Discussion
Palantir and other tech companies are stocking offices with tobacco products to increase worker productivity
jdross: “While the pouches are considered a tobacco product, they don’t contain any tobacco, and are instead made from the plant fiber cellulose”It’s just Zyn, which doesn’t seem that dramatically different than coffee. But maybe that’s because I don’t drink coffee or use nicotine
cush: Coffee doesn’t give you mouth cancer
SpicyLemonZest: [delayed]
awakeasleep: Now there is a perk that is going to get expensive, and boy it is going to suck when theres a downturn or new facilities manager who decides to cut back and stop offering them.
flowerbreeze: I'll take one addiction and a possible oral cancer for the company, thank you so much. No, I understand it's not guaranteed, but I am seriously flabbergasted by the careless actions of some companies...
cush: The opening line - “puff puff pass the spreadsheets” - was written by someone with absolutely no idea what that means
hirvi74: Hey, that is the kind of corporate lingo I can get behind.
alfon: Not much different than a fully stocked fridge with alcoholic beverages. Consume responsibly, we're all adults.
chasebank: Does nicotine?
stackedinserter: Do nicotine pouches give you mouth cancer?
nickmonad: I agree to a point. Although, alcohol (when consumed responsibly) has a social element to it, so companies having a "beers on Friday after 4pm" just feels different than "here's nicotine so you can be more productive and make us more money." They are serving different functions.
diacritical: Beers on Friday after 4pm is rarely done because management really cares about the employees. It's a type of team building, improves employee morale and humanizes management. All lead to improved productivity in the long term.I my boss gives me a stimulant to be more productive, especially a relatively harmless one like nicotine, I would gladly take it, as I like stimulants and am an adult capable of making decisions for myself. If I didn't, I would just refuse, just how I might refuse the free coffee by boss offers me.I doubt anyone is forcing the employees to take the stimulants. That would be bad, indeed.
dmix: > just feels different than "here's nicotine so you can be more productive and make us more money."More likely these companies just offered to give them some free vending machines and some office manager said sure why not. Not everything is a careful corporate strategy.
poplarsol: They're "tobacco products" in the same sense that Diet Coke is a "cocaine product".
paxys: Soldiers have always been given cocaine and meth to stay awake and alert during battles. Guess their tech backup will have to do with nicotine.
0x4e: This reads like an ad.
stringfood: they are horrendously addicting though which is the huge difference between nicotine and caffeine. Even though I love caffeine I can go days without it no problem (besides being slightly more tired). Habitual nicotine users tend to need to re-up every hour or so
D-Machine: I'm not sure it is actually all that clear that pure nicotine products really are so addictive as people believe. E.g. most studies claiming such addictiveness may simply be because e.g. those that get addicted to patches / gum were already addicted to cigarettes prior. See e.g. Gwern's notes on the topic.https://gwern.net/nicotine#habit-formationhttps://gwern.net/nicotine#dependence
Georgelemental: Nicotine is addictive, much more so than coffee
sph: Utter nonsense. I have replaced my ADHD prescription with nicotine patches, and in my experience I have had worse withdrawals, and greater desire to consume caffeine than either dermal nicotine or dexamfetamine. And I’m only a cup a day kinda guy, and I used to be a heavy smoker for years, so I know how dangerous the stuff can be.If we’re talking about smoking or vaping, or nicotine pouches, sure, but mode of administration and how quickly it peaks in your bloodstream cannot be hand-waved away like that.
mikestew: Utter nonsenseGot something other than anecdata? Because a web search returns a list of contrary sources as long as my arm.
giraffe_lady: Or more literally in the sense that cocaine is a narcotic. This is the legal category, not the medical one.
Spivak: Nicotine is depending on how you measure the 3rd or 4th most addictive substance on the planet. It's up there with Heroine, Fentanyl, Nicotine, Cocaine, and Meth.
cm2012: Nicotine is highly addictive but also relatively harmless. I would appreciate it provided by an employer though even though I wouldn't normally use it.
dfxm12: The article specifically mentions Lucy & Sesh. A quick Google search confirmed some suspicions:Sesh (2025): Max Cunningham is the Founder & CEO of Sesh, a nicotine pouch startup. In September 2025, Sesh raised $40 million in funding from investors including 8VC, a firm co-founded by Peter Thiel.David Renteln is the ceo of Lucy. I couldn't find a direct link between Thiel and Lucy, but it looks like Thiel has been friends with Renteln for a while and invested in Renteln's Soylent.
