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Comment by plank_time | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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.

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.

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...

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.

> 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.

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.

>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?

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.

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.

Who says this?

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

>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.

Totally I'm an advocate for 100% legalization of all drugs. Though with strong regulation for things like opiates, more as replacement harm reduction thing than it being something you can get at a liquor store (and you can probably argue similarly for alcohol looking only at a net harm + addiction lens, but that kind of proves the point in treating different drugs differently because of stigma).

I don’t think so. A cursory google search sounds like nicotine itself causes minuscule to no damage by itself.

This is the best single source compendium I’ve seen on the question: https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine

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.

Because there are other health issues, we should ignore this one? Smoking is a leading cause of death, so it's not insignificant.

I'm confused. The parent was complaining about solving smoking but letting Juul "in" and all the chemicals it introduces to people. I was merely saying there are far more and far worse chemicals in our food. That we should address chemicals in our food before we worry about Juul given the help ecigs have limited smoking.

When exactly do you think we got rid of cigarettes?

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-...

In full, he said "trying to get rid of cigarettes and it worked", implying that it was a completed effort, imo.

alright, I can see how the sentence could be read that way.

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.

Is there anything bad about having a nicotine only addiction?

I haven't seen Juul or its founder "celebrated" to any great extent in Silicon Valley. Is this a common sentiment?

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

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