And that's a bad thing?
What the DEA (a totally different governmental organization with different motivations and biases) thinks about marijuana is reprehensible, however.
Exactly. They have approved 3 niche pharmaceutical industry replacements. Meanwhile they have kept their head in the sand regulating the 26 state cannabis industry, and we have no universal standards for contaminants, potency, etc. beyond state imposed regulations.
The CBD industry, which has been commercialized in most states, is also totally unregulated.
If your product causes harm in any way—regardless of the benefits—you're going to have a difficult time getting regulatory approval. It will also greatly affect access to the product, as not everyone has access to good doctors, and most items that are FDA-regulated requires prescriptions.
For a product which is a superior, healthier option to cigarettes, it's a massive regulatory burden that could kill the business. I can't imagine anyone would defend that as preferable to the status quo.
Question stands, is that a bad thing?
Besides not everything FDA approved becomes a prescription medication. On topic; nicotine gums and patches as smoke cessation products are widely available as OTC.
In this case, we would certainly have to consider the potentially increased harm of non-smokers taking up vaping to assess the overall harm being done, but I see the merits of the basic argument at least.
The first nicotine gum, Nicorette, began as a prescription-only product in the US.
Long story short, I can imagine a lot of valid arguments pointing in every which way here.
Why do people have to stick their noses in things that don’t affect them?
There are countless products from weight loss to joint pain to "improve your memory" that sidestep the issue with those 9 simple words. I don't see why it would be any different for Juul.
Nicotine will count as an active ingredient, you can't just slap these 9 words to any random drug and just sell it over the counter.
I don’t think this is true. I can buy Nicolette all over the place without a doctors note. In the US at least.
Oh and it tastes like shit, to save the children.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I'll just point out the observation that there are a lot of perverse incentives to keep the tobacco money flowing, public health be damned. Hell, remember back 2019 public health officials were running made-up 'e-cigarettes are causing lung injury' scare which turned out to be entirely caused by contaminated black market THC cartriges? SF still hasn't walked back their e-cigarette ban that led to a doubling of tobacco use by high schoolers[1].
To give an idea of where priorities are, the state of California does 10x the number of checks to make sure stores are paying their cigarette taxes as they do to make sure stores aren't selling to minors.
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
https://vaping360.com/vape-news/105656/how-will-the-pmta-dea...
If that’s not enough detail let me know, I’m happy to dig up other old articles for you. This small business destroying charade by the fda has been well documented and publicized. Though not as well as the fear mongering about children juuling.
Why is that fear-mongering? My anecdotal evidence is that it's rampant with teens. Do you have any stats that are not anecdotal so I can educate myself?
They went back to cigarettes.
Mission accomplished I guess.
Furthermore it is much more socially unacceptable and awareness of the harms of cigarettes has never been higher.
Insofar as teens if eciggs were to become as hard to get as heroin tomorrow nicotine addition of teens all cause would be liable to decrease because your mom is absolutely going to know your smoking actual ciggs and have something to say in the matter.
I once knew an adult smoker who smoked about 1/2 a pack a day. She also didn’t want to smell like it, he had methods she employed that would leave absolutely no smell on her.
If your kid wants to hide smoking analogs then they can easily, just stand in front of a fan and wash your hands and face after.
What you say is correct you could certainly decrease the chances of being caught but on net out of 100 smoking teens 90 will end up getting caught trying to smoke real ciggs whereas hiding a non scented vape is so extremely trivial that the situation is reversed. 90 will escape detection.
There is a distinct difference between those two circumstances.
My wife when she was smoking would go all day without smoking only to smoke at home. Also one of my school grade friends was a smoker at 13 or so, and he only smoked at home.
Also vape’s have a smell, it’s just not as pungent.
What you’re really saying is you can’t watch your kid 24/7, you don’t trust them, didn’t teach them why smoking is bad and now you want everybody else to suffer.
I think the entire industry ought to be taxed out of existence like boiling a frog not because I want other people to "suffer" but because I don't want people to suffer.
I don't even know what to make of this. How many other things do humans do that are dangerous that we all have to pay for?
> They have clearly marketed themselves to young people who otherwise wouldn't have taken up smoking.
Why do you think this? Is it because of flavors? Do you not realize how many adults prefer flavored vape liquid? Or is it cause they ran commercials?
> I think the entire industry ought to be taxed out of existence like boiling a frog not because I want other people to "suffer" but because I don't want people to suffer.
So then you naturally try to force your opinion onto others. Why has society devolved into forcing others to do what we want? Do you think banning vapes will keep people from returning to cigarettes? Do you think addiction is just a switch one can easily turn on and off? You will cause more damage than good "taxing them out of existence like a boiling frog" (seriously wtf with that statement?) than realizing they are helping people and just minding your own business.