D-Machine: Seems a good time to link to Gwern's great writeup on why nicotine, when consumed in purer forms, may be pretty useful and not really as harmful nor as addictive as one might think.https://gwern.net/nicotine
aduffy: It's even funnier actually. Yes, Palantir does have free Zyn vending machines in every office, but the Zyn is only for visiting customers. Employees are explicitly prohibited from using the machines.Just vice signaling all the way down.
adhoc_slime: >The pouches are available for free in Palantir’s offices for employees and guests over the age of 21, a Palantir spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal. Palantir, which did not respond to requests for comment, pays to stock the products.Is the article wrong in this statement?
hilliardfarmer: Yes, palantir is lying to the press, suprise suprise!
jihadjihad: > Palantir’s move is just one of the ways biohacking has taken the Silicon Valley tech space by storm.It's not a new phenomenon, either. I remember biohacking being mentioned in the late aughts, if not earlier, and it's referenced as being part of SV culture in the 2012 novel Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore [0].0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Penumbra%27s_24-Hour_Books...
jesse_dot_id: History has taught me to wait on the science of newer products that are consumed.
still-learning: When is my corporate sponsored adderall IV drip coming in?
leetrout: I always assumed that was one of the benefits of FAANG offering onsite company doctors.
butterbomb: Funny. At least since Covid, I’ve noticed a number of employers, often at municipalities or other governments, but sometimes at private companies, are adding terms that employees cannot use any nicotine products whatsoever. What’s even stranger is the always go out of their way to explicitly note that non tobacco cessation aids are not allowed either. Seems like pure virtue signaling, though at least one person has suggested to me that the companies engaging in this are serious and go as far as blood testing.
JohnFen: This is almost always because the company gets a break on health insurance premiums for enacting such a policy.
bkummel: A fully stocked fridge with alcoholic beverages also doesn't belong in a work place.
steve_adams_86: According to several reputable sources (cancer societies around the world), it isn't known if this is a risk yet. What are you being this on?I'm not encouraging anyone to use these things, but we should only make claims that are based on evidence.
jmye: Given the long-term, widespread usage of coffee, is there something specific they're waiting on? Or is that an "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" thing?Your final statement doesn't really add value without knowing that, unless you agree that we shouldn't assume other people are actually people, and not lizards in people suits until they prove, definitively, otherwise.
46493168: What dimension of “addictive” are you anchoring on? Capture rate? Withdrawal severity? Reinforcement strength? Relapse rate after quitting? Nicotine dominates on some of those and is middling on others.
D-Machine: Pretty clear from the responses to OP that most people are quite unaware there is almost two decades of decent research on pure nicotine now, and that, outside of vaping, the purer stuff probably really isn't all that addictive, in the grand scheme of things. In many cases it is hard to even say it is much different than caffeine.
stringfood: it's like 25x more addicting than coffee, not sure how OP misses that
D-Machine: Probably not the case for some modern pure nicotine products (gum, patches). Vaping is harder to say due to lack of data and clear cases of addiction in young people, but pure nicotine is definitely a different animal than the classical delivery forms. See my response to GP.
vladvasiliu: I wonder if the issue with vapes isn't the sweeteners they put in them. I sometimes vape a specific liquid, which has never given me any cravings. I'll just stop after my bottle is done for multiple months until I remember to buy some more. I never carry my vape with me when I leave home (not to the office, not for multi-week holidays, nothing). It's not difficult to go without, I don't even think about it when I don't have it.But the other day I ended up vaping some melon-flavored liquid. When it was empty, I was going crazy for a few hours, I absolutely had to have more. And it didn't even have more nicotine than what I usually vape. It was just the sweet taste that had me wanting more, exactly like back in my college days when I was eating Snickers bars like no tomorrow. Now that was a habit that was tough to break. And most people I see vaping out in the street seem to be vaping those ultra-sweet smelling liquids.
giraffe_lady: Seriously. How many times in your life have you seen "ok ok, yah that thing was bad, sorry everyone. but this new one isn't :)"
temp0826: Cancer no, but nicotine is implicated in heart disease and other cardiovascular issues.
steve_adams_86: Is that because it's a stimulant, or is there some other known mechanism? It seems like most (maybe all) stimulants I've read about are correlated with cardiovascular issues.
nobodyandproud: I’m taking a low dose (and spread out beyond 1 week) of mounjaro.I realize the risk as GLP long term use is untested, but in my case it’s that; or deal with inevitable health problems from high BP and being only moderately overweight.I don’t see a good reason for nicotine products.
nickmonad: > It's a type of team building, improves employee morale and humanizes management. All lead to improved productivity in the long term.Yes, but the important distinction is that its intention is to bring people together face-to-face, not isolate them to their desks for continued work. Just because the end goal is "productivity" broadly speaking, doesn't mean the mechanisms are socially/morally equivalent.> I doubt anyone is forcing the employees to take the stimulants.I agree, and I hope my comment didn't imply I thought that was the case.
OutOfHere: I strongly urge against consuming any tobacco or nicotine product. At the very least, it's very bad for your heart in pretty much every form, whether pure or impure, smoked or absorbed. Besides being directly bad for the heart, nicotine also metabolizes to carcinogens.If you need a boost beyond caffeine, consider a square of 95% or 100% dark chocolate. It works. It too stresses the heart mildly, and can aggravate reflux a lot, but overall it's significantly safer than any tobacco product. You can also eat more of it if as needed.The only sane time to take pure nicotine might be if someone is dying from Covid, their lungs are collapsing, and one desperately needs a daytime breathing boost.
nobodyandproud: Any brand or store recommendations?
