Juul Co-Founder James Monsees Is Stepping Down | Hacker News Reader

Juul Co-Founder James Monsees Is Stepping Down

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95 pointscoloneltcb90 comments

Kate Conger pointed out on Twitter that today's a really good day to dump your corporate bad news.

I don't like e-cigarettes one way or another but I have to say, I admire the decision to step down from any CEO. Too many of them hang on to the product for a long time even when they're already billionaires (or at least in the higher echelons of multimillionaires.) I'd much rather see the more successful people exercise mobility and try their hand at new projects. If you have the skills and knowledge to make a revolutionary product, why stop at one?

In general I agree with you, but in this case I'm hoping he stops at one product, because it looks like he is inclined to create products that can potentially hurt society a lot.

Bezos has been CEO for 25 years. Did he stop at one product?

Well, if you remain a CEO at the same company but keep making new products, that's good. I'm talking more about CEO's like Zuckerberg, who've been sitting on their throne for years without any fresh input into the creative field. Much as I dislike the guy, surely he has some ideas to try.

But how much will his exit package be?

Unethical and dangerous company. Hopefully the entire industry goes down.

Even if I ignore all the different kinds of high school outreach they did, it’s obvious that they designed it to look like a USB stick quite intentionally. Fuck this guy.

first of all, what is wrong with intentionally making it look like a USB stick? second, is it possible that a flat rectangular box just happens to be the ideal form factor for a small electronic device meant to go in someone's pocket? of all the nefarious intentions attributed to juul, this seems like an odd one.

It's to make it easier for teenagers to sneak into schools. This product was designed from the ground up with the goal of getting teens to use it.

That's a tenuous link to make. Vaping has contributed to harm reduction for a lot of people trying to get of cigarettes and they should be applauded for that.

You know full well that isn't all of it.

People don't choose mango flavour to stop smoking.

please don't make such authoritative claims about stuff like this.

I'm a 26yo ex-smoker, and I absolutely chose mango flavor to quit smoking. most of my (similar aged) friends that vape agree it's one of the best juul flavors. a key feature of vapes is that they actually taste better than cigarettes.

I'll occasionally spring for a disposable vape during stressful times, and now the lack of flavored cartridges has me considering a pack of cigarettes.

I did, and almost everyone I know who quit smoking from Juul did as well.

Where did your confidence come from on this topic? Adults love fruity things. Margaritas, mimosas, juice, etc..

> People don't choose mango flavour to stop smoking.

Of course they do!

Fruit flavors help reduce the palatability of tobacco. I specifically chose them for that reason, and now my once cherished tobacco tastes disgusting, as intended. That one cheat cigarette while drinking is no longer desirable.

While I share the sentiment of the others responding to you, I won't echo it out of civility, but they're correct. People like you have just made it exponentially harder for people who want to quit, while doing nothing to keep vapes out of the hands of teens who want them.

In particular, Juul's tobacco carts tasted horrible. Same with their menthol.

> People don't choose mango flavour to stop smoking.

What an absurd assertion to make.

Flavoured juice is a major reason I quit smoking cigarettes at 27. I know many, many people with similar stories.

I agree with the GP's general claim that Juuls were designed to attract teenagers. But I don't agree with this one. Adults like flavored products too. Why wouldn't they?

It's not an either/or. Juul did market to teenagers. Juul did cause an enormous rebound in the amount of teenage nicotine use, which had fallen close to zero. For you it's a harm reduction tool and that's great, but it's not why Juul is so wildly successful.

The freakish backlash about vaping strikes me as a classic moral scold's game, but I do actually agree that the form factor was likely intentionally chosen to be easily confused with USB sticks.

The product was clearly carefully designed. A lot of money and market research went in to it, and the idea that nobody noticed the connection is not plausible. Hell, someone was likely carrying design documentation around _on a USB stick_ during the design process. And then you notice that other nicotine vape products and pot vape products mostly are not that shape...

Had the ideal form been, say, easily confused with a switchblade, they would have found a way to work around that; developing a rep for getting their customers hassled/shot would be bad for business. Thinking through the real-world implications of design is what good product designers do.

At best, it is marginally plausible that they noticed the connection but were indifferent, not considering the mistaken identity possibilities. But after typing that out, I have trouble buying it.

It does not strike me as odd at all.

