there is no evidence that chemical X is harmful.
|
| I wouldn't say that's true, if chemicals with a similar
| structure are harmful then there's weak but real evidence
| that X is harmful too.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Not all science is good. You can publish papers which
| literally do not allow any valid conclusions to be drawn due
| to methodological errors. I suspect that's most of them since
| academics are judged by the number of papers they've
| published in impactful journals.
|
| Just because science says something doesn't mean it's true.
| Truth must be verifiable. It's possible to easily and cheaply
| verify basic physical concepts like gravity. This inspires
| trust. Professors routinely reproduce physics in classrooms:
|
| https://youtu.be/hezfZ91ayiA
|
| Reproducing some medical experiment is hard, expensive and
| time consuming. Once a study is published, a huge number of
| people will simply assume it is true. Very few will actually
| check the methodology of the study. Virtually none will
| attempt to reproduce it.
| ud_0 wrote:
| > _Just because science says something doesn 't mean it's
| true. Truth must be verifiable._
|
| I don't mean to sound condescending, but if science as a
| concept 'says' anything, it is exactly that truth must be
| verifiable.
|
| There absolutely are problems with how study results are
| weighted. Starting from the way the press reports on
| findings, up to and including the uncritical acceptance of
| questionable material by many members of the scientific
| community.
|
| However, there is no workable alternative to the _process
| of science_ , because defaulting to whatever people
| personally like and discarding any inpportune data is
| certainly not how we move forward as a civilization if we
| have any ambition to continue our ascent (and we might in
| fact not have that ambition, but I do like to pretend that
| we do).
|
| Studies and data in general must be weighted. Sometimes the
| proper weight is zero. I see little other options but to
| continue stumbling towards improvement and knowledge.
| Acting on data will always be an imperfect process on a
| sliding scale, very few people would disagree with that.
|
| _Edit_ : I would also say that there is a distinction
| between the opinion that we're generally moving too fast
| and the opinion that we have severe deficits in how we
| weigh incoming data. Both of these can be addressed,
| although the solutions appear to be way easier in the
| former case. We need to be honest about which camp we're in
| though.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| > Truth must be verifiable
|
| On the contrary, truth must be falsifiable [1]. The value
| of a theory is not in how easy it is to verify, but in how
| easily it could possibly be refuted.
|
| [1] https://science.jrank.org/pages/9302/Falsifiability-
| Popper-s...
| uniqueuid wrote:
| I want to agree here because this comment seems to be
| misunderstood.
|
| In science as cumulative evidence, studies can in fact be
| harmful. If they are wrong or highly ambiguous, or if they
| make it hard to uncover errors, then they make it more
| difficult for future research to be correct.
|
| The reasons include publication bias (rejecting studies
| with null effects and/or contradicting previous
| literature), p-hacking and so on.
|
| That's why it is so important to apply rigorous standards
| everywhere: Transparency, data sharing, peer review,
| replication, pre-registration. In other words: There is no
| alternative to open science.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| I think it's the belief that whatever science _currently_
| says is final. And it 's heresy to question the findings.
|
| We do see some of that in some of today's arguments, I think.
| chalst wrote:
| Scientism is a term popularised by Hayek that means the
| fetishisation of the institutions of science and a failure to
| recognise the role of uncertainty in scientific judgement.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Dividing the world into alleged institutions that produce
| facts, and institutions that don't is exactly what scientism
| is.
|
| Querying public opinion is a method of determining facts,
| even special interests provide facts. 'Scientism' consists of
| what Feyerabend called 'methodological monism', believing in
| the notion that there is any privileged authority to 'speak
| facts'.
|
| Someone who properly understands 'science' understands that
| the processes to produce knowledge are as dynamic as facts
| themselves. All efforts to produce some sort of privileged
| methodology produce bureaucracy and standardization that
| closes science off from avenues that can produce knowledge.
| Elevating this bureaucratic caste of scientists to political
| authority is scientism.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| As a hypothetical example: "excessive deference to science"
| might occur when you have a global pandemic, and a government
| official says, "I am following the science. Therefore an
| attack on me is an attack on science." This official asks for
| exciting new emergency powers, and uses them to push through
| measures which coincidentally achieve policy goals he
| couldn't achieve before the pandemic. In the name of
| Science(tm), he tries to silence any dissent that says his
| measures are ill-suited to mitigate the pandemic, or unduly
| burdensome; maybe he even has an excuse to ban opposition
| political parties, perhaps because they are antivax (eww --
| but still) or just because they are questioning his power
| grabs.
