[szbalint]

We have to weight a complex set of circumstances:

- smoking is an exceptionally harmful habit, so just by coming up with any other activity at random one is likely to end up healthier

- this also means advising smokers to switch to vaping even without knowing the health effects of vaping makes sense - marketing vaping to non-smokers should be severely limited though

- marketing vaping to kids like juul does, should be downright illegal

[leetcrew]

> marketing vaping to kids like juul does

do/did they actually do this? I did a quick Google search and I can find a lot of articles making this claim but the only evidence given is that they have twenty-somethings and bright colors in their ads. if this is "marketing to kids", then that bar seems awfully low.

[roywiggins]

> Last summer, with public concern about teenage vaping growing, Juul Labs paid a charter school organization in Baltimore $134,000 to set up a five-week summer camp to teach children healthy lifestyles.

> The curriculum was created by Juul — maker of the very vaping devices that were causing the most alarm among parents, health experts and public officials.

> In April 2017, a Juul representative visited the Dwight School in New York City to meet with students — with no teachers present — and told them the company’s e-cigarettes were “totally safe.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/juul-teens-vaping....

[leetcrew]

>> In April 2017, a Juul representative visited the Dwight School in New York City to meet with students — with no teachers present — and told them the company’s e-cigarettes were “totally safe.”

this one is pretty damning, but it's only one occurrence. I doubt NYT would have held back if they had any more such anecdotes to offer.

as for the rest of the article, the education programs seem a bit sketchy, but they could just as easily be a poorly conceived PR campaign.

[DanBC]

> but they could just as easily be a poorly conceived PR campaign.

We have decades of experience with terrible tobacco and alcohol companies and that's pretty persuasive that Juul knew what they were doing and didn't care.

[roywiggins]

They're 30% owned by Philip Morris. I'm sure they know exactly what they're doing.

[nyolfen]

you are correct; people just get rightly alarmed that it took off with high school students. their marketing is pretty typical in that it’s aimed at young people but i’ve never seen anything particularly nefarious.

[beardedman]

> switch to vaping even without knowing the health effects of vaping makes sense

That is exactly my point. You're presuming it's healthier, yea? If you can link to any proper long term study saying that, I'd be more than happy to agree with this.