
A Stanford Professor Says Juul Stole Her Anti-Vaping PowerPoint Slides - hhs
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/stanford-juul-vaping-curriculum
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EdwardDiego
As a reformed smoker who moved to vaping, I'm terribly concerned at the
current marketing of vaping to teens, and the uptake within that age bracket
in my country (NZ).

I switched because my nicotine addiction isn't an easy one to break, and
vaping is significantly cheaper (our government increases excise taxes on
tobacco annually, so currrently $30 NZD buys me a pack of 20 cigarette that I
smoke in a day, or it buys me a bottle of vape juice that lasts 2 weeks).

And I'm a big fan of vaping for the economic and (so far as we know currently)
health benefits for smokers.

But what really concerns me, is the number of young people who would never
smoke due to the (successful! and good on the Ministry of Health for doing so)
demonisation of cigarette smoking, who are instead happily vaping away.

It seems apparent from the marketing that Big Tobacco has realised where their
next big market lies - young people who don't want to smoke, but will vape if
you tell them it's healthy and cool. At the end of the day, you're still
getting people addicted to nicotine for money. Yes, bonus that there's less
cancer involved, but it' still a monetised addiction.

My preference would be for vape liquids containing nicotine to be prescription
only for recovering smokers. If kids want to blow watermelon vapour out of
their lungs, go nuts, just don't do it with a known addictive substance in the
mix.

~~~
lovehashbrowns
> My preference would be for vape liquids containing nicotine to be
> prescription only for recovering smokers.

Isn't this going to make the argument for making teens smoke cigarettes so
they can get access to vaping with nicotine? And before you say "they're not
going to go that far," we can also have a conversation about what underage
people will do to get access to alcohol.

Also, I'm especially humored by people wanting to put legal restrictions on
things like vaping but wont have that same discussion about alcohol, which imo
is much more harmful. Alcohol literally is: Yes, bonus that there's less
cancer involved, but it' still a monetized addiction.

~~~
adjkant
I think the flaw in that flow is that no one cares about nicotine, they just
want vaping. As long as vaping without nicotine exists, there's no reason to
go after the other version. Unless you're already addicted, and in that case,
I'd say let's get them the prescription as well.

~~~
barry-cotter
Yeah, and I smoked for more than a decade for the great taste and flavor.
People vape for nicotine. It’s habit forming, pleasant, either compatible with
or actively helpful for normal social and working.

Like caffeine. People say they don’t drink tea or coffee for caffeine but
there might be one person who drinks decaf or no caffeine tea or coffee with
the regularity of all the addicts who know perfectly well that they drink it
most every day and feel crap if they don’t.

~~~
adjkant
If you don't get hooked to start, no habit forming needed. Isn't the point to
stop the cycle? You also have to remember that these are teens as young as 9th
grade that are doing it for social reasons. Let them play around with some
flavored vapor (which seems safe so far, needing more regulation) and walk
away without an addition.

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dehrmann
The title (from BuzzFeedNews) leaves out that the slides were plagiarized by
Juul, then Juul _paid_ schools to teach them, all while name-dropping The
Farm.

I'm trying to tease apart how much of the plagiarism is to be expected when
you're an academic, whether Juul was being more manipulative or lazy, and is
paying schools to teach this a token gesture, an insult, or inception
marketing.

~~~
jdsully
> how much of the plagiarism is to be expected when you're an academic

Last I checked academics have the same rights under copyright as the rest of
us.

~~~
dehrmann
IANAL, but it's complicated because this was(?) produced as part of her
employment by Stanford, so arguably Juul took Stanford's work. Stanford is
private, it can do what it wants, but what about public universities? Should
the public own the IP they fund? IP created by public employees in the US are
often released into the public domain. What if a professor from a private
school got a government grant? I'm not sure how settled any of this is
legally.

~~~
geofft
Not just "released" \- works created by federal officers and employees cannot
be copyrighted in the first place. But public universities are run by
states/territories/etc., not by the federal government, and there's no such
restriction on state governments.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_subnational_governments_of_the_United_States)

Another interesting case: works done by government _contractors_ are eligible
for copyright protection, and the copyright can be transferred to the
government, which is, I think, how parts of OpenStack can be copyrighted by
NASA. By that argument, professors (or anyone else) with government grants
should definitely be able to copyright their work and keep copyright.

There's certainly an increasingly-popular argument that publicly-funded
research work should be publicly accessible / open access, but there's no law
or even norm about it yet.

~~~
dehrmann
> There's certainly an increasingly-popular argument that publicly-funded
> research work should be publicly accessible

JSTOR. Because you should pay for it twice.

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aaomidi
For the people here who are thinking teens are doing this for taste, etc.

Ask yourself how much more existential crises kids these days are facing.

Global warming is happening and the adults aren't doing anything.

They're seeing their family get crushed by medical debt and the adults aren't
doing anything. Not only that they're actively voting for people who support
the current system.

The world is fucked for these people and the adults are blaming stuff like how
it tastes instead of the structural issues these kids are going through.

~~~
barry-cotter
You’ve heard of the bomb, right? From 1950 to the end of the Cold War every
thinking person knew there was an excellent chance that’s they and everyone
they knew could die along with the rest of civilization.

Before WW2 even the richest society in world history, the US, was by modern
standards fairly poor. People died of diseases we just don’t worry about now
because we have antibiotics.

This generation is not special. Everyone has to deal with shit.

~~~
foobar1962
> This generation is not special. Everyone has to deal with shit.

When the Falklands War started in 1982, and the British warship was sunk, I
seriously thought this was the start of WW3. So yeah, the shit was there too.

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lazylizard
Hey. I agree with smoking zones and so on. But why the trend towards bans? I
want to die young.

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WilliamEdward
In 50 years we will look back on Juuls the same way we look back on cigarettes
today.

~~~
refurb
I wish we were taking a much more harm-reduction focus like they are in the
UK.

From the NHS website...

 _Leading health organisations including the Royal College of General
Practitioners, British Medical Association and Cancer Research UK agree that
e-cigarettes are far less harmful than smoking. Based on the currently
available evidence, Public Health England and the Royal College of Physicians
estimate they are at least 95% less harmful._

~~~
Clubber
Yes, seems the UK is the only sane government on this. The US has gone
absolutely hysterical on the subject. Ban is our only tool, and everything is
a nail. Think of the fucking children, for GOD's sake! Puritanical roots
probably has something to do with it.

When I was a child, Reagan kicked off the drug war into high gear to protect
me. Millions incarcerated, even more families ruined. I wish he hadn't. We
were hysterical then too.

~~~
apta
Money, greed, and ignorance are at play here. If they truly "cared about the
children", they'd ban smoking altogether.

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suyash
Stealing other peoples work (including orignal slides) is not okay, specially
without credits and/or permission.

~~~
Retric
Editing that work and then trying to pass it off as a collaboration is IMO
even worse.

~~~
hyfgfh
I had multiple college professors doing the same thing... but the first
lecture was always about plagiarism.

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pesfandiar
"Company in tobacco industry that tries to get children addicted plagiarizes
slides"

Relatively nice journalism by Buzzfeed, but I think there are better topics to
report on Juul if you're appealing to ethics.

~~~
chottocharaii
It seems you didn't read the article closely.

They didn't just plagiarize the slides, they neutered them, and then attempted
to pass them off as Stanford endorsed research; all without permission from
the author.

~~~
pesfandiar
I did read the article. All that is just a more unethical strain of plagiarism
to me. I however agree with the other comment below that this report could go
toward painting a full picture of what kind of company we're dealing with.

