FDA Authorizes Juul E-Cigarettes | Hacker News Reader

FDA Authorizes Juul E-Cigarettes

wsj.com

26 pointskdamica94 comments

> ~ Original and Menthol

I'll never understand why adults partaking in a particular vice can't enjoy different flavours (unless the vice is alcohol).

Various U.S. institutions of authority took the position that flavors were not for adults, but instead, a strategy to attract minors.

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/e-cigarettes/why-youth-vape.html

https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/ctp-newsroom/misleading...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6663555/

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2018/05/...

https://www.drugs.com/news/study-finds-powerful-sweetener-va...

No, they took the stance that this crusade against good flavors should specifically and only apply to Juul. Maybe deservedly given Juul's behavior in marketing to teenagers. Today, you can go to gas stations in most states and buy Cherry Ice Lemonade Cotton Candy Mr Fog vapes, or Geekbars, or whatever brand shipped straight from China is popular this month. To be honest, even if Juul were allowed to bring Mango back, I'm not sure anyone would buy it; compared to the actual desserts you can smoke today, Juul Mango doesn't hold a candle.

In other words: Our government utterly decimated an American company just to make room in the market for Chinese competitors to dominate.

Would this not be due to the unfortunate reality that litigation and enforcement can be carried out against domestic companies more effectively than foreign ones?

Alcohol comes in fruit flavours too, no respectable adult would drink a cocktail cooler, so it's safer to protect the kids and ban them.

Because it's hard to get any laws passed, much less a law that tackles two major things (tobacco and alcohol) at once

In most US states the sale of alcohol is already much more restricted than the sale of tobacco.

You can walk into any 7-11, convenience store, or gas station and buy tobacco. In most states, this is not true for alcohol.

Also, tobacco vape use is much more addictive and somewhat more concealable than alcohol. People can generally tell or at least suspect you've been drinking; people generally cannot tell if you just vaped 10 seconds ago in the bathroom.

It's far from ideal and you and I would certainly not design a country from scratch this way, but legislation (at least, ideally) deals with things as they are and not with an imagined tabula rasa state of affairs.

And https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/menthol-tobacco/index.html

Do you mean why vapes aren't allowed to be sold in exciting flavours in a lot of countries?

Because what happened there was that 'strawberry kiwi', 'banana ice', and 'miami mint', and whatever fruity flavour in a colourful package you can come up with, turned vaping from something adults did to quit smoking tobacco into the biggest hype amongst teenagers since fidget spinners. Only they get addicted to nicotine as a bonus, and switch to 'proper' tobacco in their senior years.

Even with a complete ban on those the damage is done, and all across the globe society is now dealing with a huge profitable underground Snapchat-enabled market geared solely at selling the equivalent of a pack-a-day habit in nicotine to kids. (The ban helps to gradually denormalise vaping again, so it is good to have in place.)

Vapes aren't just for adults to quit smoking tobacco. They're a nicotine-delivery system. It's a way to use a legal stimulant. The flavors would make it potentially more enjoyable.

I don't think vape kids are ever switching to tobacco - that doesn't fit the model that they want at all: its an electronic device that delivers a stimulant.

Why is alcohol something that's okay to market to kids? (The new supergirl is a drunk party girl). Isn't alcohol much more harmful?

> Why is alcohol something that's okay to market to kids?

It's not in many places. Where is it OK? There is a reason abstinence from alcohol is getting normalised for under 18s.

> I don't think vape kids are ever switching to tobacco […]

Demographic research polling suggests otherwise. Besides, it is gradually becoming more apparent that vaping is very much not a healthy thing to do¹.

1: Just one example of reporting on this issue: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/sep/08/vapi...

Interesting, what evidence is there that people switch from e-cigarettes to tobacco? I hadn’t heard of that before.

Every single person I've known who switched from tobacco to e-cigarettes has switched back to tobacco. They all say it's better for one reason or another.

