[HN Gopher] Juul Co-Founder James Monsees Is Stepping Down
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Juul Co-Founder James Monsees Is Stepping Down
Author : coloneltcb
Score : 79 points
Date : 2020-03-12 19:45 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.buzzfeednews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.buzzfeednews.com)
| exogeny wrote:
| Even if I ignore all the different kinds of high school outreach
| they did, it's obvious that they designed it to look like a USB
| stick quite intentionally. Fuck this guy.
| leetcrew wrote:
| first of all, what is wrong with intentionally making it look
| like a USB stick? second, is it possible that a flat
| rectangular box just happens to be the ideal form factor for a
| small electronic device meant to go in someone's pocket? of all
| the nefarious intentions attributed to juul, this seems like an
| odd one.
| neaden wrote:
| It's to make it easier for teenagers to sneak into schools.
| This product was designed from the ground up with the goal of
| getting teens to use it.
| drcross wrote:
| That's a tenuous link to make. Vaping has contributed to
| harm reduction for a lot of people trying to get of
| cigarettes and they should be applauded for that.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| You know full well that isn't all of it.
|
| People don't choose mango flavour to stop smoking.
| samatman wrote:
| I did. I'm more than twice as old as the oldest high
| school student.
|
| By the way, screw you, specifically, and every other
| morally-panicked scold who have made it illegal to buy my
| preferred flavors off the shelf. Hope you're proud.
| creddit wrote:
| Clearly outside of community guidelines with the personal
| attack.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| FWIW, the teen usage as the root cause that made it
| impossible for you to buy your preferred flavor legally.
| The more scolds are downstream.
| leetcrew wrote:
| please don't make such authoritative claims about stuff
| like this.
|
| I'm a 26yo ex-smoker, and I absolutely chose mango flavor
| to quit smoking. most of my (similar aged) friends that
| vape agree it's one of the best juul flavors. a key
| feature of vapes is that they actually taste better than
| cigarettes.
| bigyikes wrote:
| I'll occasionally spring for a disposable vape during
| stressful times, and now the lack of flavored cartridges
| has me considering a pack of cigarettes.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| I did, and almost everyone I know who quit smoking from
| Juul did as well.
|
| Where did your confidence come from on this topic? Adults
| love fruity things. Margaritas, mimosas, juice, etc..
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > People don't choose mango flavour to stop smoking.
|
| Of course they do!
|
| Fruit flavors help reduce the palatability of tobacco. I
| specifically chose them for that reason, and now my once
| cherished tobacco tastes disgusting, as intended. That
| one cheat cigarette while drinking is no longer
| desirable.
|
| While I share the sentiment of the others responding to
| you, I won't echo it out of civility, but they're
| correct. People like you have just made it exponentially
| harder for people who want to quit, while doing nothing
| to keep vapes out of the hands of teens who want them.
| pinot wrote:
| In particular, Juul's tobacco carts tasted horrible. Same
| with their menthol.
| dc3k wrote:
| > People don't choose mango flavour to stop smoking.
|
| What an absurd assertion to make.
|
| Flavoured juice is a major reason I quit smoking
| cigarettes at 27. I know many, many people with similar
| stories.
| shawnz wrote:
| I agree with the GP's general claim that Juuls were
| designed to attract teenagers. But I don't agree with
| this one. Adults like flavored products too. Why wouldn't
| they?
| WilTimSon wrote:
| I don't like e-cigarettes one way or another but I have to say, I
| admire the decision to step down from any CEO. Too many of them
| hang on to the product for a long time even when they're already
| billionaires (or at least in the higher echelons of
| multimillionaires.) I'd much rather see the more successful
| people exercise mobility and try their hand at new projects. If
| you have the skills and knowledge to make a revolutionary
| product, why stop at one?
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| In general I agree with you, but in this case I'm hoping he
| stops at one product, because it looks like he is inclined to
| create products that can potentially hurt society a lot.
| catacombs wrote:
| But how much will his exit package be?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Kate Conger pointed out on Twitter that today's a really good day
| to dump your corporate bad news.
| rdxm wrote:
| special place in hell for guys like this....
| m0zg wrote:
| Good timing. Given Juul's popularity and their product's likely
| effect of weakening the lungs, I'm sure the lawsuits after
| COVID19 dust settles will be for the history books.
| samatman wrote:
| Benzoic acid (as sodium benzoate) is a preservative, so for all
| we know, Juul juice is protective against lung infections.
|
| To be clear, I don't believe this. Just thought one data-
| deficient argument deserved another.
| allovernow wrote:
| Sort of off topic, but aside from addictive potential there is
| very little in the way of evidence that vaping is harmful. And
| it's been around for some 15 years now - probably long enough to
| show some degree of long term harm.
