[ad_1]
Jomie Raymond was in an office in Los Angeles with a syringe, cracking juul capsules and sucking juice for analysis. It was early in 2016 and Raymond and three other 20- to 20-year-olds were creating a company called Solace Technologies, which manufactured flavored vape juice for refillable electronic cigarettes. And they were determined to analyze the recipe for the meteoric success of the giant e-cigarette, Juul.
The San Francisco-based Juul vaping company made the headlines because of its recent $ 15 billion valuation and its alarming popularity among teenagers. Sales increased by 641% between 2016 and 2017, according to a report by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), in physical stores. A recent Wells Fargo Securities analysis showed that Juul controlled over 70% of the estimated $ 6.6 billion worth of e-cigarettes. But with more success, there is increased surveillance from Juul's dependent users who sue the company and the Food and Drug Administration.
Just last week, Juul announced its intention to stop offering traditional products with child-friendly flavors to traditional stores, and pledged to keep quiet on social media to prevent the success of the popular vape. to spread. In the wake of this announcement, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) released data showing a 78% increase in high school vaping and 48% in colleges. The agency also announced its intention to limit sales of flavored products suitable for children in places only accessible to people over 18 years.
Public health officials and concerned parents are not the only ones to look closely at Juul: the company's competitors are too, and some may be less scrupulous than others. Juul has filed a lawsuit against more than 15 companies that she says violate her patent. This list does not include Solace, which has been described for the first time by Inc. in May 2018. Even before Raymond began opening Juul's capsules to analyze the liquid in it, he looked at the company's patent to try to avoid a legal battle with the vaping giant. . "They're doing something special, they're a pretty big company, they'd have it patented," he says.
Raymond's patented research told him that Juul's special sauce had something to do with his patented nicotine formulation, called JuulSalts, which is more commonly known as nicotine salts. It's the same version of nicotine that predominates in the smoke produced by most cigarettes, and that's why Juul hits like a cigarette instead of a cigar. Nicotine in nicotine salts is ionized, which means that it carries a slight positive charge. This makes it less volatile and less hard.
Nicotine is a form of nicotine that is more prevalent in other modes of treatment – as well as in cigars and pipe tobacco – that can stick to the smoker's upper respiratory tract and make him cough. Big Tobacco discovered decades ago that nicotine-free base makes blowing a cigar much harder than inhaling cigarette smoke. And that's probably why the salt-based products may contain a greater dose of nicotine, according to David Peyton, a professor of chemistry at Portland State University. "You can have a less hard vape than you can with Freebase with the same nicotine content," he says. "Combine that with the addiction that will follow with such a high dose of nicotine."
Unlike the nicotine salts found in cigarettes, JuulSalts is not manufactured by drying tobacco leaves with heat. Instead, Juul mixes the nicotine base free with an acid, triggering a chemical reaction that produces the salts. Juul uses benzoic acid, although its patent also covers a wide range of acids. Raymond and his three co-founders of Solace started with acetic acid, which is essentially concentrated vinegar. "Here we are all excited to go," Oh, shit. Okay, acetic is that. Maybe that is this evidence, "he says.
This was not the case. "It was very, very bad," says Raymond. "It was literally like inhaling vinegar." Co-founder, Brendan McDermott, explains that they even tried to mix pure vinegar from the grocery store. Both say the results were horrible. "It was horrible, I'm not a vinegar fan to start with, but I will never forget it," says McDermott.
Undeterred, the team continued their experiments using themselves as test subjects. They mixed liquid nicotine – which is a poison – with different acids and inhaled. "We were mixing all these things together and we did not really know what it would do," says McDermott. "I had this picture in mind as a Bill Nye experience."
When they found the right combination, Raymond and McDermott knew from the moment they inspired. "You immediately felt it in your veins," says McDermott. But even when they found the right mixture (they will not say what it is), the salts did not take off immediately. "Nobody knew what we were talking about. Everyone thought we were trying to sell them salt-flavored vape juice, "says Raymond.
