Users Sue Juul for Addicting Them to Nicotine
wired.com
wired.com
> Juul use was pervasive at the school, including on the school bus, in bathrooms, outside school, and even in class
> In order to deter his use, the complaint says the teenager’s parents removed the door from his bedroom, locked parts of their house, instructed school officials not to let him use the bathroom unaccompanied, and subjected D.P. to regular urine tests.
> Yet despite all these measures, D.P. is unable to stop Juuling.
I can't help reading into this completely different story. It reminds me of dialogues in R.D.Laing book when he questions the patient and his relatives, and you can't tell who's "ill".
But even if it's accurate account on mother's part, why not to sue the school where they vape on a schoolbus?
edit: missed words
The only problem the school has is that they don't have a vape awareness program. That's all you can expect them to do with the money + labour they have. The police should get involved and charge the companies who sold the devices and juice.
These companies are very interested in pushing their own lines of packaged/disposable e-cigs. It is very different from the cottage style hobbyist/enthusiast e-cigs. The big companies are kind of blind to this segment of the market, I don't think they truly realize how large it is.
Their approach will be to have the e-cig industry regulated much like the current cigarette industry is... in such a way that they can win through the sheer scale of legal attrition and achieve the current prices they have in cigarettes.
It is not by mistake that there are maybe 3-4 meaningfully large cigarette companies in the US that set the prices and rules, it is impossible to enter the industry.
I think there will always be an enthusiast segment of the e-cig market, much like the pipe tobacco one that exists now. Pipe has many small manufacturers and far less legal hoops and administrative overhead.
That doesn't make them scared of the vape business, it makes them want to join the vape business, and a number of them already are selling ecigarettes and juice.
The only outcome here is that well-meaning therapeutic e-cig / nicotine quitting businesses will likely be stomped.
Again, I don't vape, but have occasionally done Hookah. Flavors were the whole point of it, and I was well above 18 when I made the choice.
Warn against the dangers of vaping, sure, but I don't see what this company in particular has done. And I don't see how people don't realize the dangers of vaping nicotine.
They've developed a special formulation of vape juice that causes a much more dramatic spike in blood nicotine levels, which experts confirm increases the risk of addiction dramatically compared to the gentle plateau of blood nicotine caused by other vaping products [0].
Maybe this is beneficial on net (Juul confirms outright that the nicotine spike is the entire point of their formula, but they say it's intentional to help people quit smoking) but don't try to muddy the issue by claiming they're being singled out for no reason.
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/3/17529442/juul-vapes-nicoti...
https://patents.google.com/patent/CA2909967A1/en
a previous Wired article on the patent
Essentially, the patent is mostly useful in shrinking the size of the device, not necessarily delivering more nicotine. And, truly; if you put Juul-equivalent liquid (50 mg/ml) in a traditional sub-ohm device, even high tolerance users would probably black out or throw up.
That being said, anyone who has done a variety of vape devices would concur that Juuls hit harder than anything else out there. And despite their marketing that they're trying to help smokers quit, they still don't offer any refills lower than 50mg/ml, which is an obscene amount of nicotine even for a low output device. Less talk and more solutions from Juul; let's start with 35mg/ml and 20mg/ml refill packs.
But Juuls are seriously bad, and this is coming from an ecig/vape user. I cannot emphasize enough that people need to stay away from Juul. The sheer nicotine they pack in their pods is habitually addictive, they're ridiculously expensive, their quality control leads to constantly leaky pods... any other solution is better as far as I've experienced.
Even the other "gas station ecig" products (Vuse, Blu, etc) aren't nearly as bad. But if you're trying to quit, get a normal sub-ohm device and create a plan. The beauty of vape as a quitting mechanism for cigarettes is that you have complete control over the nicotine content. Buy a bottle of 6/9mg/ml juice + a bottle of 0mg/ml juice of the same flavor, and create a dilution plan. Week 1, full strength, week 2, 90% 9mg 10% 0mg, etc etc.
Once the nic addiction is gone, all that's left is the ritual, which is a bitch to get rid of, but you can do it. Stick on 0mg, ween it off, and replace it with new healthier habits.