You don't know me but...

I switched to vaping, IDK, 10 or so years ago from an off and (mostly) on cigarette habit and haven't looked back. There was a point where I was spending more on 'cheap' Chinese vape gear than I was on cigarettes but, other than that, no regrets.

And, yes, I'm a middle-aged adult who likes to vape flavors a well.

Perhaps the only downside, if you can even call it that, is I never tried to quit vaping as I enjoy it and it (probably) won't kill me before the lingering effects of a couple decades of smoking, environmental hazards of invading Iraq twice, the skin cancer and whatever else comes up due to my general lack of concern over living a healthy lifestyle.

And every person I know that vapes did so to quit tobacco and hasn't gone back. Unfortunately, I don't know anywhere near enough people to have significant conclusions based on that.

Certainly my observations are pure anecdote, and only really a handful of people; all of whom started smoking before vaping was available. That said, a cigarette is a pretty impressive way of delivering nicotine, which is why they are so addictive. It's not hard to imagine that someone who's become addicted to nicotine via vape would then try other delivery methods and find them more satisfying.

That said, I do think that vapes as a replacement for an existing tobacco habit is a nice idea and it makes sense that it would be much safer. The issue is just that I have not known people to stick with them.

Former smokers switching back is one thing, but how often do people start out with vaping and then move to smoking tobacco?

That's switching 'back'. People that want vapes/ecigarettes want them for specific reasons and smoked tobacco has way too many other problems.

In the Netherlands the scientific Trimbos Institute has been reporting this based on their regular demographic research polls, but health care professionals are drawing this conclusion too. Near the end of high school vaping is something the kids do. To be really cool, you gotta smoke — and as this group of unfortunate kids is already addicted to nicotine…

As a former smoker and vaper for 12 years this is unfathomable to me. Vaping is just better in every way. It takes some getting used to when coming straight from cigarettes, but after that the flavor of tobacco is just pure stench when compared to vanilla, strawberries etc.

That's the problem with a not yet fully developed prefrontal cortex; cool now is way more important than healthy later.

You're saying they leave high school and because they vaped they will switch to smoked tobacco?

No, what is reported is that older high school kids who vape take up smoking tobacco because vaping is perceived as childish by that time.

This is from a Dutch newspaper article interviewing one of the researchers from the Trimbos Institute:

> De overstap naar sigaretten met tabak is vervolgens snel gemaakt, zegt Croes. „We horen ook dat de jonkies op het schoolplein vapen, maar dat in de bovenbouw niet meer stoer vinden. Dan gaan ze roken, wat in hun ogen nu weer een positief imago heeft gekregen.” Zo vormen e-sigaretten volgens haar een „enorme tegenkracht” voor campagnes die jongeren van roken moeten weerhouden.¹

(Tobacco) smoking is cool again. The young kids vape, so to be really cool and adult…

1: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/10/01/beginnen-met-een-sigare...

nobody switches to proper tobacco, only from it. nice try tho

Central planning saviors to the rescue, keeping everyone safe from themselves or else in jail or public supervision. So no, it is not "good to have in place".

Rules around fruity flavors (trying to target sales that disproportionately go to kids) are one thing. Rules around menthol are another, only slightly less heinous thing.

About 85% of African Americans who smoke use menthol cigarettes, compared to a rate of less than 30% menthol use among white Americans. [1] They're disproportionately advertised and were (in the past) literally given away in poor Black communities to get people addicted.

Basically, policy makers can target their regulations to a specific group by specifying flavor. Sure, an individual white adult might like fruity flavors or menthols, a black adult might like originals, and some kids might prefer original or menthols, but there's a strong statistical bias.

When health departments are trying to address a particular health concern - say, young children smoking - they can do so by targeting fruity flavors. Conversely, when tobacco company marketing departments are trying to advertise their products to Black users without drawing unwanted attention from disproportionately white regulators, they can achieve their goals by promoting menthols. An individual from any population might have any flavor preference, but the dice are shockingly heavily weighted when you're looking at large groups.