|
| _(This is a hypothetical government official. Any
| resemblance to real-world government officials is
| coincidental.)_
| kenjackson wrote:
| That isn't deference to science. That's just someone who
| can align himself to something and use it t to make himself
| untouchable. You see the sand thing with religion or
| nationalism. "An attack on me is an attack on our
| veterans!"
|
| It really has nothing to do with science.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Yes, that's the point.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| I thought the indulgences of the 21st century were carbon
| credits.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > Juul's dominance dissipated around the time that over a
| thousand people contracted a mysterious vaping-related sickness
| in the fall of 2019, and state and federal regulators started to
| investigate the company's blatantly obvious marketing to
| teenagers.
|
| Surely as hell I support investigating marketing to teenagers but
| in this case it would seem to me more adequate if they would
| rather investigate the cases of the sickness and find out what
| exactly was causing it. I even doubt the sick were using Juul.
| qvrjuec wrote:
| I think the case was closed on the vaping sickness, as it was
| attributed to black-market THC vapes using vitamin E oil to
| thicken their otherwise diluted distillate to give the illusion
| of a higher quality product. It's too late for the PR damage to
| be undone to vapes in general.
| Aldipower wrote:
| I quit to smoke after 13 years of smoking. And I was a heavy
| smoker. I am a non-smoker for 10y now and will never smoke again.
| No need for vaping or such. I think if you substitute you do not
| catch your addiction at the root. Vaping is really the wrong way.
| You need to get rid of the addiction. My main point why it was
| easy for me to quit finally, I hated to be controlled by an
| chemical. A chemical that has control over my brain? No way
| anymore! I've destroyed this beast. I am a free man!
| kortex wrote:
| That's wonderful, but be careful generalizing your experience
| to others. You don't know who is struggling with mental
| illness, executive control issues, ADHD, OCD, depression, etc.
|
| Tobacco is more than nicotine delivery. It contains harmaline
| alkaloids, which among other effects, is a monoamine oxidase
| inhibitor. Quitting a cocktail of nicotine and MAOIs, while
| those stimulants are "treating" underlying conditions, is a
| _way_ harder task.
|
| For these folks, vaping is absolutely a step up, and allows
| them to wean off the tobacco MAOIs, especially in conjunction
| with treatment such as bupropion.
| Nav_Panel wrote:
| Yep -- this is how I use my vape, to reduce my overall MAOI
| intake. And I started smoking to begin with for the
| antidepressant effects (which it's surprisingly effective
| at).
|
| Were I to switch to vaping alone, it would be far easier to
| quit, mainly because the nature of conditioning relating to a
| vaping habit (hitting my juul at my desk) is very distinct
| from cigarettes (going on the roof and having a smoke
| triggered by certain events). The latter is far more
| "attached" to specific event triggers and lasts a specific
| amount of time, while the former is a more "ambient" act with
| much less habituality attached.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| n=1 is only a new data point. If vaping helps someone else then
| I'm all for it, if they can sub it out for smoking, it really
| does seem to be a better option if people don't use cheap
| ingredients and companies.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| The most harmful part of smoking is the smoke, not the
| addiction to nicotine. The critical thing to do is to get
| people off the actual smoke. However they achieve that safely,
| including with nicotine vaping, should be supported.
| nurb wrote:
| Nicotine is harmful for your mind more than your body. Every
| time the need to smoke appears, it replace everything you had
| in mind, to the point that the only thing you can think of is
| <<Damn I need to go to smoke>>.
|
| To me this is by far worst than any potential cancer risk.
|
| (I smoked for 15 years and stopped 3 years ago, if that
| precision can add any value)
|
| EDT: Juste to add that realizing this gives you motivation
| when you quit. And the freedom gained is also rewarding.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Nicotine is harmful for your mind more than your body.
| Every time the need to smoke appears...
|
| Right but you don't need smoke for nicotine - that's the
| point.
|
| Nicotine is still harmful, but it isn't as lethal as smoke.
|
| And more critically - smoke is dangerous to people around
| you, while nicotine is just your problem alone. If we can
| get people off smoke but still on nicotine, that's better
| for everyone.
| dntrkv wrote:
| > To me this is by far worst than any potential cancer
| risk.
|
| I think anti-smoking/vaping organizations should put more
| focus on this. I never realized how much this aspect of
| nicotine takes over your life.
|
| Personally, my thought process was always something like:
| Lung cancer and all those other health effects are scary
| and all, but they're gonna happen decades from now, and I'm
| gonna quit by then so it doesn't matter.
|
| Whereas focusing on the immediate effects of nicotine
| addiction and how it drives your day-to-day life, that's
| not talked about enough.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > My main point why it was easy for me to quit finally, I hated
| to be controlled by an chemical. A chemical that has control
| over my brain? No way anymore! I've destroyed this beast. I am
| a free man!