|
| Similarly, nicotine is guilty by association, I've been unable to
| find any literature pointing harm from consumption.
|
| Now here's some speculation to take with a grain of salt -
| nicotine may offer a protective effect against 2019-ncov. We've
| known for a while that nicotine downregulates ACE2 receptors, and
| someone did an unofficial, but comprehensive meta review for
| SARS, MERS, and 2019-ncov and found that former and current
| smokers were significantly underrepresented among infected cases.
| Yes, it's a Reddit post, but the sources are all there and you
| can review and judge them for yourself.[1]
|
| 1.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/faluhv/an_exhausti...
| TallGuyShort wrote:
| Interesting that infected cases were down. However of the
| infected cases, smoking is believed to be a major factor in the
| seriousness of the disease and potential for death (I don't
| know off-hand if that was based on data, or if it was
| humanity's best attempt at a reasonable understanding of a
| respiratory disease / general trait of pneumonia). So... yet
| another reason why vaping is great as long as it's primarily
| getting fewer people to smoke.
|
| But yes - a lot of the harm attributed to vaping is after-
| market / black-market oils, and it's silly for Juul to carry
| all that blame. I'm not a fan of nanny state-type laws anyway.
| wozniacki wrote:
| a lot of the harm attributed to vaping is after-market /
| black-market oils
|
| Could you perhaps elaborate on these oils? Is there a list of
| safe, high-quality oils somewhere? Certified perhaps?
| WalterSear wrote:
| It was two related companies in New York state, and both
| have been shut down.
| stan_rogers wrote:
| Specifically, the only confirmed correlations to any class
| of products were to THC cartridges using tocopheryl acetate
| (colloquially, Vitamin E acetate) as a diluant/cutting
| agent. That should never have happened in legitimate THC
| products, but it was pretty much guaranteed to happen with
| street and counterfeit carts. A similar sort of thing _can_
| happen with nicotine e-liquids if they 're made with
| oil/lipid-based flavourings - stuff that people who don't
| know what they're doing might pick up from grocery, craft
| and health food stores. (Flavourings sold for vaping are
| water-soluble. That's not to say that all of them are as
| safe as they could be, particularly as it concerns
| saccharides, which can produce carcinogenic compounds when
| overheated/burned.) There have been a small handful of
| cases worldwide of idiopathic reactions to whatever was
| being vaped by the user; that's pretty much par for the
| course with anything that isn't pure air or water going
| into a human - somebody, somewhere is going to going to be
| hurt by something literally everybody else's body ignores.
| beenBoutIT wrote:
| Even if the vape juices were manufactured with only ACS
| grade chemicals free of impurities there isn't much
| meaningful data on the health impact of 'vaping' said
| chemicals. Vaping data won't be meaningful until there's a
| standardized vaping device made of non-reactive components
| (stainless steel, glass, PTFE, etc.) to use in clinical
| trials.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Buying your oil from a billion-dollar company is pretty
| safe. Buying it from a licensed and legal smoke shop, less
| safe. Buying from a sketchy dude out of his car or
| apartment very unsafe.
| beloch wrote:
| Black market goods aren't going to be certified by anyone
| you can trust, nor can you trust black market goods to
| contain what they claim to contain.
|
| People harming themselves with unsafe illegal goods is one
| of the costs of making certain substances illegal and
| taxing others so heavily that black market demand for them
| can thrive. Governments should weigh the harm done by black
| market goods against the benefits of substance control.
|
| Regulations and certifications don't necessarily make
| things safe, but they at least _help_ protect people from
| things known to be dangerous. Put black market goods in
| your lungs at your own peril.
| leetcrew wrote:
| GP is referring to the fact that the recent widespread
| vaping illness was caused by illicit cannabis cartridges
| (in particular, one or more cutting agents used). I doubt
| there is anything like a certified list of safe products,
| but the recent scare is unrelated to products sold through
| legal distribution chains.
| techbio wrote:
| Vape liquid base is propylene glycol and vegetable
| glycerin. Oils don't belong in vape juice at all. Black
| market "chemists" (thanks, drug war!) put Vitamin-E acetate
| in to stretch out the thing people wanted (THC), with the
| thing that killed several of them. Press and the Pres used
| the hysteria to ban the flavors people (not just teens)
| like.
| TallGuyShort wrote:
| So I'm totally not a vaping expert, I just know that in
| every case that I read about of someone being hospitalized
| because of vaping, it was because of such oils. My
| understanding is that the "juices" these devices are
| designed for and most of the mainstream ones from the
| "official" sources are water-based fluids with a small
| amount of drug and flavoring added. I believe vaping oil is
| quite problematic, regardless of the source. No idea if
| "black market" oils have actually been adding bad things to
| the oils, or what. Like I said, not an expert myself.