[1]: https://datatools.samhsa.gov/das/nsduh/2019/nsduh-2019-ds000...

>unless the vice is alcohol

there is no exception to alcohol for this. Anybody who was a teenager or older in the aughts remembers "alcopops" (might have had a different name depending on where you're from). Lots of countries regulated or raised taxes on mixed drinks because they were seen (probably justifiably so) as targeting teenagers. In Germany it resulted in Smirnoff Ice and some Bacardi mix drink largely going off the shelves.

The candy flavors were marketed to children.

Who is 99 banana's and maddog 20/20 marketed to?

To be fair 99 Bananas still tastes like ass with a hint of incredible artificial banana.

Also the cultural aspect is just different. It is generally harder for kids to get alcohol in my experience and also you (usually) don’t carry a bottle of 99 bananas and swig it every few minutes out in public.

Perhaps most importantly is that alcohol doesn’t contain nicotine. People get addicted to alcohol but not in the same way people get addicted to nicotine.

Please tell me who MD 20/20 is marketing to, I would love to know.

I don't know. But they clearly don't have a lot of money, a refined pallet, and don't mind crazy flavors. Everyone I know seemed to have tried it in a particular time in their lives, and oddly they don't seem to drink it anymore.

ban the marketing to children. or limit the ads to in between all the ads for the different betting platforms.

Regulators have no control over who looks at a given billboard or television ad.

It's a new phenomenon that they might (might) be able to tell TikTok or Youtube to estimate the age of individual viewers and limit which topics can appear in advertisements to different age groups.

The existence of the candy flavors and any public marketing of those flavors (even on the label in the store aisle) is implicitly marketing to children.

They were banned before vapes existed. That's why the cartoon characters are gone. They still intentionally made it appealing to children.

Because of the belief that making them desirable to adults is a method to sell them to kids. It also makes them less desirable which keeps cigarette sales up. Tobacco lobby is still going strong with its influence.

Alcohol is no exception, Fourloco was banned!

I believe that was for the high alcohol content mixed with the high caffeine content

the point is that as far as they are permitted to be sold and consumed with regulations for largely cultural reasons, alcohol and tobacco are both subject to cultural (fluid) regulations, and inconsistencies between them are a matter of the speed and power of diffuse cultural forces, not some sort of big conspiracy against libertarians

Its still for sale, just without caffeine

It is already known that E-Cigarettes cause lung damage:

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-preventi...

On the rare occasions of exposure by a user exhaling in public next to me I found it worse than passively inhaling cigarette smoke.

Seems like Zyn is better for you and others.

... except the increasing numbers of young children who ingest them.

Kids also regularly ingest large volumes of flinstone multivitamins and melatonin gummies. Does that change your position on the health and safety of these supplements? Should our nanny-state ban those too?

I'll stop you right there, because I know what you're thinking, and nope: Zyn containers already have a child safety lock on them. Its the bane of existence for the adults who buy them, you can ask any of them, but they already have that.

I never advocated for a ban, and frankly don't see the relation between kids vitamins and nicotine ingestions

Regardless of the purported child safety lock on Zyn, child nicotine poisonings are up dramatically according to recent research:

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1090659

The reality is, anyone who has suggested that a ban on highly-appetizing flavors of nicotine pouches would be an effective deterrent to accidental underage consumption, has very clearly never tasted any of these products.

Many of the candy and fruit-flavored vapes are legitimately delicious tasting, through and through. The same is not as correct for nicotine pouches. These flavors only barely cover up what is best described as a highly-chemical, astringent, punch to the mouth, vomit inducing taste much akin to chlorinated pool water. They are not candy. They don't taste like candy. They are not sold in containers that look like candy.