Sort of off topic, but aside from addictive potential there is very little in the way of evidence that vaping is harmful. And it's been around for some 15 years now - probably long enough to show some degree of long term harm.

Similarly, nicotine is guilty by association, I've been unable to find any literature pointing harm from consumption.

Now here's some speculation to take with a grain of salt - nicotine may offer a protective effect against 2019-ncov. We've known for a while that nicotine downregulates ACE2 receptors, and someone did an unofficial, but comprehensive meta review for SARS, MERS, and 2019-ncov and found that former and current smokers were significantly underrepresented among infected cases. Yes, it's a Reddit post, but the sources are all there and you can review and judge them for yourself.[1]

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/faluhv/an_exhausti...

Interesting that infected cases were down. However of the infected cases, smoking is believed to be a major factor in the seriousness of the disease and potential for death (I don't know off-hand if that was based on data, or if it was humanity's best attempt at a reasonable understanding of a respiratory disease / general trait of pneumonia). So... yet another reason why vaping is great as long as it's primarily getting fewer people to smoke.

But yes - a lot of the harm attributed to vaping is after-market / black-market oils, and it's silly for Juul to carry all that blame. I'm not a fan of nanny state-type laws anyway.

   a lot of the harm attributed to vaping is after-market /
   black-market oils

Could you perhaps elaborate on these oils? Is there a list of safe, high-quality oils somewhere? Certified perhaps?

GP is referring to the fact that the recent widespread vaping illness was caused by illicit cannabis cartridges (in particular, one or more cutting agents used). I doubt there is anything like a certified list of safe products, but the recent scare is unrelated to products sold through legal distribution chains.

Vape liquid base is propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin. Oils don't belong in vape juice at all. Black market "chemists" (thanks, drug war!) put Vitamin-E acetate in to stretch out the thing people wanted (THC), with the thing that killed several of them. Press and the Pres used the hysteria to ban the flavors people (not just teens) like.

Specifically, the only confirmed correlations to any class of products were to THC cartridges using tocopheryl acetate (colloquially, Vitamin E acetate) as a diluant/cutting agent. That should never have happened in legitimate THC products, but it was pretty much guaranteed to happen with street and counterfeit carts. A similar sort of thing can happen with nicotine e-liquids if they're made with oil/lipid-based flavourings - stuff that people who don't know what they're doing might pick up from grocery, craft and health food stores. (Flavourings sold for vaping are water-soluble. That's not to say that all of them are as safe as they could be, particularly as it concerns saccharides, which can produce carcinogenic compounds when overheated/burned.) There have been a small handful of cases worldwide of idiopathic reactions to whatever was being vaped by the user; that's pretty much par for the course with anything that isn't pure air or water going into a human - somebody, somewhere is going to going to be hurt by something literally everybody else's body ignores.

Even if the vape juices were manufactured with only ACS grade chemicals free of impurities there isn't much meaningful data on the health impact of 'vaping' said chemicals. Vaping data won't be meaningful until there's a standardized vaping device made of non-reactive components (stainless steel, glass, PTFE, etc.) to use in clinical trials.

Black market goods aren't going to be certified by anyone you can trust, nor can you trust black market goods to contain what they claim to contain.

People harming themselves with unsafe illegal goods is one of the costs of making certain substances illegal and taxing others so heavily that black market demand for them can thrive. Governments should weigh the harm done by black market goods against the benefits of substance control.

Regulations and certifications don't necessarily make things safe, but they at least help protect people from things known to be dangerous. Put black market goods in your lungs at your own peril.

Buying your oil from a billion-dollar company is pretty safe. Buying it from a licensed and legal smoke shop, less safe. Buying from a sketchy dude out of his car or apartment very unsafe.

So I'm totally not a vaping expert, I just know that in every case that I read about of someone being hospitalized because of vaping, it was because of such oils. My understanding is that the "juices" these devices are designed for and most of the mainstream ones from the "official" sources are water-based fluids with a small amount of drug and flavoring added. I believe vaping oil is quite problematic, regardless of the source. No idea if "black market" oils have actually been adding bad things to the oils, or what. Like I said, not an expert myself.

It was two related companies in New York state, and both have been shut down.

Physically harmful no. The mental harm from having a replacement reward system is if anything underdrawn.

That sounds plausible. What exactly do you think this harm looks like?

Read the comments. Sounds like the study rather is a case against smoking. That's also what researchers think is causing men to be more severely affected in China.

