I'd like to think of it as 'big tobacco' - but most of them own vape brands, so would have thought they'd be most happy to carry on selling nicotine products, without being beaten up with them killing people.
Now - I don't think big tobacco is 'clean' here. EU's "Tobacco Products Directive" was pretty much written to hand the market to large suppliers selling small refills.
My guess is that it's just the latest 'think of the children' scare. Juul and teenagers seem to be the main cause/victim here. Seems to gloss over the 'fewer teens are smoking' benefit here.
We had novels, rock music, gansta rap, video-nasties, murder-simulator games... and now we have vaping. Eventually we'll get over it.
The addiction to nicotine is nothing to scoff at, but they were taking a page out of the big tobacco brands' play book. The same people that go after Juul and disregard regular tobacco brands is something, seeing how they are just doing what big tobacco has always done. There are a lot of people angry over those kids being targeted by Juul, but fail to see big tobacco next door, causing as much, if not more damage due to the nature of their product. Both should fail, but I would rather have an ecosystem of Ecigs(for adults) vs the waste and carnage that big tobacco has done for decades.
i still find this absurd, the cause has not yet been identified and its localised to one country which makes it seem a little presumptuous to ban it outright
but if youll just wait with me a sec while i put this tin foil hat on maybe this was an intentional move, a whole host of new kids/teens have become hooked on nicotine, take away the vapes and they have no other source than good old ciggies
although im not sure that makes sense to me as surely they make more profit on eliquid and the various equipment than they do off standard cigs
As a reformed smoker who moved to vaping, I'm terribly concerned at the current marketing of vaping to teens, and the uptake within that age bracket in my country (NZ).
I switched because my nicotine addiction isn't an easy one to break, and vaping is significantly cheaper (our government increases excise taxes on tobacco annually, so currrently $30 NZD buys me a pack of 20 cigarette that I smoke in a day, or it buys me a bottle of vape juice that lasts 2 weeks).
And I'm a big fan of vaping for the economic and (so far as we know currently) health benefits for smokers.
But what really concerns me, is the number of young people who would never smoke due to the (successful! and good on the Ministry of Health for doing so) demonisation of cigarette smoking, who are instead happily vaping away.
It seems apparent from the marketing that Big Tobacco has realised where their next big market lies - young people who don't want to smoke, but will vape if you tell them it's healthy and cool. At the end of the day, you're still getting people addicted to nicotine for money. Yes, bonus that there's less cancer involved, but it' still a monetised addiction.
My preference would be for vape liquids containing nicotine to be prescription only for recovering smokers. If kids want to blow watermelon vapour out of their lungs, go nuts, just don't do it with a known addictive substance in the mix.
The sad thing is that this is only an issue now, when the product is unexpectedly killing people in the short term. It's clear that killing people in the long term is part of their business model.
For example:
They created flavors clearly designed for non-smokers
They took major investment funds from big tobacco
The had to be forced to restrict certain marketing policies even though it was clear that vaping had become epidemic in high schools.
They pursue the same kinds of hyper aggressive promotion overseas the cigarette companies do, continuing with practices that are now prevented in the US
They happily ignore the evidence that many people in this new generation of addicts switch in-part or in-whole to cigarettes.
I'm a living citation. Was a small business owner, retail vape shop. Did fine for 5 years. Then the regulations to save the children and hit pieces in the news. All the small independent shops went under and now you can only buy the vuse, and juul, both owned by...you guessed it, the same folks who sold cigarettes.
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.
The reason they go after nicotine is because kids use these vapes and become addicted to the nicotine in them, much of the time without wanting to do so. It is pernicious. It’s why cigarettes were demonized, but not banned. Cigarettes were doing everything that Juul and Co. are doing now, hooking kids, spreading because it’s cool and marketed to children. It’s kind of like rape. Hooking you without your consent, and taking advantage of the most vulnerable market, kids.
The nicotine in e-cigs are produced using tobacco and I'm pretty sure big tobacco doesn't care if kids are smoking actual cigarettes or e-cigs, only that they are smoking.
> I'm pretty sure big tobacco doesn't care if kids are smoking actual cigarettes or e-cigs, only that they are smoking.
I disagree.
Tobacco is an industry with high regulatory barriers to entry and decades of very effective marketing behind it. "Big Tobacco" makes money at the wholesale and retail levels pretty much unopposed.
Vaping is effectively unregulated, and there really aren't any truly big players in e-liquid market. Everyone who vapes seems to have their favorites, but even a small vape shop will have a dozen or more brands on the shelves.
Vaping isn't going to kill tobacco use, because as you said, the nicotine ultimately comes from tobacco - but its rise is cutting significantly into the revenue of "Big Tobacco".
I don't think anything along those lines but I am extremely disappointed that another generation is hooked on nicotine through vaping. You hear kids bragging about how much 'nic' they go through.
I was always confused about that particular part of smoking culture, it's got this mixed message of bad-boy persona and defiance yet it's very much a corporate curated habit. Nobody should have ended up addicted to nicotine, it was entirely unnecessary, and now here we are again even after all those lessons learned.
I am glad it's not nearly as harmful as cigarettes, but people are once again being sucked into an addiction in order to buy product and that stinks.
I highly suspect these young vapers would have picked up smoking instead if products like this didn't exist.
I don't know what more the industry can realistically do. The sales of their products is already limited to adults, and I don't know why advertising flavorings is supposed to be about targeting children (why would adults not like strawberry flavoring?) so unless there is an epidemic of B&M or online stores that keep selling to minors, they're already doing what they can.
