Please scroll up and look at the link provided by @abutilon
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Americans get more toxic versions of Juul’s products. The tighted regulatory environment in countries like the UK and Israel have limited Juul to the sale of 1.7% refills.
Seems fair. After all, they get real beer.
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Are you proposing that it’s ok to sell addictive products to kids because they want them? At any rate, I was never a teenager. I am a replicant. But even my soulless ethos holds that seeing a vacancy in the child-addicting market and then “going for it” is wrong-o.
Tobacco use rates were falling steadily before vaping products arrived, to, again, the lowest in recorded US history, and still dropping.
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This thread predictably drew a number of posters with <60 min experience on BB. Funny how that seems to happen.
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Is that on the label? Sort of like… suggestions? “Give your soccer team a migraine! Make an entire church congregation slightly dizzy! Amuse your friends! Juul! Another name for hi-jinx!” Or presented like a Bazooka Joe comic? “Sweet! I got the dead kids one! My collection is now complete!”
While I agree this is horrible, that sounds like scare-mongering hyperbole intended to be eye catching, memorable, and dramatic; I grew up in the days of, “This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. (WHAM!) Any questions?” Yes. A few.
- How big is the class of preschoolers?
- Where is the teacher during all this? (ironically, out vaping.)
- Would packaging it in a childproof bottle fix the problem?
There are many other things you can buy in the grocery store right now that aren’t in childproof containers that could be used to kill a class of preschool kids. Heck, if you fill the class with the right kids, you could do it with a single jar of ‘Skippy’.
Finally, the target for these horrible products appears to be teenagers who vape, not preschool kids. It feels very disingenuous to say “kill an entire preschool class,” specifically as though that outcome was a likely possibility. It has a huge “think of the children” vibe that has been used against so many things, that reading it put me immediately on guard and into ‘snark’ mode.
If deceptive packaging surprises you, I don’t think you’re really jaded.
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Replicant? nice that’s my phone’s OS.
But come on, I’m only suggesting that it’s difficult to keep adult products from children. Hence our total agreement that the pictured products are irresponsibly packaged. But the best response to poor packaging somewhere in an industry is likely not to attack the non bad-actors elsewhere in the industry.
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I’m sorry you have the wrong response to an industry preying upon children.
Holy crap this article.
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Juul didn’t nefariously “ramp up” nicotine in its products. It was 5% from the beginning, now they also offer 3% pods.
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The image illustrating this article IS NOT JUUL PRODUCTS.
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Especially because Juul DOES NOT SELL BOTTLES OF LIQUID that could kill any school bus children.
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Right the way that the best response to facebook and google’s privacy fails would be to publish misleading articles regarding boingboing’s BBS.
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It’s easy to understand why Phillip Morris (Altria) recently made a $13Billion investment in Juul. They are the leaders in getting kids hooked.
Well, I’ve been reading BoingBoing since it was a print zine, enjoyed the Happy Mutant book in high school, and am happy to put my bona fides in the alt culture world up against anyone here.
I’m no fan of Juul, but this article is flat-out wrong. One problem with tobacco’s deceptive practices is that it has led anti-tobacco interests to assume similarly deceptive practices in a fucked up disinfo arms race. There was a time when BoingBoing called out attempts at mass manipulation no matter who was perpetrating them, but the site has shifted from a leading voice on culture jamming to “here is some cool shit to buy through our Amazon referral link and also cats.”
There is no question that vaping is an important harm reduction tool, as has been shown in numerous studies, and has IMO been insufficiently studied for it’s particular potential to reduce combusted tobacco use w/r/t minority communities, in which menthol cigarettes and candy-flavored Swishers have absolute market dominance.
I quit smoking in 2009 using an e-cigarette and Red Bull flavored e-liquid over 5% nicotine. Blu e-cigarettes existed then, but Juul didn’t. I still enjoy vaping occasionally, at 3mg/mL, but never tried Juul (or Blu) specifically because they don’t offer interesting flavors (without sidestepping the official offerings). These days my favorite flavors are Chai Tea and Bourbon-Coconut-Almond.