>aside from addictive potential

And this is already very harmful in itself, hooking the user (read, mostly young teenagers) into an addiction for life. It's the last thing on your mind when you go to sleep, and the first when you wake up. As soon as you put one out, the itch begins to rise until you have another. That's enslaving, it's a bad thing in itself. Not to mention the thousands of dollars per year you will sink on that.

I agree, but to be fair, that's how a lot of us feel about coffee.

Coffee addiction wean off completely after a few days of abstinence though. And the side effects of abstinence are quite mild.

I always get the worst headaches whenever I'm withdrawing from caffeine.

Withdrawing from nicotine is pretty minor in comparison. Mainly just cravings, and they subside after a week or so depending on how long I had been vaping

Are you joking? When I quit I had a month of full on panic attacks over the tiniest things, and I only vaped for 5 years.

I don't understand the motive for downplaying the addictive potential of nicotine unless you're excusing your own habits to yourself. It's posts like yours that led me to think vaping "wasn't that bad" when I first got hooked. I feel like I got my life back when I finally quit and I never would've been able to do it at all without the endless support and patience of my wife.

My experiences tend to agree with the GP. One thing to consider is that the withdraw effects may be proportional more to the intensity of an addiction prior to quitting rather than the length of time addicted. If you're drinking one cup of coffee a day, but vaping the equivalent of one or more packs a day, your nicotine withdraw may be far more severe. Conversely, if you smoke one cigarette a day, and consume the equivalent of 12 cups of coffee a day in caffeine (caffeine pills or energy drinks). This may sounds ridiculous to you, but if I were to interpolate your experience with my anecdotal sample set, it sounds as if you were vaping well over the equivalent of two packs a day. This is really extrapolation, I can't say I know anyone who has had panic attacks while going withdraw who otherwise would not have, and my sample includes people who have gone through withdraw from a pack a day + vaping. Obviously the sample is small and anecdotal. Also, I've neglected to find supporting sources. I acknowledge that you are probably relaying the events truthfully, but you are essentially downplaying the addictive potential of caffeine here similarly to how you accuse GP of downplaying the addictive effects of nicotine. In summary, caffeine withdraw is a thing, and can be worse than nicotine withdraw. I don't think you need to have some dark motive to state that.

I just think it's extremely irresponsible to downplay the addictive power of nicotine and it's a theme I see recur frequently on this forum. I have a caffeine addiction as well, and have broken and restarted it multiple times in my life. It simply doesn't compare. If I don't get coffee (I'm a 3-4 cup/day coffee drinker), I'll be cranky but I'll live.

When I vaped, my brain was on fire inside of an hour and a half. I couldn't get through a movie. I'd wake up in the middle of the night to vape. That has never happened to me with caffeine. There is no comparison. And I was vaping 3mg/ml liquid for the longest time. I can't imagine what the hit from a Juul or any nicotine salt vape is like in comparison.

Everyone is different. But trying to find out if you're a person who can use nicotine without becoming hopelessly addicted is like lighting firecrackers in your hand to see if you're the kind of person who won't lose their fingers when it blows up. It's stupid and it's comments like the one I originally replied to, downplaying the potential for addiction, that helped me talk myself into it in the first place. After I'd had a few hits.

I just hate seeing that in a place like this, with an ostensibly educated userbase.

Frankly there's also abundant scientific research to back up just how hideously addictive nicotine is. I shouldn't have to supply all my anecdotes but hearing this community discuss how it really isn't so bad makes me so anxious that someone might actually believe it and start to use.

I hope if someone is reading this and thinking about starting to vape that it makes them think again. Don't. It's awful.

> I just think it's extremely irresponsible to downplay the addictive power of caffeine and it's a theme I see recur frequently on this forum.

I’ve drank a lot of coffee and I’ve smoked a lot of cigarettes at different times in my life. They aren’t even in the same universe.

Well by this metric we have a pandemic of smartphone usage that poses an immediate public health risk.

People have indeed made claims along those lines. Vaping isn't being singled out here.

Thousands of dollars a year? On vaping? Not even counting the money that would be extremely difficult to do.

EDIT: deleted the distracting

not that hard to do. juul pods in particular are fairly expensive. a pack of 4 juul pods costs $15-20 depending where you buy them. if you go through one pod a day (fairly high usage, but not unlikely for someone transitioning from a pack a day smoking habit), that's already over $1000/year.