Because the only way to provide for the health of a society is with socialized medicine. Most of the civilized world has settled on this conclusion and even we have basically half and half.
In that context allowing people to be stupid as they want to be is ultimately allowing the stupid people to spend everyone's money.
Is this a country you want to live in?
Also we don’t yet have, and hopefully will never get, socialized medicine. Why do we prepare society by starting to implement the boot on the neck when we’re not even sure if it’s needed yet? Seems a bit assumptive and preemptive no?
Below you accuse stories about harm to children of "pushing an agenda"; might this be pushing one?
Basically, the wrong people were making money, and the regulators fixed that. Now the money is flowing to the right people and no one gives a shit that teen smoking rates went back to higher than they were before vaping. Harm reduced, a slow clap to our regulators.
People like to go to both extremes wrt. vaping - "but it creates new addicts" vs. "but it's effective tool for breaking addiction", forgetting about the biggest benefit vaping brings: letting smokers who don't want to quit to keep smoking, without risking lung cancer.
I'm definitely against marketing vaping to non-smokers. But I'm fine with converting existing smokers to vaping without any talk about quitting, because smoking e-cigarettes is strictly better than smoking analog ones.
I started smoking when I was 18 (2004), picked up some of the first vapes in 2009 (they were horrible), and finally stopped smoking in 2012. But I don’t want to stop vaping. I don’t like the modern mainstream ecigs like juul (I mix my own liquid and build my own coils on a dual 18650 battery device), but I’m just glad that vaping exists, because, if all my fruitless attempts at quitting were any indication, otherwise I’d still be smoking a pack a day.
[0] https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2020/05/risks-vaping
[1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-preventi...
[1]: "Vaping Is Less Harmful Than Smoking, but It’s Still Not Safe"
[1] has some problems. It seems to be conflating the vitamin E acetate issue with vaping in general. ("However, there has also been an outbreak of lung injuries and deaths associated with vaping. As of Jan. 21, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed 60 deaths in patients with e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury (EVALI).") The section on "Research Suggests Vaping Is Bad for Your Heart and Lungs" focuses on nicotine. Which raises your blood pressure. And not much else, according to other sources.
I think the evidence is out as to what, if any, are the harms of vaping. But it’s not arguable that it’s better for you than smoking.
[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2120440-switching-from-...
If impossible meat makes vegans start eating burgers, you can't just argue "well, it's still better than meat".
> I'm definitely against marketing vaping to non-smokers.
But this is the whole point, they do attract non-smokers. They should explicitly detract them instead.
This is magical thinking. Do we apply this requirement to healthier alternatives in any other market?
For example: I really like McDonalds fries, but I mostly don't eat them because they're unhealthy. However anecdotally some "heavy users" eat them 3 to 5 times a week.
Imagine if McDonalds introduced "Beyond Fries" tomorrow, equivalent in every salient way, but less unhealthy (say, baked potato-level healthy). Would anyone apply the standard above, calling for it to be _only_ a "fry cessation product" for heavy users, and expecting it to explicitly repel the abstaining-for-health-reasons users like me?
I can't see how it's even possible to achieve both goals at once. A healthier alternative to _anything_ is going to draw some former abstainers-for-health-reasons into the market. And smoking has a _lot_ of abstainers-for-health-reasons.
By all means let's call vaping a smoking cessation product, but I'm not sure it's reasonable to assume that we can have our cake and eat it too here.
Edit: sense
Attitudes around smoking in general are grounded deeply in magical thinking. People have been raised on anti-smoking rhetoric so deep, with such little cultural push back toward sanity, that it's tough for most people to think let alone discuss the subject with any objectivity.
But by that logic, smoking could be called a weight loss product.
Other people have a more complex definition, which precludes cigarettes from being considered a health product, despite their appetite-suppressing properties.
And it was! The difference is that smoking isn't really healthier than obesity, so it's not a very good way to lose weight overall.
No it’s not. Meat isn’t addictive. People don’t “quit” meat and develop a habit of impossible burgers. People don’t wake up every morning feeling shitty about enjoying meat.
I fully support vegan and vegetarian lifestyles. To compare tobacco to meat is foolish.
I do.
> but it doesn't do anything to get you off your nicotine addiction, which people usually mean by "smoking cessation product"...
OK but what does this have to do with expressing ourselves accurately?
How can a society allow marketing vaping as a healthier way to smoke without allowing marketing that makes non-smokers think vaping is a healthy way to smoke?
(Especially considering that the marketers are eager to market to non-smokers.)
It's all about power.
There are so many things it would be useful to quantify and compare:
Does anybody know the difference between the percentage of non-nicotine users who begin smoking cigarettes and the percentage who begin vaping? It sounds like the percentage for vaping is higher, but how much higher? Is it as much higher as the risk of dangerous health complications smoking has over vaping?