| taurath wrote:
| Physically harmful no. The mental harm from having a
| replacement reward system is if anything underdrawn.
| 0x8BADF00D wrote:
| I've stopped vaping primarily because COVID-19 mortality rate
| risk grows exponentially if you smoke. Any type of lung
| inflammation (including wildfire particulates in my case) may
| increase your risk of mortality ten fold.
| lowdose wrote:
| Juul made the product so the user experiences the same nicotine
| spike and addictive rush as normal cigarets give. Sounds pretty
| malicious to me because it introduces ambiguity into how
| healthy and addictive vaping is.
| ohyeshedid wrote:
| I believe it also contains more nicotine than tobacco
| products. To me, that's a bad way to start using nicotine;
| where do you go when you start out at peak dosage?
| TylerE wrote:
| Nonsense. Dose is titrated via usage. You don't have to sit
| there and puff on a cape for 5 minutes straight like a
| cigarette.
| ohyeshedid wrote:
| How much nicotine is in a puff? How are you measuring a
| puff, and how are the individual users measuring a puff?
|
| My first several disposable vapes stated 300 puffs; it
| took me running out much faster than a pack of cigarettes
| to actually measure; my starting usage I got 101 puffs.
| How much nicotine was in each of those puffs?
| monadic2 wrote:
| Yes. And it's a real shame because if they offered lower
| nicotine percentages (1% and 0%) it could be a powerful
| prescribed treatment for nicotine addiction. Instead they
| just made a new market for exploitation.
| Kiro wrote:
| Read the comments. Sounds like the study rather is a case
| against smoking. That's also what researchers think is causing
| men to be more severely affected in China.
| andrepd wrote:
| >aside from addictive potential
|
| And this is already very harmful in itself, hooking the user
| (read, mostly young teenagers) into an addiction for life. It's
| the last thing on your mind when you go to sleep, and the first
| when you wake up. As soon as you put one out, the itch begins
| to rise until you have another. That's enslaving, it's a bad
| thing in itself. Not to mention the thousands of dollars per
| year you will sink on that.
| rhizome wrote:
| Thousands of dollars a year? On vaping? Not even counting the
| money that would be extremely difficult to do. The rest of
| your comment sounds pretty emotional, I'm guessing there's
| some pre-existing anti-smoking issues behind it?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I agree, but to be fair, that's how a lot of us feel about
| coffee.
| wmeredith wrote:
| I've drank a lot of coffee and I've smoked a lot of
| cigarettes at different times in my life. They aren't even
| in the same universe.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Coffee addiction wean off completely after a few days of
| abstinence though. And the side effects of abstinence are
| quite mild.
| Jarwain wrote:
| I always get the worst headaches whenever I'm withdrawing
| from caffeine.
|
| Withdrawing from nicotine is pretty minor in comparison.
| Mainly just cravings, and they subside after a week or so
| depending on how long I had been vaping
| monadic2 wrote:
| Well by this metric we have a pandemic of smartphone usage
| that poses an immediate public health risk.
| nitrogen wrote:
| People have indeed made claims along those lines. Vaping
| isn't being singled out here.
| dqpb wrote:
| You mean besides all those people that died from vaping?
| monadic2 wrote:
| They were vaping vitamin E from black market THC cartridges--
| not exactly what people refer to as "vaping". The solution to
| that would be regulation of the market. My understanding is
| that the banning of flavored vape sales is mostly intended to
| cut consumption among teenagers & that it seems to have had
| the intended effect.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| On the contrary, nicotine in and of itself is quite harmful.
| It's debatable if it causes cancer, but it definitely
| contributes to lung and heart disease, among other things.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/
| ohyeshedid wrote:
| Was just about to post this. Nicotine vapor seems to be
| better than smoking, assuming legit products, but nicotine is
| still poison. Consume a little too much nicotine, whether
| smoking or vaping; that sickish feeling can be the onset of
| nicotine poisoning.
|
| I've seen so many people stating basically the same as OP,
| claiming no data on vaping being harmful while completely
| ignoring the core substance that produces the addiction in
| the first place.
|
| I smoked a pack per day+ for 27 years, quit a few months
| back, still using low nicotine vape products when
| overstressed and struggling with urges. I'm not a vape hater,
| but I'm not ignorant to it being poison. It's always a good
| idea to have as much knowledge about your vices as possible.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I am a cigar guy and have been for year. I also know what
| it's like when someone who doesn't smoke tries a strong
| cigar for the first time. I was once at my favorite cigar
| bar on Canal Street, talking with the owners as I usually
| did, when I saw some large men walk into the humidor. They
| were all WWE wrestlers.