I spend less than $50/year and Juul are not the most popular device.

I know many people who are aware of that and don't mind. To them addiction not a bad thing in itself, only if the object of addiction is harmful.

Children can't really make that choice. And before anybody responds with "won't you please think of the children," this is about the children. If vaping is anything like tobacco, the primary marketing target is children, because for the most part virtually nobody starts smoking as an adult.

That's funny, that sounds like exactly the kind of lie I used to tell myself when I was addicted. Nicotine is a powerful force for rationalization of your addiction to it.

They said this before they decided to get addicted.

That's an opinion on a matter they know nothing about. Addiction (and other mental modifications) is tricky that way.

On the contrary, nicotine in and of itself is quite harmful. It’s debatable if it causes cancer, but it definitely contributes to lung and heart disease, among other things. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/

Was just about to post this. Nicotine vapor seems to be better than smoking, assuming legit products, but nicotine is still poison. Consume a little too much nicotine, whether smoking or vaping; that sickish feeling can be the onset of nicotine poisoning.

I've seen so many people stating basically the same as OP, claiming no data on vaping being harmful while completely ignoring the core substance that produces the addiction in the first place.

I smoked a pack per day+ for 27 years, quit a few months back, still using low nicotine vape products when overstressed and struggling with urges. I'm not a vape hater, but I'm not ignorant to it being poison. It's always a good idea to have as much knowledge about your vices as possible.

I know I’m being pedantic but nicotine vapor would be above 247 c.

I think you’re meaning to compare the pure aerosol and the smoke that comes from burning it.

I am a cigar guy and have been for year. I also know what it's like when someone who doesn't smoke tries a strong cigar for the first time. I was once at my favorite cigar bar on Canal Street, talking with the owners as I usually did, when I saw some large men walk into the humidor. They were all WWE wrestlers.

The owner asked me to go help em out, so I walked in with them and they asked me what was the strongest cigar they had. I paused and then asked them about their experience level with cigar smoking. All of them rarely ever smoked and for some it was a first time thing. One of the guys had recently "won" the world title and they wanted to celebrate his good fortune.

I had to tell them that I wouldn't recommend the strongest to them, that's crazy if you haven't built a tolerance, and that if they felt nauseous, to stop smoking and eat something sweet. I instead pointed out a medium bodied, medium strength cigar and sent them on their way.

About an hour later two of them were sitting at the bar eating butter mints out of a dish with their heads in their hands.

Nicotine will mess you up.

Even a "weak" cigar will mess you up if you don't smoke. If you don't have nicotine tolerance, smoking a cigar is akin to getting drunk. Stumbling around and slurring words.

I don't know much about cigars, but I was always under the impression that cigar smokers do not inhale. Is the nicotine absorption in the mouth sufficiently efficient that smoking a cigar can make grown men nauseous?

Your mouth absorbs a lot of nicotine, so even if you don't inhale (you will STILL inhale a little just by being in a cloud of smoke you just blew), you will likely get buzzed off of a cigar if you aren't used to smoking them.

It's more harmful than not doing it. But probably less harmful than bacon.

Smoking related disease kills thousands daily. Bacon does not. So no, not less harmful.

Smoking != nicotine. The byproducts from combustion are extremely harmful regardless of the effects of nicotine.

It definitely interferes with the bodies healing process as well. Not a doctor so unsure of exactly how. Back when I was smoking I needed to have knee surgery and the doctor advised against nicotine in any form for that reason.

I think it's because it cuts of blood flow to the extremities. And blood flow helps healing. But I'm not a doctor.

Funny, after both my appendectomy and my knee surgery, nurses suggested that smokers recover faster. Why? They’re way more motivated to get up and out of bed to go for a walk on a regular basis!

That report doesn't say what you describe, and neither do any others I could find.

What it does describe are lung effects, first in the form of "tracheal deviation," which to my layperson's eye appears to be a side to side pushing of the esophagus based on different lung volumes, air in the chest, or some other treatable disorders, i.e. fixable and not permanent damage.[1]

There is also the decrease in elastin in the aveoli, which are the little balloons that comprise most of your lung function. They have a goo lining them which includes something called elastin, which helps it be a balloon (emphysema is [partially] alveoli losing this elasticity). Nicotine helps decrease its, uh, "presence," but by itself my sense is that it's possibly reversible, definitely stoppable, and at any rate very common from a variety of causes.[2] Most of the scholarship about this problem is focused on it (elastin deficiencies) being common in premature babies and early lung development.

