Scott Gottlieb: JUUL is Now Your Bitch

So for the last say fifty years or so the message from the FDA has been very simple: SMOKING KILLS

My children, their children, all know this.

The fact that smoking is bad is engrained in their DNA almost from birth (while this may seem like a good idea it's in fact not because you lose your critical thinking skill as I describe below).

Originally at https://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm345087.htm we now find a HTTP 404 Not Found error.  (Preserved in this blog is the original though now even the saved https://archive.is/ejhfI is gone...):

Nicotine was a side show for the FDA: "... decades of research [by the FDA] and use have shown that NRT [nicotine replacement therapy, i.e., vaping] do not appear to have significant potential for abuse or dependence."  (Be nice or I'll file another FOIA request to get the research and publish it... or maybe I just will anyway.)

Not really addictive after all.

And so on as I write in older posts (for example this).

I have spoken to various "vaping" children.

I ask: "Is smoking bad?"

"Of course...!!" they cry, "We are not stupid!"

Some even know that the "smoke" itself is bad as opposed to just "smoking."

They reason, not unreasonably, that "JUULing" is not smoking.

And they are right.

Today, naked and afraid, I can still find tobacco, dry the plants, ignite them with flint, and smoke.  Nothing has changed in millennia.  Modern society has added convenient delivery to the corner store, chemical-laced paper wrappers and treatment of the tobacco but that's just marketing - people still (or would) buy plain old tobacco and smoke it.

On the other hand, about 10,000 years of technological advancement is required to build a modern JUUL.  No scavenging USB connectors in the bush.  No building lithium ion batteries from salt scavenged from the flats.

Then there is the nicotine.  Not much interesting there according to decades of FDA research.

But there is the problem of appearances.

Can't have little Johnny down at the corner JUULing, can we (as in the above picture).  It looks bad.  It looks, in fact, like smoking.

So there are two real problems.

Kids know better than to smoke so they don't.  YOU taught them this.

The FDA, to a point, has done their job there.

Unfortunately for the FDA JUULing is not smoking.

People vaping are not smoking.

So now the FDA defines away smoking (literally airborne ash from fire) and converts it to what "looks" like smoking, namely JUULing, to save the children.

They do this by redefining "nicotine vapor" or even just "vapor" into "smoking", plastic USB lithium ion batteries into "burning", and so on.

All so they can save us and the children from "not smoking" which they aren't anyway.

So if adults use JUUL to stop smoking and JUUL and/or the FDA make flavors that help people stop smoking unavailable to in 90,000 convenience stores across the USA won't both youth and adult be more inclined to actually smoke?

Of course.

You see, "public health" as a job cannot deal with the normal course of disruptive change brought on by technology.

The FDA was caught flat-footed by vaping.

Their "SMOKING KILLS" message has backfired: kids don't want to smoke so they don't.

You, Scott, just didn't think there was any alternative for them but the FDA and big pharma.

What you didn't think of was that some poor Chinese guy would solve the smoking problem with a disruptive technological solution.

So now YOU want to give more people of all ages incentive to smoking instead of vape.

(Quite honestly Scott, based on my research, the whole "vice" model is based on faulty science.  Groups of humans like to sit around and do things together, smoke, eat, drink.  They do this because it's a human trait: we are social animals and these things help to bind the society together.  Cell phones, on the other hand, make you depressed and isolate you and your children.  But don't worry, there are much larger companies than convenience stores selling those...)

Scott Gottlieb, you own this.  JUUL is now your bitch.

Maybe your latest actions can convince the kiddies to JUUL "tobacco flavors" or "plain" instead of cucumber and what not...

Oh wait, JUUL is removing only "kiddie friendly" flavors and leaving their older brother or who ever to buy them "tobacco" flavors???

Hmmm....

That seems like YOU are actually trying to indoctrinate the kiddies back into the flavor of "tobacco."

You see, Scott, if you were smart you'd realize that disruptive technologies like vaping are exactly that, disruptive.  Old ideas no longer work.

Maybe you should think long term and come up with a real plan instead of this "status quo" knee-jerk response.

You can pretend that decades of your own addiction research show that nicotine isn't really the problem.

You can pretend that youth vaping is the real 800 pound gorilla.

But YOU, and the FDA, over decades have taught these kids SMOKING KILLS.

Why wouldn't you expect them to JUUL?

Now you slap them in the face and say, no, we LIED, it's really the nicotine that's bad.

It's not, it's the SMOKE.

You own this...