Juul Is Moving Base From San Francisco to Washington, D.C. | Hacker News Reader

Juul Is Moving Base From San Francisco to Washington, D.C.

wsj.com

When a company moves its HQ from its former home to Washington, you know it's become a regulatory / lobbying firm and not a technology or product-focused company.

It was never a technology company. It's biggest function was marketing, and now it is going to be lobbying.

Its biggest innovation was figuring out how to avoid tobacco regulations, and it does seem likely that Washington is the next battleground on that front.

It's biggest innovation was ensuring tobacco regulations for everyone else while making sure it didn't apply to them.

I'm not sure it's even possible for a nicotine company to stay successful for very long without a big lobbying effort. As soon as they're a big enough brand, they become a juicy target for political interference from the usual bootleggers-and-baptists combo of anti-tobacco activists and competing tobacco companies.

San Francisco banned e-cigs as of 2020. I could certainly see Juul wanting to leave in that case.

Why? It seems short-sighted because it increases regular smoking. Plus no one cares about the ban. You can literally get away using a juul (or other device) on an airplane discretely.

Because Juul gets teens addicted to nicotine, and this outweights the public health benefits or providing an alternative to cigarettes for adult cigarette addicts.

> this outweights the public health benefits or providing an alternative to cigarettes for adult cigarette addicts

No way. It's not the e-cigs - those are vastly more helpful than harmful overall. It's Juul specifically - they're the bad player in the game. Not the only one, but the biggest of the handful - most e-cig companies just want to sell within the rules. No need to cut off the nose to spite the face. That would be detrimental.

Yeah - that's not true.

The UK government agencies opinion is that e-cigarettes are about 1/20th the risk of smoking. So if 1% of teens switch from smoking to vaping and 19% of teens start vaping it's a wash from a public health standpoint.

And the numbers are far better than this which means it's a public health benefit.

I disagree. 1300 deaths from actually smoking per day sounds way worse than 2000 people getting hospitaled and 33 deaths per YEAR

And banning vaping has increased good old fashioned cigs in teens. Teens are going to smoke or vape. Pick your poison.

I would disagree to a point on ecigs on health benefits - they seem to be very useful on decreasing overall tobacco use.

However, Juul has specifically targeted teens with targeted ads, influencers and 'education' on underage teens - purposefully [see FDA link].

In addition, Juul heavily promoted 'salted' nicotine, where many ecig enthusiasts or those who quit only use 3 mg to 6mg nicotine levels in their ejuice, Juuls salted nicotine push can get up to 60mg.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-vaping-juul-idUSKB... >Between 2018 and 2019, use of JUUL vaping devices doubled among U.S. young people aged 18 to 20 and more than tripled among those aged 21 to 24, a new study finds.

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-warn... >he agency also sent a letter to the company expressing concern, and requesting more information, about several issues raised in a recent Congressional hearing regarding JUUL’s outreach and marketing practices, including those targeted at students, tribes, health insurers and employers.

https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine

Juul sort of has to to survive though. Big tobacco wont tolerate an actual competitor.

But juul is big tobacco?

Altria owns a 35 percent stake in them, so their interests are definitely aligned.

Juul is a huge opportunity for big tobacco.

It’s a way to get the kids hooked and make them life long customers.

Juul is not an alternative to Big Tobacco. It is just another member of the club, facing the same kind of existential regulatory pressure as the other major participants in the industry. And as mentioned by others, Altria owns a third of the company.

Possibly not for long: https://www.barrons.com/articles/altria-group-must-unwind-it...

Exactly. From what I understand, they're trying to get all vape products heavily taxed like cigarettes (which states are chomping at the bit to do because of declining revenue from that sector)-- they can simply sell their stuff at break-even or a loss for a while until all competition is dead. Voila! A new monopoly is born.

Juul is owned by big tobacco (Philip Morris).

That was the point of the parent poster. It's better to create a limp competitor from within than leave an empty vacuum for an outsider.

Your comment indicates just how successful Juul's marketing has been. You didn't know that Altria Group, Inc. owns a large stake of Juul.

There is a lot of ignorance around, and PR/Advertising works, so I understand why you'd think that of me.

But consider the counter case for a moment.

Altria didn't pay 13bn dollars, for just 35% of a company that is barely 5 years because they were confident did they? Hedging your bet is a sign of fear. And you generally still want the main bet to pay off. Altria would do better if Juul were banned, they'd lose 13bn but the rest of their portfolio would go up by considerably more than that.

When you have billions of dollars hedging is standard operating procedure, not a sign of fear. Anyone in control of that kind of money who isn't hedging their main source of revenue should be fired.

He means they have to move because they ARE big tobacco who, if they don't lobby the government, will be gone.

How much technology is there in e-cigarettes anyway? It's basically a small electric heater and a battery.

juul pods are more sophisticated than you might think. the circuitry monitors the resistance change of the heating coil to estimate its temperature and adjusts the power to hit a target. this stops the wick from burning if it's dry (very unpleasant for the user) and delivers a consistent experience mostly independent of airflow over the coil. it takes a lot of engineering effort to make that work in such a small form factor and cheap enough to be disposable.