There are also "other respiratory disorders," which from the several links and studies I just read, are thinly defined if at all[3]

Negative coronary effects appear to be exacerbation of existing problems, particularly something called "myocardial ischemia," which seems to be what doctors call "the heart doesn't get enough blood when your arteries are already clogged." I figure this is a result of well-known vasoconstricting properties, which, y'know, a lot of substances have (some even unregulated).[4] A side effect of this is that if you do have a blockage, the increased pressure from the vasoconstriction can help dislodge it, the result likely being a heart attack. This is a problem with fried foods, too.

Last but not least: https://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?Re...

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3929318/

3. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/12/16/7885401...

4. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/myocardial-is...

Just to clarify, because I was very confused--you mean that there is very little correlation between smoking and additional risk after contracting COVID-19, as your source is entirely dedicated to.

There's significant risk to vaping, based on numerous studies.

[0] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/E-Cigarette-Toxicity-T...

The abstract seems to say "we don't know, but we'd expect it's bad." Is that right?

>The inhaled aerosols of e-cigarettes contain numerous potential toxicities, some of which could be dangerous for health with long-term use. The safety of prolonged aerosol exposure is not known

Could be. The jury is out.

The safety of a lot of it is known, and it's safe. Propylene glycol has been used for concert smoke machines for 50 years. Vegetable glycerin is used for all kinds of things, internal and not. Please don't spread misinformation.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507184/

http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC44877...

The fog from fog machines has cooled down by the time you inhale it. How much does a concertgoer inhale vs. a vaper over a given span of time? Is there a risk of the heated product causing damage to the lungs that fog at ambient temperature does not? Can the ingredients, when combined and heated, chemically react to form hazardous compounds?

I found one study where they had mice inhaling cigarette smoke extract (not even vape juice, and worse) five hours a day for a few months, and it caused some discoloration on their uvulas or something.

Here's something to take 12 seconds to read: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027869151...

And yet breathing around fog machines is uncomfortable and can cause real problems if you have asthma. Safe is a loaded term here.

Safe is relative, sure, but not loaded. Pretty much everything can cause real problems if you have asthma, it doesn't have anything to do with PG per se.

Juul made the product so the user experiences the same nicotine spike and addictive rush as normal cigarets give. Sounds pretty malicious to me because it introduces ambiguity into how healthy and addictive vaping is.

Yes. And it’s a real shame because if they offered lower nicotine percentages (1% and 0%) it could be a powerful prescribed treatment for nicotine addiction. Instead they just made a new market for exploitation.

I believe it also contains more nicotine than tobacco products. To me, that's a bad way to start using nicotine; where do you go when you start out at peak dosage?

Nonsense. Dose is titrated via usage. You don’t have to sit there and puff on a vape for 5 minutes straight like a cigarette.

How much nicotine is in a puff? How are you measuring a puff, and how are the individual users measuring a puff?

My first several disposable vapes stated 300 puffs; it took me running out much faster than a pack of cigarettes to actually measure; my starting usage I got 101 puffs. How much nicotine was in each of those puffs?

You mean besides all those people that died from vaping?

They were vaping vitamin E from black market THC cartridges—not exactly what people refer to as “vaping”. The solution to that would be regulation of the market. My understanding is that the banning of flavored vape sales is mostly intended to cut consumption among teenagers & that it seems to have had the intended effect.

You mean from black market THC oil which has nothing to do with nicotine vaping?

I've stopped vaping primarily because COVID-19 mortality rate risk grows exponentially if you smoke. Any type of lung inflammation (including wildfire particulates in my case) may increase your risk of mortality ten fold.

You may want to reconsider relying on /r/COVID19 as a source of information. There's been a lot of criticism on how they are applying censorship, and no transparency around it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/f2jiyz/uclo_jun...

Good timing. Given Juul's popularity and their product's likely effect of weakening the lungs, I'm sure the lawsuits after COVID19 dust settles will be for the history books.

Benzoic acid (as sodium benzoate) is a preservative, so for all we know, Juul juice is protective against lung infections.

To be clear, I don’t believe this. Just thought one data-deficient argument deserved another.

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