|
| The owner asked me to go help em out, so I walked in with
| them and they asked me what was the strongest cigar they
| had. I paused and then asked them about their experience
| level with cigar smoking. All of them rarely ever smoked
| and for some it was a first time thing. One of the guys had
| recently "won" the world title and they wanted to celebrate
| his good fortune.
|
| I had to tell them that I wouldn't recommend the strongest
| to them, that's crazy if you haven't built a tolerance, and
| that if they felt nauseous, to stop smoking and eat
| something sweet. I instead pointed out a medium bodied,
| medium strength cigar and sent them on their way.
|
| About an hour later two of them were sitting at the bar
| eating butter mints out of a dish with their heads in their
| hands.
|
| Nicotine will mess you up.
| swiley wrote:
| I know I'm being pedantic but nicotine vapor would be above
| 247 c.
|
| I think you're meaning to compare the pure aerosol and the
| smoke that comes from burning it.
| rhizome wrote:
| That report doesn't say what you describe, and neither do any
| others I could find.
|
| What it does describe are lung effects, first in the form of
| "tracheal deviation," which to my layperson's eye appears to
| be a side to side pushing of the esophagus based on different
| lung volumes, air in the chest, or some other treatable
| disorders, i.e. fixable and not permanent damage.[1]
|
| There is also the decrease in elastin in the aveoli, which
| are the little balloons that comprise most of your lung
| function. They have a goo lining them which includes
| something called elastin, which helps it be a balloon
| (emphysema is [partially] alveoli losing this elasticity).
| Nicotine helps decrease its, uh, "presence," but by itself my
| sense is that it's possibly reversible, definitely stoppable,
| and at any rate very common from a variety of causes.[2] Most
| of the scholarship about this problem is focused on it
| (elastin deficiencies) being common in premature babies and
| early lung development.
|
| There are also "other respiratory disorders," which from the
| several links and studies I just read, are thinly defined if
| at all[3]
|
| Negative coronary effects appear to be exacerbation of
| existing problems, particularly something called "myocardial
| ischemia," which seems to be what doctors call "the heart
| doesn't get enough blood when your arteries are already
| clogged." I figure this is a result of well-known
| vasoconstricting properties, which, y'know, a lot of
| substances have (some even unregulated).[4] A side effect of
| this is that if you do have a blockage, the increased
| pressure from the vasoconstriction can help dislodge it, the
| result likely being a heart attack. This is a problem with
| fried foods, too.
|
| Last but not least: https://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpine
| ws/newsitem.aspx?Re...
|
| 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/
|
| 2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3929318/
|
| 3. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2019/12/16/7885401...
|
| 4. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/myocardial-
| is...
| JamesBarney wrote:
| It's more harmful than not doing it. But probably less
| harmful than bacon.
| dclusin wrote:
| It definitely interferes with the bodies healing process as
| well. Not a doctor so unsure of exactly how. Back when I was
| smoking I needed to have knee surgery and the doctor advised
| against nicotine in any form for that reason.
| alexggordon wrote:
| Just to clarify, because I was very confused--you mean that
| there is very little correlation between smoking and additional
| risk after contracting COVID-19, as your source is entirely
| dedicated to.
|
| There's significant risk to vaping, based on numerous studies.
|
| [0] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/E-Cigarette-
| Toxicity-T...
| allovernow wrote:
| >The inhaled aerosols of e-cigarettes contain numerous
| potential toxicities, some of which could be dangerous for
| health with long-term use. The safety of prolonged aerosol
| exposure is not known
|
| Could be. The jury is out.
| rhizome wrote:
| The safety of a lot of it is known, and it's safe.
| Propylene glycol has been used for concert smoke machines
| for 50 years. Vegetable glycerin is used for all kinds of
| things, internal and not. Please don't spread
| misinformation.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507184/
|
| http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC4487
| 7...
| nitrogen wrote:
| The fog from fog machines has cooled down by the time you
| inhale it. How much does a concertgoer inhale vs. a vaper
| over a given span of time? Is there a risk of the heated
| product causing damage to the lungs that fog at ambient
| temperature does not? Can the ingredients, when combined
| and heated, chemically react to form hazardous compounds?
| rhizome wrote:
| I found one study where they had mice inhaling cigarette
| smoke extract (not even vape juice, and worse) five hours
| a day for a few months, and it caused some discoloration
| on their uvulas or something.
|
| Here's something to take 12 seconds to read: https://www.
| sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027869151...
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| The abstract seems to say "we don't know, but we'd expect
| it's bad." Is that right?
| [deleted]
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