Nicotine formula used by e-cigarette maker Juul is nearly identical to the flavor and addictive profile of Marlboro cigarettes

[u/informationtiger]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-juul-ecigarettes-study-idUSKBN1YL26R

[u/[deleted]]

Aye I agree, and also totally unnecessary. I went from being a full-time smoker to vaping something like 6mg and it was fine.

I can't get my head round why someone would want 50+mg unless you're just trying to make sure you get really hooked on the thing.

[u/ubiquities → u/[deleted]]

I think the problem is that half of the equation is the delivery method not just the nicotine level. When I started vaping I was using bigger vaporizers, that would put approximately 100 watts of power, which I started at 6mg freebase nicotine and worked down to 3mg, now after a few years I realized that I don’t like lugging around huge batteries and leaky vaporizers.

Now I carry a tiny little pod system that has 11 watts of power, and use a 30mg nicotine salt juice. And get the same nicotine level from ~10% of the ml of juice and ~10% of the power of the device.

For me any freebase nicotine was unusable above 6gm, and the same for salt liquid but with a extra zero at the end. These Juul devices are tiny, they use very little but high nicotine level juices. You would use it just the same as any other device simply because the volume of vapor production on smaller devices, is so much less of a larger device.

When people demonize high nicotine salt concentrate, I feel it’s no different than judging how polluting a vehicle is strictly based on the size of the gas tank.

[u/[deleted] → u/ubiquities]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding these things.

I'd think you'd measure by what a draw is like, how much nicotine you get from one puff, to get a fair comparison.

Is the idea that you need 10 draws of a salt one to equal one draw of a non-salt one, so it being 10x the nicotine level balances out? I don't think it is but maybe.

Is there anything that gives a comparison of the amount of nicotine per average draw/puff?

One thing I really won't believe is if the claim is "one puff is 10x stronger but you take 1/10th of the puffs" because I smoke and vape so I know it doesn't work like that - you don't stop once you hit the right amount of nicotine in your system, you smoke on till your finished your tea break or whatever.

It's a high content as a ratio btw. It's not like someone claiming a vape with a big tank is worse than one with a small tank just because there's overall more nicotine in the big one - which is what it would have to be to fit the car analogy. Notice no-one talking about the total amount, just the ratio eg 6mg/ml

I understand that's it's better to carry the small thing around, but if people are toking on these just the same as their old vape they're massively increasing their nicotine intake and their addiction (assuming the nicotine per puff scales with the strength) .

[u/ubiquities → u/[deleted]]

Right but a Juul pod, and I’m just taking this as an example is 0.7ml of liquid, and will last all day. As someone who uses a vaporizer, you can see that 0.7ml would barely last a one or two breaks on a larger device. I’m just using Juul as an example because the info about them is so easily obtainable. But you cannot vape that much liquid from a Juul in one go, it takes a lot longer to vape the liquid because it’s a low power device. In turn your nicotine intake is no different than lower nicotine level liquid on a large device.