Maybe I'm missing something, but as an outsider, the FDA seems dead set on killing your vaping industry by all means necessary.
Kids smoked cigarettes because it was cool. Now they sometimes vape. I suspect all the cool is from the vaping not because there's a strawberry flavour. When I was in school smoking was cool, but menthol cigs were for wimps. There was often a corner shop near schools that would sell one cig with two matches. Now that was targeting youngsters. I'm sure flavours do make vaping more palatable for everyone, but that's a very long way from those flavours existing to target youngsters.
Bizarre things like aerosol and glue sniffing had their phase of being a niche cool thing amongst kids. Seems like the few who must will always find something regardless of flavour or ease.
I still occasionally see school kids smoking regular cigarettes. How the hell they afford to beats me at over £10 for a 20 pack. But whether vaping or cigarettes there's far fewer kids bothering at all than say 20 or 40 years ago when it seemed like almost every school kid smoked. Besides I'd far rather a few kids were using a vape pen than those same kids on tobacco with all the additives and vastly worse health outcomes. Vapes are far easier to quit too as tobacco seems to have other more addictive components. Well, that was my feeling from having quit both.
I keep hearing of Juul as being something extra, more accessible, worse, more addictive, you name it! How are they different to the dozens of other brands of vapes and ecigs? I've yet to see one in the UK, if they're even sold here.
This whole thing has nothing to do with keeping kids off nicotine and everything to do with keeping people of all ages on cigarettes.
Vaping is safer than smoking.
Let's say I'm Phillip Morris. I sell Marlboro and a slew of other cigarette brands. E-cigs come along, offering a safer alternative that is importantly much more cost effective. They're eating my lunch.
How do I kill this industry? I buy Juul. I remove the fruity flavors (which people of all ages enjoy more than tobacco flavors) and I claim that I'm doing it to protect the children.
Juul is now much worse off; big tobacco gets to claim that it's looking out for the kids; last step is to manufacture a public crisis to have cover for over-reaching legislation that bans what would otherwise be the least harmful of all age-restricted products.
Something about all the sudden bans in flavored, (enjoyable) vapes, mixed with the fear mongering all over the news makes me feel like this is all FUD being pushed by the tobacco industry. I mean, consider what’s happening. “Why vape if it’s flavorless and tasteless? At that point, I might as well stick to my Marlboro Reds, at least they have some established flavor” - I’m just playing devils advocate.
And about the “Think of the children!” replies - Classic red herring fallacy. Decent parenting and better local regulation could solve this problem. Or maybe it wouldn’t. Teenagers under the smoking age buy cigarettes every day, so vaping is no different.
I realize people are getting sick, but why is everyone acting like it’s “average” people getting sick like this? It’s those “HUGE CLOUD XD” people who are taking ridiculous sized rips, and black market THC vape carts. Juuls aren’t perfect, but their popularity and the losses to the tobacco industry’s profits make me wonder....
Very similar to the FUD campaign put out against La Croix last year when the 18-24 crowd stopped drinking soda, and started drinking sparkling water instead.
True, but the regulations they push through often happen to only impact smaller competitors, or only impact things people are actually using to quit smoking.
Also, their VEEV vapes are only available in tobacco and menthol flavors, and those flavors have been shown to be less effective for tobacco cessation. (They also tried to push through laws banning other flavors, if I remember right.)
Pre-empting the "think of the childeren" responses; tobacco marketed to kids continues to be widely available:
Check out the Pod Juice Freeze "Strawberry Kiwi Pomberry", for example. If not for the big nicotine warning on the bottom half of the label, I wouldn't be surprised if parents confused it with kids' Pedialyte, or some sort of DIY popsicle mix:
That's not how I see it. Regulators started cracking down on JUUL a couple years ago and drove the value of the company down until Phillip Morris bought 35÷. Then they backed off until JUUL started losing market share to the new generation of refillable vapes that use nicotine salt like the JUUL system. The difference? JUUL pods aren't meant to be refilled, and 4 pods with a total of 2 mL of juice will cost $20 in most states. With a refillable system, you can have 30mL of the same strength juice for $20.
So, here come the regulators again to protect big tobacco. They want strict controls on who can manufacture juice. Less competition =more profit. JUUL only has a handful of flavors compared to the thousands of alternatives. So, here come the regulators to limit the flavors. And surely it's just a coincidence that the one flavor they really want to limit it to is tobacco, Phillip Morris's bread and butter.
If you've been vaping a cucumber rosehips menthol juice every day, cigarette will taste like absolute shit. But if you only have the option of vaping tobacco flavored juice? Well, then a cigarette might not sound so bad.
Sure, I agree that JUUL hasn't been an angel, and probably are guilty of marketing to kids. But that all started being investigated well before the tainted THC carts started making people sick.
There is a journalism campaign against Juul in particular, and I don't know why. They continue to run stories about how kids are getting addicted to it, and that somehow Juul offering flavors (like cotton candy) are targeting kids specifically.
Again, I don't vape, but have occasionally done Hookah. Flavors were the whole point of it, and I was well above 18 when I made the choice.
Warn against the dangers of vaping, sure, but I don't see what this company in particular has done. And I don't see how people don't realize the dangers of vaping nicotine.
Now - I don't think big tobacco is 'clean' here. EU's "Tobacco Products Directive" was pretty much written to hand the market to large suppliers selling small refills.
My guess is that it's just the latest 'think of the children' scare. Juul and teenagers seem to be the main cause/victim here. Seems to gloss over the 'fewer teens are smoking' benefit here. We had novels, rock music, gansta rap, video-nasties, murder-simulator games... and now we have vaping. Eventually we'll get over it.
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