Highlights of history

  • Juul CEO Kevin Burns said he would say to parents whose children are dependent on Juul's electronic cigarette: "I'm sorry."
  • Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb blamed Juul for a "vaping epidemic".
  • CNBC is investigating the e-cigarette debate in a documentary titled "Vaporized: American's E-cigarette Addiction."

Kevin Burns, CEO of Juul Labs – the maker of the best electronic cigarette in the United States and the center of the federal authorities' crackdown on what they call a "teenager epidemic" – has a message for parents whose children are dependent on his company's products: "I'm sorry."

Since its launch in 2015, Juul has quickly dominated the e-cigarette industry with around 40% of the market. He became such a dominant player that Altria, the largest US cigarette manufacturer, invested $ 12.8 billion to acquire 35% of San Francisco's capital. startups.

But society has a problem: its vows are incredibly popular with teenagers.

The Food and Drug Administration said that adolescence was an "epidemic," citing federal survey data that showed that nearly 21 percent of high school students had been vaping last year. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and health care advocates blame Juul for increasing the number of young adolescents

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Carl Quintanilla of CNBC interviewed Burns in a documentary titled "Vaporized: American's E-cigarette Addiction," which airs on Monday at 10 pm EDT Quintanilla, who visited one of Juul's manufacturing facilities in Wisconsin with Burns, asked him what he would say to a parent with a child addicted to Juul.

"First, I would tell them I'm sorry their child is using the product," said Burns, who joined Juul at the end of 2017. "It's not for them. I hope nothing we have done has made it attractive. As a parent of a 16 year old, I feel sorry for them and empathize with them about the challenges they face. "

The company has attempted to fight youth use by closing its social media accounts and removing fruity flavors like cream and mango from retailers. So far, this has not stopped the critics. The company's hometown, San Francisco, banned e-cigarette sales last month.

Electronic cigarettes are sold to adults to help them stop smoking while maintaining their dose of nicotine. But they are under fire from critics in recent months for their growing popularity among teens. Federal data reveal that about 3 million American high school students let themselves be dumped last year. This is causing e-cigarettes to create a new generation of nicotine after decades of declining cigarette consumption rates.

"It would always be in my hands"

Pam Debono's daughter, Grace, took a Juul in the summer of 2017. At the age of 15, Juul was starting to take off. Debono calls it "Juul's summer," when she began to find everywhere in plastic covers that she "did not really have a clue what they were."

Grace told CNBC that one of her friends had bought the Juul pods and devices at a gas station. The two girls were 15 years old at the time. Grace said that she would hit Juul at dawn and that she would be blowing all day, examining a nicotine pod a day – about as much as nicotine from a pack of cigarettes.

"It would always be in my hands," she said. "As if, it would always be right with me, you know? That's why I always touched, because it was so easy. "

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Stanford Pediatric Professor, Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, said her research team had discovered that children were "more dependent" on Juul than other products because the level of nicotine in Juul capsules was " astronomically high ". between about 1% and 2.4% on average, according to the Truth Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the eradication of tobacco. Since then, the company has introduced lower doses containing 3% nicotine for some of its flavors.

Juul says her products are for adults, not for minors like Grace. The company supports raising the minimum age of smoking to 21 to prevent teens from buying their electronic cigarettes.

Juul's critics cite the company's initial advertising campaign, which featured bright colors and young models, as evidence that Juul fueled the wave of teenage vaping. Co-founder Adam Bowen said retrospectively that the ads were "inappropriate".

"When we launched Juul, we had a campaign that was too lifestyle-oriented and too flashy," he said. "It lasted less than six months. It was at the beginning of the product introduction. We think that it had no impact on sales. "

How the FDA Involves

Gottlieb, the former FDA commissioner, said the wave of teenage vapotages had surprised the FDA. During his stay at the agency, Gottlieb postponed a key deadline that would have already forced e-cigarettes to be reviewed by the FDA and could have removed some of the market. He does not know if he has made the right decision.

"It's a good question [whether the delay was a mistake]and that's a question I ask myself all the time, "said Gottlieb. "And we are fighting with her."

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The FDA review process requires the agency to weigh the net benefit to public health – which means that it must weigh the number of adults who will benefit from it in relation to the number of adolescents likely to be harmed – when deciding to leave the products on the market.

In 2017, Gottlieb has postponed the deadline to 2022 from 2018. After noticing the increase in the use of teenagers in the fall, he changed the number of children in the year. ; opinion. Before retiring in April, one of his last moves was to extend the deadline to one year.

Courts can force the agency to work even faster. A federal judge has agreed to public health groups that have sued the FDA for failing to fulfill its public duty.

Some say it is too early to judge electronic cigarettes because there is not enough data and they do not have enough time to understand the effects of long-term use.

"Frankly, we do not know [the impact of chronic vaping] Today, said Burns, the CEO of Juul. "We have not performed the long-term longitudinal clinical tests that we need to do."

Despite the unknowns, some researchers have claimed that electronic cigarettes could help the 34.3 million American smokers. Regulators in the UK are actively encouraging smokers to give up their cigarettes for the benefit of electronic cigarettes, while the debate in the United States is much more controversial.

"Vaporized: America's E-cigarette Addiction" airs on CNBC on Monday, July 15 at 10 pm EDT.

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a contributor to CNBC.

© CNBC is a USA TODAY Content Partner providing financial information and feedback. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

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