Jamesbeam: Bob from marketing used half a million tokens on that, you monster. He is now crying and talking to his ChatGPT therapist / boyfriend.
diacritical: I don't see how offering nicotine (or caffeine, or amphetamine) is morally wrong if it's not mandatory. In fact, given 2 companies that only differ in what they offer - free beer on Fridays for 1 hour or free stimulants all the time - I would choose the second one in a heart beat. Many people wouldn't, and that's their choice. I just don't see how one approach is better ethically than the other at all.
graybeardhacker: One could pretty easily argue that free coffee, tea, energy drinks and energy bar snacks are all productivity driven perks.
general_reveal: Big tobacco won. They realized the lobby was saying cigarettes were bad for the lungs, so they … fixed that with a vape product. Still addictive as shit. Hah! Oh, and now the Zyn.Which industry has the most to gain from these products? We’re living in some weird time period where value systems are regressing.
karmakurtisaani: In this time and age going against proven scientific knowledge or even basic decency signals toughness and manliness. It works particularly well on deeply insecure men who need to prove their masculinity, and boy is there an endless supply of those in the US.
general_reveal: Sounds like the same demographic the Taliban targets, vulnerable and impressionable men. It’s a really neglected group from a human-rearing perspective. More needs to be done, and to bring it back to vaping and zyn, that was one hell of a marketing psy op they pulled on the current generations to get them back into tobacco. Our kids need a lot more support from the external onslaught of general wrongness.
red-iron-pine: it is. but boy howdy wait until you read the rest of the comments.that said, this is a site run by venture capitalists -- flogging product is a given
marcosdumay: During battles the calculations around health are completely different.Are the Palantir headquarters inside an active war zone?
red-iron-pine: lord knows they're trying to be
lores: That's unnecessarily cynical. I've been in plenty of companies where the staff, managers included, enjoy going for a pint together. I'm in the UK, maybe it's cultural.
Spivak: Can you point to said research because everything I can find from any kind of authoritative source is that form doesn't matter and nicotine is strongly addictive in all of them.There is like zero messaging out there from anything resembling a health organization that says, "nicotine in purer forms is okay actually."
46493168: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/addiction-outlook/20...The delivery system modulates speed and magnitude of the hit, which affects how rapidly and how strongly dependence forms, but every form produces dependence with sustained use.There isn’t anyone who is going to say “nicotine in purer forms is okay actually” because there isn’t anyone who is tasked with answering such a broad question.Also, be careful not to shift the frame. Spivak ranked nicotine with other drugs. You changed the framing to “all are highly addictive.” These are different assertions, and both can be true at the same time. That’s why it’s more important and more interesting to discuss it in terms of addiction subtypes
gethly: bullshit. i've been smoking cigars for 5 years now. sometimes 2 or 3 a day and have zero issues stopping or going without a smoke for months. i was surprised as i was never smoker, but it is what it is. nicotine addiction is not nicotine addiction but cigarette addiction. cigars are pure tobacco. nothing else. cigarettes have over thousand ingredients in them. cigars also have higher nicotine dose than cigarettes and as i have said, zero issues.know thy enemy.
zingababba: It is bullshit. Stopping nicotine is like 2 days of mild discomfort. Stopping caffeine is absolute hell.
gethly: as i said, nictoine is a non-factor. as for caffeine, i quit multiple times. once the headaches are gone, which takes a week or two, followed by another week, or few, of feeling lethargic, it is back to normal(ie. give it a month altogether). so it's not too bad. it might be also easier to wean off slowly by decreasing caffeine consumption over longer period than quitting cold turkey to avoid the negative effects altogether.
duxup: Why are these guys so fucking weird?Like being a selfish prick of a CEO is whatever, wrong but money I get it. But this other stuff like signaling with tobacco? What social media rabbit hole makes tobacco seem like something to spend money on??? Are all these guys actively “twitter poisoned”, like they’re really into this weird shit like excessively worrying about other people’s genitalia or anti christ shit?https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opinion/trump-musk-kanye-...
robocat: > which has never given me any cravingsI've seen multiple friends that could give up an addiction: until after a while and then they couldn't.For many people, addictions are not that addictive until they are.Be careful generalizing from your own experiences. Try and learn from the mistakes your (often older) peers have been taught the hardest way.I've seen it with drinking, vaping, smoking, meth, bad partner, gambling; my friends that weren't hooked, could take it or leave it, and then one day they find they are hooked.Take care.
padjo: Habitually taking vasoconstrictors is almost certainly a bad idea.
dariosalvi78: biohacking? it's snus and it's dangerous: https://www.fhi.no/en/publ/2019/health-risks-from-snus-use2/
ac29: snus is tobacco, these nicotine pouches have no tobacco (its just nicotine and wood fiber)
D-Machine: It is really not so clear at all this is the case for pure nicotine products. See https://gwern.net/nicotine#habit-formation, and https://gwern.net/nicotine#dependence for a starter / some brief counter-evidence.
yepguy: Anecdotally, I found I developed a dependence on nicotine pouches very quickly. It was also very easy to exceed the nicotine equivalent of a pack of cigarettes daily without even noticing.But it was also easy to quit by substituting nicotine-free pouches, and withdrawal symptoms only lasted like 3 days.