Why are rates up? Because these products have become significantly more popular! Zyn sales have gone up by bonkers numbers basically every year for the past decade [1]. Any report that suggests accidental consumption is up should be met with a "great job sherlock, really putting that government pork funding to work", because even intentional consumption is up. In fact, statements like the following from your link should raise even further questions about the efficacy of their findings:

> Nicotine pouches were also more likely to be associated with serious medical outcomes or hospital admissions than other nicotine products like gum/lozenges, e-liquids, powder/granules, and tablets/capsules/caplets.

What is "nicotine powder, granules, tablets, capsules, caplets"? That's nothing. There is no such thing as population-level consumption of "nicotine powder". No one buys that. No one uses it. They're clearly just making stuff up to scare people. Even an assertion that medical outcomes from the consumption of nicotine pouches are worse than e.g. lozenges or e-liquids is extremely suspect, from a first principals perspective. Many popular e-liquids, such as Juul, contains as much as 5mg of nicotine per milliliter; and because its a liquid, its extremely bio-available, it gets absorbed through every mucousal membrane that liquid touches, and anyone who has touched vape eliquid can attest that the smell takes days to wash off once it touches your skin.

Bad article, bad research, I don't believe a word it purports to be true.

[1] https://fortune.com/article/philip-morris-economic-volatilit...

In some objective analysis I wouldn't be surprised if drinking a bottle of Coke daily is worse than vaping once daily, even for teens.

Sugar is bad, but not that addictive and has no withdraw symptoms.

Nicotine is highly addictive and bad for you health. You pretty much have a customer for life ... which is the point. So next to having something which is bad for you, inhaling glycerol, combined with a substance which is addictive and bad for your health, you also are at a financial loss for life.

And it's targeted at teens ...

Absurd comparison. Nobody vapes once daily.

(I think vaping should be legal, fwiw.)

Watch the documentary on Netflix, it is wild to see people start with noble intentions and then little by little, money absolutely corrupts everyone at Juul. Sick, sad and they make up so many excuses to try and project that they have some moral character. They aren't really trying to convince us of that, they are trying to convince themselves of it.

I dunno about that. Pretty much everyone from day 1 only cared about making money.

And the get more and more desperate to cover their actions

https://archive.is/d3P2O

My neighbor has two kids.

One kid has asthma and uses an albuterol inhaler. The inhaler requires a doctor's prescription and is expensive.

The other kid vapes e-cigarettes. Vaping solution is cheaper and readily available.

Perhaps albuterol is a dangerous, addictive substance?????

I'm sure loosening restrictions is all part of the Make America Healthy Again plan, right?

Considering vaping is an effective means to get people off cigarettes, I would guess so. MAHA is garbage but this is a good change.

The narrative of vapes as "tools to quit tobacco" really doesn't hold up. I'm not saying that you can't make it work, some people do, but it's not the primary use and it doesn't account for the explosion of vaping among young populations who weren't using nicotine before vaping. These companies aren't investing tens of billions into these products because they plan to help smokers quit and then stop using vapes.

By the same token the degree to which vapes help people quit is up in the air, some studies show strong effects in favor of quitting, others show strong effects that it's inferior to other quitting aids. (i.e. studies like https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7867832/)

"These are a way for people to reduce harm" is primarily an industry narrative at this point, divorced from reality.

It's not a narrative. It's what the research tells us. https://www.nhs.uk/better-health/quit-smoking/ready-to-quit-... The "protect the children by banning products" is a very common narrative though that has no scientific basis.

Kids were using nicotine before vaping, they were smoking cigarettes. And these companies absolutely are investing in a growing market for adults who either want to quit smoking entirely or want a healthier option to cigarettes. As cigarettes prices have continued to soar and laws have become more and strict on where someone can and cannot smoke, vaping offers an alternative to get nicotine and an oral fixation. So it's not surprising that more and more adults have switched to it.

That's not a study that's a meta-analysis. You seem to have seen the one ad Juul put out to minors and assumed that is the entire industry and its purpose. This is objectively divorced from reality.

