| That's a good hot take, and I don't really disagree about (some of) the tendencies of this article, but this is still a pretty shady / unethical company by most measures. > I was told it has 50 mil nic and my jaw hit the floor. Those that vape knows that's a crazy number Since the earliest days of vaping, it's been easy to get liquids at varying nicotine levels, downright common to have them without nicotine at all, and it's been understood practically as a first principle that one can gradually taper down the nicotine levels as an effective means of smoking / overall nic cessation. Along comes Juul, with patents for more effective nic delivery, a $16B valuation and >$1B capital, trying to reach people who aren't necessarily tuned into this niche at all, coming to market with exactly one nicotine option: ultra freaking high, apparently over double what for a long time was the standard 'highest' option available from most e-liquid vendors (18mg/mL). These guys seriously only plan to start selling "lower-dose pods" at some later point. I'm not so sure that any significant portion of the market they're angling for (virgins to the product space) is likely to progress to "more advanced setups", not if Juul is their point of entry. In any case, Juul's rising will probably lead to higher median nic levels in the market at large, as competitors whose product would otherwise seem "weak" try to reach Juul's customers. Makes sense, I guess, that the guys in this space getting funded would be those who are the most amoral - cranking nic levels up while aiming to deliver it with more punch, not even pretending to support tapering off nic entirely, keeping them on the tit for now while probably offering unspecified lower levels in the future. On one hand they talk about their noble mission to get people off the hated cigarettes and their outreach to keep everything above-board and 21+, on the other they make sure social media is carpet bombed with cool young guys + gals vapin Juuls. Don't get me wrong, I'm not outraged or clamouring for them to be legislated to their doom or anything. I'm truly impressed by how brazen and full of shit these guys are. |
In my interpretation, no company can really stay afloat by sticking to beginners, except for a very small portion. Every "beginner" device these days is good enough for a long-time user. Even those companies have things that are for more advanced users, though the highly advanced stuff is a different world entirely.
The CA regulations opened the door for companies like Juul to thrive. No one took these sorts of companies seriously enough to suggest them to anyone. Now that CA has all these regulations, vape shops just gave up and started carrying them. It's ironic because so much of the regulations purportedly about safety, yet it's only going to take one Juul to leak to see someone dead of nicotine poison, and the company can apparently advertise as they are due to loopholes.