The hard part is going to zero opiates, and tapering is infinitely preferable to jumping off a large dose, but it does not make it any less taxing on your will.
The stories about users upping the amount of nicotine they consume is very true. I was a casual smoker (only a few cigs a day), and when I switched to juuling I quickly became a pod a day vaper, and was very addicted to niccotine. They really need to release differing concentrations -- while the 50mg is great for pack a day smokers, they need to release lower amounts for all the other types of smokers wishing to quit out there. The current formula has more nicotine per puff than when smoking a cigarette. I think they should get that on par, as many users with oral fixations just like to take many puffs, but may not want the nic.
However, when it came time to quit, it actually wasn't that bad. The biggest hurdle was the mental addiction to the act of juuling, but I didn't feel any withdrawals, and I didn't get quitting sickness (which I have gotten in the past when quitting directly from smoking)
Also, dosage and frequency affects addiction. If you are constantly doing it, you are going to be addicted. I occasionally (a few times a month) use vape drops with nicotine on the skin or sublingual as a nootropic. I haven't notice any addiction or cravings whatsoever.
Having had to deal with the disgust of roommates smoking, I was so happy when they switched to using a Juul. It didn't bother me at all after that. I did notice that they smoked even more though.
This case seems bogus. They are using the product illegally since they are underage. Don't see how you can sue someone when what you are doing is illegal. Also, it is abundantly clear that the product is addictive.
JUUL is like any other nicotine alternative (e.g. gum) -- has Nicorette been sued after people switched from cigarettes to their product and retaining their addiction to nicotine?
Further, it's peppered all around their site: Warning: This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
I don't vape, but I feel like this case is bull.
In the UK there's a voluntary agreement to not market to young people, and to not sell product to people who are not smokers.
Something like juul happening over here would probably prompt more formal regulation.
It definitely happens, it happened to me and a few friends. I suppose we may be extreme outliers but I think it's happening a bit more than people might guess.
Not exactly so, a distinguishing feature of Juul is that the nicotine provided is formulated as a salt rather than as a free base.
If they said that it was less addictive than cigarettes based on the average nicotine in a cigarette versus the average nicotine in a single pod, it would depend if a single pod has less nicotine or not.
Just looked it up, they claim a pod is equivalent to a pack.
It would also depend on their exact claim. If they're just claiming that it's a way to get people off of cigarettes, then that's not the same as nicotine independence.
E-cigarettes also give the user a lot more control over what they ingest. It's anecdata, but I know several people who have weaned themselves mostly or entirely off nicotine after switching to vaping thanks to the ability to mix or purchase vape liquid with variable nicotine content (this requires some level of knowing what you're doing and doesn't apply to mass-market products like Juul).
Vape products are also the largest existential threat to the status quo of the tobacco industry right now. Drawing an equivalence between e-cigarettes and conventional smokes vilifies the former and is exactly what big tobacco wants.
I'm not anti-regulation in general - designing e-cig products to give a more intense nicotine hit than smokes seems insane and if that's what Juul is doing then they can all get bent. But telling people that vaping is smoking is deceptive, and until conventional cigarettes no longer exist I believe that the suggestion is actively harmful.
In this case, Juul engineered a product that causes a nicotine spike that increases the chance of addiction.
This isn't unlike any other lawsuit where consumers sue a company for engineering a dangerous product without proper warnings.
The most famous (and universally misunderstood[1]) case is the woman who got 3rd-degree, flesh-falling-off burns from McDonald's coffee and sued them successfully.
It was reasonable for the woman to expect hot coffee, as one would find in one's home. McDonald's served her much hotter coffee without warning her beforehand, which led to her underestimating how dangerous handling that coffee could be.
All McDonald's had to do was tell her it was very hot.
Juul is in a worse position because engineering addiction is much more malicious than engineering extra-hot coffee that saves the company money.
I mean if you take something that delivers nicotine... that's kinda what happens.
What exactly is the case for the users here? Did they think it had less nicotine but it did not?