Never mind the question of why nicotine addiction is so dangerous it must be prevented on a federal level, but alcohol addictions aren't? How much more dangerous is nicotine than alcohol?
Important distinction: I didn't say anything about banning sales, just marketing, which we've already done for both smoking and alcohol.
> How much more dangerous is nicotine than alcohol?
According to the CDC, "cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States...causes more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States" while "excessive alcohol use is responsible for more than 95,000 deaths in the United States each year, "
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...
https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-death...
Edit: as for vaping specifically, the risks are not yet fully known, but some health authorities argue "a growing body of evidence shows that smoking e-cigarettes, or vaping, may be even more dangerous than smoking cigarettes".
https://www.nm.org/healthbeat/healthy-tips/emotional-health/...
Inhaling smoke is very bad for you. Lots of people die this way in fires. Like, you cut the victims open and there is soot in their lungs. So, no surprise smoking cigarettes is also a bad idea even if it's less bad than being in a literal burning building.
Nicotine is poisonous, but so is booze. There may be other things about vaping which are bad for you, but it seems pretty clear that the main problem is the nicotine, which is why people are doing it anyway, so, fine.
Booze has another important difference though: The ones drinking aren't always the ones dying. That can be because they're impaired while operating machinery (e.g. someone has "a few beers" then drives home, next morning they don't remember anything about how they got home, but there's a blood red stain on the bumper and someone else is found dead in a ditch) or they might just become violent and cause deliberate harm to others.
Would you agree that exposure to THC, in itself, causes serious lung injury?
(Yes, I know, vitamin E acetate (an oil) in cannabis vaping products was likely the cause of a number of cases of lung injury.)
Also, "An FDA analysis of e-cigarettes from two leading brands found that the samples contained carcinogens and other hazardous chemicals, including diethylene glycol, which is found in antifreeze." Diethylene glycol is also used as "a humectant for tobacco, cork, printing ink, and glue. It is also a component in brake fluid, lubricants, wallpaper strippers, artificial fog and haze solutions, and heating/cooking fuel" as well as an industrial solvent. This statement is largely meaningless unless you know how much is in there: "The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations allows no more than 0.2% of diethylene glycol in polyethylene glycol when the latter is used as a food additive. The Australian government does not allow DEG as a food additive; it is only allowed at less than 0.25% w/w of DEG as an impurity of polyethylene glycol (PEG) even in toothpaste." (Wikipedia)
The question was about nicotine; it is not generally the _nicotine_ in cigarettes that kills you. That's what keeps you smoking them (to a large extent) but it's not what kills you.
If you divorce nicotine from its problematic delivery systems, nicotine itself is a pretty good drug (albeit very addictive). It's potentially protective against diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, it's associated with weight loss, and it improves short term memory and attention.
It's also great in combination with caffeine, and it speeds up caffeine metabolism.
I first got interested in the nootropic properties of nicotine long before I took up the pen when I came across Gwern's article on it. In particular, the possibility of reinforcing habits using it was the biggest thing that made me look into it. However, he uses gum instead.
Juul is a product of one of those big tobacco companies.
These are conversations that belong in a physicians office. Advertising is a scam on both sides and destroys instead of creates value for humanity. Historians will look back upon advertising the way many look back upon slavery.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/health/juul-vaping-lawsui...
What's the lastname of this Society guy?
It's kind of hypocritical to wrap your personal wishes and desired in the veil of common good, care for others, etc.
Legislature would be its lastname, I suppose. As in [nation] legislature, [state] legislature, etc.
Alarmingly there are also many people, especially young people, who believe that vaping is safe, and if educating them is "consent manufacturing" then let's manufacture some consent on this issue.
This is precisely how I remember e-cigarettes being marketed when I first heard about them 10 years ago. I was a smoker then, so my ears perked up.
They clearly switched their marketing to target kids who didn't even smoke to begin with. 'Juul' was synonymous with teenagehood during the mid-2010s, at least if my recollection of IG memes from that time are accurate.
A young priest asked his bishop, “May I smoke while praying?”... The answer was an emphatic “No!”
Later, when he sees an older priest puffing on a cigarette while praying, the younger priest scolded him, “You shouldn’t be smoking while praying! I asked the bishop, and he said I couldn’t do it!”
“That’s odd,” the old priest replied. “I asked the bishop if I could pray while I’m smoking, and he told me that it was okay to pray at any time!”
I first heard it from an Alan Watts talk, but couldn't easily find the quote, so I used one from r/jokes, at ”https://amp.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/3q2h1a/a_young_pries...
There have always been products to battle nicotine addiction. They should compare this to those.
Or we could trust the adults who chose one product over the other to make those decisions.
Note: this came after initial warnings from the FDA years ago that they were going to ban the product unless.