That's the problem, kids were using nicotine less and less often before vaping, and vaping reversed that trend.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10741819/

Here's the statistical breakdown from that: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10741819/table/t1/

Between 1991 and 2021 tobacco use among young people dropped precipitously. Again, this shows up again and again in the data comparing ALL products containing nicotine.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

So with all due respect this isn't really up for debate, it isn't a subtle signal in the data. Nicotine use (especially smoking) has been on the decline across ALL age groups, especially children, for decades, and vaping starkly reversed that trend.

I'm not sure what your point is here. It did cause a spike and once again it is going down. The trend isn't reversed, it was a data spike. Even severely anti-vaping organizations like Truth Initiative reflect this too. https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/emerging-toba...

We are far past the apex of teen vaping in 2019.

I wonder why we're past the apex of teen vaping. It can't possibly be because we banned flavors in ecigs that targeted kids.

It's almost like saying we should stop vaccinating because the rate of disease has dropped after decades of vaccination

Correlation does not equal causation. Why did teen drinking drop? We didn't ban flavored alcohol. It dropped because enforcement went up. Fines were greater for businesses and those who sold to minors. More time was put into ensuring common places of sale were not selling to minors.

Are you seriously making the argument that any flavor outside of tobacco and menthol is targeted at kids? That no adult likes the flavor of funnel cake and fruit? Because I can show you the massive amount of vape shops across the country that sell through flavors quickly and it's not to kids. The mentality of making something taste worse to prevent people from consuming it because you think it's bad is based in prohibition era puritanical thinking. Not to mention it's directly benefitting tobacco companies by keeping people smoking cigarettes.

Put it behind the pharmacy counter and require a prescription then. This is just a way to hook teenagers on tobacco.

So instead of addressing access we're just going to invent another hurdle from the same cloth? Is alcohol made to hook teenagers on drinking?

Yeah, I think most alcohol advertising is aimed at trying to addict people as young as possible.

You are the one who proposed that this product is to be used as a medical device, so why wouldn't we treat it like one?

Saying it can help people get off cigarettes doesn't mean it should be a medical device and require a prescription. Not to mention nicotine lozenges and patches are over the counter.

Fine, make them OTC. If the only reason we are allowing this is to help people quit cigarettes, then there should be a bit of friction so they aren't being used to addict teenagers.

Interesting one to watch.

UK is seeing a wave of people who never smoked cigarettes but went straight to vapes. It's less bad for sure but not harmless. IIRC a bump in lung cancer cases in young people was ascribed to this.

And you get people to switch from cigarettes to ecigs by permitted flavors targetted at children?

How many children, enticed by the fruit flavors, pick up a life time habit of tobacco use?

Are we going to outlaw fruity cocktails as well? There has to be better ways of allowing adults to indulge than outright bans.

Kids already generally find it much harder to obtain cocktails than to obtain e-cigarettes. Regulating particular cocktail flavors is unlikely to have a noticeable affect on kid cocktail use.

E-cigarettes are much easier to obtain and so any product features particularly attractive to kids are much more likely to have a significant affect.

Exactly! You can go to any place that sells or offers alcohol and there are tons of different flavors available and most people consider that cultured. But when it comes to vaping it suddenly only exists to entice children.

Absolutely. Vaping gets so many people off cigarettes. This is a win. The think-of-the-children thing was all bullshit.

Restrictions placed by govt is not a part of MAHA, and is anti MAGA.

Except of course for government restrictions on women's reproductive healthcare. Those seem to be fine.

And expanding government restrictions on vaccines.

Not sure what you seem to refer to. If it is abortion, then that is restricted in the same spirit as murder is prohibited.

Only if the state laws redefine it as such.

The whole issue around abortion for conservatives is that it's not considered felony manslaughter by the Supreme Court. Hasn't been for close to 50 years now.

Murder has a victim. Abortion does not.

