The vaping company that “treated nicotine as a fashion accessory” may soon be snuffed out, said Lauren Etter in Bloomberg Businessweek.
The Food & Drug Administration last week banned Juul, the popular electronic cigarette, from U.S. store shelves, potentially delivering “a death blow to an American company that just a few years ago had attained a $38 billion value and dominated more than 70 percent of the market.”
Juul broke onto the scene in 2015 as “the brainchild of two Stanford grads” who rewrote Big Tobacco’s playbook. Through social media and sleek marketing, they hooked a new generation of kids on “atomized nicotine” delivered in a chrome shell — in 2019, “almost 30 percent of high school students reported using e-cigarettes, mostly Juul.” However, “it wasn’t the company’s appeal to young people” that triggered its dismissal. The FDA blamed “insufficient and conflicting data” related to chemicals that could leach from Juul’s pods. For now, a federal judge has stayed the order while Juul appeals.
The Week – 2022-07-03.
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