Hacker News Reader

Comment by jajuuka | Hacker News Reader

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

View on HN

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.

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com