What was ever 'tech' about Juul?

Their valuation!

Related news: Juul sees interest evaporate from potential buyer of SoMa high-rise

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/c/juul-sees-interes...

Juul bought the building in mid 2019 because SF landlords were increasingly hostile to it and often unwilling to rent to them. Their response was buy a building, right around their peak. Late last year, they took some big hits related to e-cig deaths (which I don't think they actually caused) and dropping their flavored offerings, massively hurting revenue.

Meanwhile, their new CEO (fall 2019), K.C. Crosthwaite, is an ex-tobacco exec, and some googling says he lives in Richmond, VA.

As others have said, part of this is probably lobbying, but part is that they're city hostile to them that the CEO doesn't live in.

> their new CEO (fall 2019), K.C. Crosthwaite, is an ex-tobacco exec

> ex

Evidently not.

The former CEO is under investigation by DOJ

This place is absolutely hostile to Juul. I know individual developers who vape, but the market is tight and Juul looks shaped like Lime to me.

Edit: now realizing those developers are not even in SF.

Juul had issues with city government after they sublet space on Port property:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Port-officials-...

New execs often run a fake office location search, then pick the place nearest their house.

(One of Apple's Cali. DCs was a telco facility until the telco got a new exec and "it had to suddenly be located on the East Coast," where he happened to live.)

I’d point out this article and lots of comments state Juul stopped making flavored pods like mango and creme brule, but they only stopped selling them directly in the US. They are still on shelves in Canada etc and there is a thriving black market for them stateside now as happens with most banned substances...

So they don't have to travel as far for their congressional hearings?

Fascinatingly, nicotine itself may not be as addicting as cigarettes which contain MAO inhibitors. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16177026/

How's that related to the article at all?

What makes Juul different from other ecigs other than marketing proficiency?

They were the first to use nicotine salts instead of freebase nicotine (the standard nic used in e-cigarettes). Nicotine salts are less harsh on the throat, allowing them to basically double the concentration in the juice. This allowed them to mimic the sensation of a cigarette a lot more than other e-cigs.

Double-edged sword. On one hand, it makes it the first e-cig that was a no-brainer for most smokers to switch to, but it also (IMO) makes is as addictive as cigarettes. In my anecdotal opinion, the e-cigs prior to the Juul—due to their lower nicotine delivery, and longer lag time between inhale and absorption—are probably not as habit-forming.

That's the thing with replacement products, if it's good enough for existing addicts to switch to, it's good enough for kids to get addicted to, in and of itself.

OTOH, nicotine doesn't seem to be all that harmful once it's divorced from tobacco, and it does appear to have some benefits.

I like to semi-joke that WWII was taught by nicotine addicts who drank absurd amounts of coffee, suggesting that those stimulants enabled prodigious feats.

Realistically though nicotine is pretty bad for your vasculature and the carbon monoxide is pretty bad too. Smokers get strokes due to stiffening of the small vessels. Yuck.

You forgot amphetamines as well, which were used in a widespread fashion by both the Allies and Axis [1]

[1] https://defenceindepth.co/2017/08/11/amphetamines-and-the-se...

Juul also went all-in with addiction potential, by loading their liquid with high amounts of nicotine. And are probably not alone in that practice either.

Freakonomics did an episode[0] about e-cigarettes last year. A cartridge in US contains 3 times the nicotine of a cartridge in UK.

0: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/vaping-nicotine/ (search "have up to" for the relevant segment)

>not as habit-forming

What's the difference between addiction and habit in this context?

I think he meant addiction. Habit is what I have about eating an orange after lunch, or a cup of tea while I work.

No difference. It was most likely my subconscious mind taking the edge off of what I’m currently “habit-formed” to ;)

Addiction is defined by consequence.

I don't really find much difference in the "buzz" from nic salts vs freebase, but maybe I'm just acclimated. I used to use those huge 18650 mods, but switched to a small nic salts device about a year ago. in my experience, the higher nic concentration is cancelled out by the vastly lower vapor production.

When I quit cigarettes I had more cravings for cigarettes than I did with Juul.

But cigarettes were easier to quit because they made me feel like shit.

Juul was hard to quit because it made me feel great. For the 9 months I was Juuling I got along much better with my wife. I was never irritable. No matter how much I worked, how long the day, or how frustrating the client when I came home from work I was in a good mood and could enjoy her company.

When our office was juuling we never got into silly technical tiffs, we just got along really well all the time.

Even online video games were more enjoyable. When people were real dickheads (which happens far too often) it just always rolled off.

I'd probably still be doing it if it didn't destroy my sleep schedule or mess with my circulation.

They used incredibly sketchy, and probably illegal, marketing tactics aimed at minors: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/juul-gave-presentati...

All of the answers give these fucks way too much credit. They designed it like a USB stick so underage kids could have them and their parents would be none the wiser.

https://archive.md/erh8C

What is archive.md? It does not appear to be related to the Internet Archive [1].

[1] https://archive.org

It’s a separate website that lets you snapshot websites at any time, so that you can access them in geo-restricted areas (like the EU for a lot of sites) and possibly avoid paywalls.

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