|
| I quit for seven years. It was one of the hardest things I've
| done. Starting again was the worst decision of my life, but I
| was in crisis at the time. Quitting a second time, with full
| knowledge of the first, is even more daunting. I'm happy to
| have something in between while I try to reduce dependence.
|
| Saying that vaping is not a legitimate path toward reducing the
| harm of cigarettes is like saying there's no use for the patch
| or nicotine gum. They're better than smoking, even if a crutch.
| wyuenho wrote:
| Is that why a while back HN is full of articles supposedly
| extolling benefits of nicotine?
| londons_explore wrote:
| A little more R&D into the ingredients of vape products could
| have eliminated or reduced so many of the health concerns.
|
| I really wonder why industry didn't do that. No industry wants
| their own products to be banned or legislated about by regulators
| - and paying a few more scientists to find replacements for
| ingredients that cause lung cancer would seem like a no-brainer.
| Traster wrote:
| This seems to be just standard procedure for any company
| operating in a health related sector. Maybe the scale is
| different, but any competent regulator would be aware of these
| types of relationships and should be adjusting for selection bias
| in their evaluation.
| counternotions wrote:
| This is all fair game for Juul, and merely serves as a
| distraction by the media. Modern capitalism enforces no moral
| responsibilities on companies besides enriching its
| shareholders. The academic system has long been exploited by
| these same players and left standing as a shell.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| I never understood why smoke users don't use metal chelators,
| that would remove a lot of a the toxicity/carcinogenesis
| mik09 wrote:
| (scihub all the way)
| Gatsky wrote:
| Juul is a company selling mind control juice to children, and is
| being advised by Big Tobacco, the most morally despicable
| industry in the world. They cannot be trusted, not at all, and
| this shameless fake journal issue is a perfect example straight
| out of the Big Tobacco playbook.
| petercooper wrote:
| Before I start I note that I'm old enough to do what I want and I
| have no other habits/vices, but don't vape, kids ;-)
|
| So I, a total non-smoker, started experimenting with nicotine a
| few weeks ago. First I tried gum which did nothing but give me an
| itchy throat. Then I bought a vaping device and some juices. Why?
| I think I'm low in dopamine (I am not depressed, though) and had
| read nicotine provides a temporary boost (until you get hooked)
| and I was intrigued to feel the difference.
|
| I can't really tell what's happening. I like the taste and mouth
| feel of the smoke but the nicotine itself is a bust. Perhaps a
| very mild caffeine-esque feeling at a push. It hasn't proven
| addictive as it's been sat out in my car untouched for the past
| four days! Perhaps the nicest sensation is that of taking a truly
| deep breath.. but that feels just as good without the vape!
|
| I remain intrigued what this means and hope to speak to someone
| medical about it one day. There's nicotine because it stings the
| throat if you hold it there (versus a zero nicotine juice) but
| whatever this amazing sensation people get has clearly passed my
| receptors by.
| grawprog wrote:
| >I quite like the taste and mouth feel of the smoke but the
| nicotine itself is a bust. Perhaps a very mild caffeine-esque
| feeling at a push? It hasn't proven addictive as it's been sat
| out in my car untouched for the past four days!
|
| As someone who stupidly started smoking later in life, that's
| pretty much how it goes. Nicotine addiction isn't like on TV
| where you smoke a cigarette or puff a vape and suddenly you're
| hooked. It's a slow process you find yourself doing more and
| more often until you realize one day, it's every day all the
| time.
| axaxs wrote:
| I'll add to that - I never found nicotine that addictive.
| Some grogginess, a little on edge, gone before you know it.
|
| What's hard to quit are the motor memories/habits. Get in the
| car, reach for your ... wait no we quit that. You start
| realizing how many little habits you have that way.
| grawprog wrote:
| This is the hardest part. This and being around people who
| smoke. You get used to those times when you have a smoke,
| or socializing with people who're smoking. Even just having
| your smokes in your pocket or something becomes one of
| those things.
| petercooper wrote:
| If that's the case, I'll ditch the nicotine juices and enjoy
| the zero nic ones on a rare occasion then. The smoke/flavor
| part is amusing, but as a drug, I'm not seeing the appeal.
| Sugar or caffeine has a more noticeable effect.
| grawprog wrote:
| I'm only speaking from my own personal experience.
| Everyone's different, bit i definitely found nicotine to be
| a slow building thing. I never found it all that great.
| Like you say, it's not much different than a cup of coffee
| or something, maybe not even as strong and that's almost
| why you don't tend to notice when it becomes a habit. It's
| really subtle.