The unborn baby can be considered a life. That is the victim. You and I may not agree, but that is politics

It can be considered a life, maybe in some hypothetical argument, but nobody actually can make that argument.

Because it's hard. There's implications of autonomy here. If an unborn baby is a life and has rights, which rights does it have? Is it an American Citizen? It must, at least, have personhood - what are the guardrails around that? Can I, for example, say that the unborn fetus is a person and is inside me, and is therefore bound by "stand your ground" laws, meaning I am free to kill it for self-defense, much like I would a grown person?

See, the Supreme Court never actually asked that question. As it stands, unborn babies are not people, they are not citizens. We, instead, said "fuck it this is hard to argue" and made exactly 1 exception for unborn fetuses - abortion.

If you want to argue an unborn fetus is alive, there are implications and consequences of that. Evidently, conservatives are too cowardly to address any of them. Ever. So, here we are, with our broken laws that make no sense.

If the federal government can't implement and enforce restrictions then it has no authority at all.

Why do you think we have tariffs?

It is not so much about what the govt can’t do. It is more about what it should not do. It is the philosophy of govt that is in the MAGA political discourse.

I am not of the opinion that govt should not be placing restrictions. That is literally the definition of laws. I am of the opinion that govt should not regulate how someone can do something.

Loosening a ban on menthol, not because it was harmful, but because it was causing addictions, was an overreach. It should have banned the Tobacco and nicotine instead.

There is no consistent agreement about what the government can or cannot do within MAGA. That's why it's not a framework for global discourse. It is a joke even within conservative circles.

"Let me control my own health" up until abortion is mentioned.

"We need better surveillance measures" up until that surveillance is used against them.

"Law enforcement needs more privileges" until they harass your daughter with the bodycam turned off.

"Don't regulate Apple/Google" up until they become politicized and collude with the government for warrantless surveillance.

"Foreign policy is too globalist!" up until Israel insists Iran has a nuke. And so on. There isn't a single neocon value that can't be forsaken by ideologues, I challenge you to name just one.

That is not inconsistency. That is double standards. They are willing to uphold a rule until it bites back against them. This is mob mentality. And a reason for why democracy does not work (unless the mob is diffused).

Let me preface by saying that I'm not a fan of the evolution of e-cigs since they ended up being more of an entry point than a transition out of nicotine. Probably half of my friends started by vaping and moved to cigarettes.

That said, tons of other vapes are allowed on the market, so why should Juul specifically be banned?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juul#US_Food_and_Drug_Administ...

Ah, marketing and design. That's fair. I appreciate the link.

Juul was particularly problematic for marketing designs they made. However it's not an unforgivable sin. Just needed a corrective action. Which threatening to shut them down seems to have done.

Targeting kids and teens with addictive substances (actually targeting anyone with addictive substances) is normalized evil. Also, addictive experiences (shorts...). Normally I lean libertarian but there has to be some allowance/mechanism for defending people from predatory corporations. Vaping was absolutely a huge problem in schools; legally "intentional" or not it was somehow getting picked up by kids.

Teen vaping has been decreasing. And the solution to that problem is ban vaping. When teen drinking was a huge problem we didn't ban alcohol.

It is declining after shooting to like 20% of high school students a few years ago it was insane. I don't think bans are the solution either, but I do think it's fair to restrict advertising/promoting. Parents should have assistance to protect their kids from marketers who believe it's net bad for the users but market it anyway because it's their job, or addicts who evangelize it out of cope/excuse for their own addiction.

We already have restrictions on advertising and promotions. What assistance do parents need to monitor what media and information their kids have access to?

Probably a better link: https://www.axios.com/2025/07/17/juul-vaping-e-cigarettes-fd...

Bizarre that we even have an FDA.

Tobacco products are insanely harmful.

Alcohol kills hundreds of thousands a year in the US.

But heaven forbid you flavor your nicotine.

What is the actual criteria for FDA approval?

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