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Comment by hprotagonist | Hacker News Reader

I have long been confused how Juul manages to avoid getting taxed into oblivion.

A cart has ~2x packs of cigarettes worth of nicotine, yet is regularly sold for ~$15 in my state, which is a 50% or greater savings over traditional cigarettes. I don't entirely understand how this is legal.

The FDA is in an interesting regulatory bind here, too -- I think nicotine is unique in their regulatory scope in that the FDA is concerned with efficacy and safety and tobacco products are known to be unsafe and ineffective therapeutic agents.

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Not arguing your main point at all, but I wanted to correct your last statement. While not considered safe, cigarettes have proven to be remarkably protective against the development of Parkinson's disease in a slew of studies spanning decades of research. This is relatively little-known outside of the field. I did my PhD in Parkinson's drug discovery, and it was one of those findings that is frustrating due to the lack of other effective therapies for PD prevention and the obvious deleterious effects of smoking on heart disease, lung cancer, etc. Here's a relatively recent review paper on the topic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5494127/.

Relevant excerpt: "Population-based studies have shown that smoking was associated with approximately 40–50% reduced risk of developing PD. [10, 11] This inverse relationship between smoking and PD was dose-dependent: age-adjusted relative risks (RRs) of PD were 0.8, 0.6, 0.5, and 0.4, for 1-9, 10-24, 25-44, and 45+ pack-years, relative to never-smokers, as shown in a large prospective cohort study [9]. There is also a temporal relationship between cigarette smoking and PD risk [9, 17]. Individuals with more years of smoking, older age at quitting smoking, and fewer years since quitting smoking had lower PD risk. Researchers prospectively observed a significantly lower risk of PD for smoking as early as 15 to 24 years before symptom onset, but not for smoking 25+ years before onset (n = 143,325) [17]."

Interesting. I wonder if vaping would have the same effect, or if it's some other ingredient?

> The FDA is in an interesting regulatory bind here, too -- I think nicotine is unique in their regulatory scope in that the FDA is concerned with efficacy and safety and tobacco products are known to be unsafe and ineffective therapeutic agents.

Thr tobacco industry tried this approach, claiming tobacco is an "agricultural product". Congress fixed that by passing a law specifically authorizing the FDA to regulate tobacco, which includes smokeless nicotine products.

yeah, exactly. This is a newish thing for the FDA, too. I think they were given regulatory power in ~2014.

Perhaps at some regulatory point it would make sense for Juul and others to extract nicotine from tomatoes and eggplants to bypass the tobacco restriction, or synthesize it from organic precursors?

Not all tobacco/nicotine products are taxed equally. In my state a pack of cigarettes is $10, but you can buy cigarette sized cigars for $2.50 for a 20pk, a 170pk of nicotine gum for $35 (1 gum = 1 cigarette). In defense, chewing nicotine gum is a lot less harmful than smoking a cigarette.

Cigars are a different, less addictive nicotine delivery mechanism.

Juul is problematic because they have an improved nicotine salt that delivers cigarette-like intensity/dosage. The upside is that it's easier to transition from cigarettes. The downside is that it shares the strong addictive quality of cigarettes.

A package of Juul pods contains 4 cartridges which each contain approximately 1 pack of cigarettes worth of nicotine. In NYC these sell for ~$20, while 1 pack of cigarettes sells for ~$13.

ah, so it's even worse! (or better, i guess, if you really like nicotine)

I used to think there is another government agency in charge of alcohol and nicotine - ATF yet FDA makes sense as it is about safety of a thing people consume internally.

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