| qvrjuec wrote:
| I've also heard similar experiences from heroin users when
| talking about their path to addiction. A real negative of
| anti-drug/smoking education is the hyperbole used when
| describing how addictive and amazing the substance is. When
| the user tries it and finds that their first hit is kind
| of... underwhelming, at least compared to everything they've
| heard, it's easier for them to say "eh, I'll never get
| addicted. I can do this casually" until, whammo - they're
| hooked.
| freedomben wrote:
| I smoked a variety of tobacco products for years and never got
| anything out of it either, so it may be that some people just
| don't work with it. I quit trying long before vaping became a
| thing but I would expect similar results.
|
| I did end up moving to dip (Skoal) however and that worked. It
| was never more than a minor buzz but at least it did something.
| For me it was incredibly relaxing. I quit dip years ago as well
| but I still find myself with urges to put one in while driving,
| and especially after meals. Highly addictive stuff and you
| don't even see it coming.
|
| If you're thinking of trying it though, it is _really_ easy to
| overdo it and end up dizzy or sick. This is especially true on
| your first dip. If you 're going to try it, take a small pinch
| first! If you overdo it, lie down and take a nap and sleep it
| off.
| petercooper wrote:
| Tobacco doesn't appeal to me so I won't be likely to go down
| that route, but it's interesting to hear your experience.
|
| The only thing I've ever taken that's given me a true buzz
| plus relaxation is doxylamine which is a common OTC sleep aid
| in the US. The only problem is shortly thereafter it also
| knocks me out well into the next day so isn't exactly
| something to take with any regularity(!)
| vizzier wrote:
| Interesting thoughts. Some back for you from an ex smoker: I'm
| not entirely sure that the feeling would be described as
| amazing. When smoking Cigarettes I'd get a mild "buzz" nothing
| so strong as cannabis or alcohol in its effects, but
| noticeable. Probably something akin in strength to a strong
| coffee. I was unable to replicate that 'buzz' with a vape pen
| that I used while attempting to give up. However, I have to
| draw a difference between that feeling of buzz from the direct
| chemical effects from the feeling of relief of having your
| addiction fulfilled. The latter maybe the more extreme, the
| craving of nicotine is a near constant building tension that is
| released with that next cigarette.
|
| Apart from yourself others have noted the meditative aspects of
| cigarette smoking. Beside the chemical addition aspect when
| giving up smoking you're losing a ritualistic break where you
| can spend a few minutes away from what you're currently doing,
| usually alone, to do a deep breathing exercise. This ritual is
| often a contributor to the difficulties in giving up.
| zeroego wrote:
| Have unfortunately been a smoker on and off for a while. Am
| currently using a Juul and have successfully been winding down
| my nicotine dependence again. They way I initially got hooked
| was in college. I would not mix alcohol with your nicotine
| experience. You'll feel it much more acutely. I've also
| read/heard that people with ADHD are far more susceptible to
| nicotine addiction FWIW.
| beowulfey wrote:
| I have never smoked, but the impression I had was that
| sensation of relief happens _after_ you become addicted. When
| addicted but not smoking, you feel withdrawal effects that are
| diminished in a quick surge upon smoking again.
|
| Not feeling anything is good...
| klyrs wrote:
| I think I'm sensitive to nicotine; ymmv on actual effects. If I
| smoke a cigarette, it gives me a dizzy buzz, nausea, shakes,
| sweats... and that doesn't go away even if I smoke regularly
| for months. I wouldn't call it "relief" of any sort. I usually
| quit after a couple of weeks, and stay off for years, but I've
| been addicted since I was in high school. My last stint was
| because I'd read that nicotine can moderate stress... but I've
| found that stepping outside for a quick walk and _not_ smoking
| is even better.
| w0de0 wrote:
| As a nicotine addict I caution you against assuming addiction
| is not looming. In my experience the onset of nicotine
| addiction is sudden and consuming.
|
| For some time, perhaps, you smoke or vape merely socially,
| experimentally, after a whisky at a party. Then, suddenly,
| perhaps after one too many the night before, ferocious
| withdrawal threatens. It is not a slow process, but a sudden
| toggle.
| w0de0 wrote:
| I will also add that in my experience a nicotine high only
| exists when consuming a large amount before you have
| developed a tolerance. I believe most addicts do not get real
| pleasure, either.
| legulere wrote:
| We should just take it at face value: make Juul a medical product
| that you need to get prescribed to get away from cigarettes.
| fnord77 wrote:
| has anyone worked on nicotine-analogues that might be less
| addictive?
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