The reason the other flavors (all produced by small independent companies getting their asses handed to them by Juul and the FDA, btw) are all sweet is because the carrier glycol tastes sweet already, and if you think candy flavors don’t appeal to people in the 21-to-90 crowd I invite you to take a closer look at the selection of alcohol available at your local gas station.
Should sales to children be better regulated? Yes. Are tobacco companies inherently suspect? Sure. But blaming the technology for being effective and delicious is just stupid, and particularly hypocritical when BoingBoing is hocking “glass blunts” that leave far more tar and particulate matter in the lungs than any vaporizer- tobacco, e-cigarette, or otherwise.
If you don’t like nicotine that’s cool. I don’t drink. But I also don’t try to start some kind of conspiracy theory pile-on every time someone mentions that addictive poison, which kills more people every day than e-cigarettes ever could. Either we educate and advocate for independent thought and informed adult choices, or we gather the pitchforks for everything. Picking on the new kid is just sad.
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Vaping is not harm reduction. Vaping is a nicotine delivery device designed for and marketed to young users to get them addicted quickly.
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Meh, jul sucks. There are much better vapes. Nicotine salts hit harder too.
As a perennial cigarette quiter, I need the vape and patch as a step down from smoking to just using nicotine, then Chantix to stop completely.
Sorry for the kiddos, but jul isn’t evil. It’s just making money and we’re nothing but the gut flora of the corporation, a la Mr Doctorrow. The evil is in the lack of regulation.
The drugs that should be illegal are the very addictive ones…cocaine, heroin, nicotine… or at least heavily regulated. Everything else should be totally legal. Hell… alcohol, cocaine and heroin are the most immediately lethal when overdone.
No drugs should be illegal, that just drives the black market, and crime syndicates.
Regulation,on the other hand can help prevent disasters like this one.
Once folks reach 21, though, all drugs should be legal. Pharmaceutical self determination for all adults!!!
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Thanks for mansplaining vaping to me. Surely I must have hallucinated the large groups of people I’ve personally seen improve lung function, cardiovascular health, quality of life, sense of smell and overall fitness using this technology.
Here’s the American Cancer Society statement acknowledging that e-cigarettes are less harmful (while yes, also acknowledging more research should be conducted).
One British study you might look up if you have better library access than I do, is “E-cigarettes in Smoking Cessation: a Harm Reduction Perspective,” published in the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Pharmaceutical Journal. You might also look up Public Health England’s “E-Cigarettes: An Evidence Update.”
I encourage anyone interested in this area to review both the anti-vaping perspective (most notably championed by the American Lung Association, which is a different organization than the Cancer Society), and the research summaries provided by CASAA, an e-cigarette trade association which includes both large interests and the little hometown vape shops.
I know quite a few vape shop owners, and 100% of them started their companies because they quit smoking using e-cigarettes and wanted to share their enthusiasm. This market segment is very different from the gas station bullshit that ends up on the news and leads to conclusions like yours, and to reiterate, I feel strongly the crackdown needs to happen with regard to irresponsible retail sales, not the technology itself.
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Sounds like some studies are showing how effective it is at helping people quit.
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Ummm… So is every explanation written by a male equal to mansplaning? Overeact much?
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There was no explanation whatsoever. There was a conclusory statement made without demonstrable background knowledge or personal insight, under the assumption that the author’s own limited authority on the topic was greater than his audience; or alternatively, that the very fact the author was making the statement made it authoritative on its own.
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Vaping is not harm reduction. Vaping is a nicotine delivery device designed for and marketed to young users to get them addicted quickly.
Marketing to youth should be stopped. But why would you say it’s designed for youth? It was designed as less harmful and gross alternative. Which it is. Possibly 20 times less harmful.
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Because I have firsthand knowledge of the tobacco industry’s marketing strategies and practices.
It was designed as less harmful and gross alternative. Which it is. Possibly 20 times less harmful.
Yes, so it would be appealing to a much younger target market and get them addicted to nicotine.
