Juul’s New Marketing Is Straight Out of Big Tobacco’s Playbook

theatlantic.com

13 points·pseudolus··4 comments

this article is extremely weird. juul is doing exactly what you would expect it to do if the product was completely safe. what is wrong with marketing your own safe product?

the article refers to "mounting evidence of health complications", but there is no high quality evidence showing that ecigarettes or non-tobaccco nicotine products are unhealthy.

actively opposing safe and effective alternatives to cigarettes will lead to a huge number of avoidable deaths. it's hard to see why so many journalists and public health professionals are so invested in the failure of ecigs as a product.

Indeed. Juul hasn't made any health claims so the clickbait title that they are copying big tobacco's playbook (when they are big tobacco now) is kind of silly.

It was also odd to read Juul's statements that they are an "alternative" for adult smokers but not intended as a cessation device. So they're for people who want to smoke cigs and Juul? That seems strange. They're trying to fit themselves into a regulatory niche and not be seen as a quit device nor as smoking. That's kind of impossible.

> not intended as a cessation device.

> So they're for people who want to smoke cigs and Juul?

No, they want to wean smokers off cigarettes and have them continue using the Juul instead. Not a cessation device for nicotine, but for tobacco.

Well ecigs are too new to have long-term studies and there's basically no standards or rules on what they may contain. It's probably safer than tobacco, but we don't know for sure, and it very certainly is not healthier than not smoking/vaping at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com