Today, more than two years later, the company has become too small for its Los Angeles office and has expanded to a Simi Valley plant. This is not the only small start-up to break into the nicotine salt space, but Raymond thinks it will take bigger competitors to face Juul. "Big Juul is kind of untouchable, at least for the moment," says Raymond. "They are the size where their only competitor is Big Tobacco."
Big Tobacco is the old guard of the nicotine addiction market. The slightly acidic smoke produced by brightening their most popular products, cigarettes, already contains nicotine salts. But these titans of the industry are still only small potatoes in the world of the e-cigarette. Their vows are constantly losing to Juul, a newborn baby.
British American Tobacco (BAT), for example, is the parent company of well-known cigarette brands such as Camel and Pall Malls, as well as Vuse's vape range in the United States (marketed in the United States by Reynolds American). According to a recent CDC analysis, BAT's vape products dominated electronic cigarette sales from 2014 to the end of 2017 before being overtaken by Juul. But BAT began using nicotine salts before Juul gained ground, said spokeswoman Joanne Walia The edge in an email. "They have been integrated into our Vuse e-liquid in the United States since 2012," she says. "So, to be clear – not in response to Juul."
Other companies are a bit later, like Philip Morris International (PMI), which sells Marlboro cigarettes overseas. Marlboro is marketed by Philip Morris USA, a separate entity owned by tobacco giant Altria. Even before the FDA announcement last week, Altria had reduced its offer of flavored vaping products to physical stores. But he continues to sell his MarkTen Bold Classic and Bold Menthol products, which "are the only MarkTen aroma variants that use nicotine salts," according to an email from David Sutton, spokesman for the company.
Philip Morris International, on the other hand, does not currently sell any nicotine-containing products in the United States, according to Corey Henry, spokesman for the company. But he hopes to enter the market soon. PMI is waiting for permission from the FDA to sell a device called IQOS, which heats, rather than burns, short, densely filled tobacco bottles. PMI is also developing a product in the form of a nicotine salt vapor called STEEM – known internally as Platform 3 – André Calantzopoulos, CEO of Philip Morris International The edge in an interview.
While small businesses like Solace focus on the chemistry of their competitors, Calantzopoulos does not care about Juul's patent. "There is no particular know-how or patent around Juul," he says. He would argue that Juul's advantage is not necessarily salt; it's the mark. "Juul was the first real" brand "in the electronic cigarette market. But I do not think Juul has a technological or innovative advantage, "he says. "You can create a nicotine salt in 50 different ways. Just add an acid with nicotine to create a salt. "
But Juul's hit brand is under fire from critics. The increasing pressure from the FDA and Juul's recent decision to cut the supply of her fruit and dessert flavored pods to traditional stores may have the effect of making it easier for her competitors. This is what James Campbell, spokesman for Fontem Ventures, which markets Blu e-cigs, said The edge in an email earlier this month when rumors about FDA projects have been reported. "We will come out as competitive or more competitive than before."
Fontem Ventures is a subsidiary of the tobacco company Imperial Brands, PLC, behind the electronic cigarettes Blu and myBlu. Unlike the original myBlu flavor pods, which used nicotine freebase, myBlu Intense flavored pods contain nicotine salts that are created by combining nicotine freebase with lactic acid. According to Grant O'Connell, head of scientific affairs at Imperial Brands, nicotine salts can penetrate deeper into the lungs than the free base, where nicotine is absorbed more quickly. With the typical vape freebase base juice, he says, "When you activate your e-cigarette and inhale this aerosol, you notice in your mouth that the free base evaporates from the aerosol droplets."
This means, according to O'Connell, that Freebase fluid releases less nicotine into the lungs and more nicotine into the upper airways, where it is absorbed more slowly into the body. This slower absorption does not give the same effect as a cigarette, which makes these products less attractive to smokers than those who use nicotine salts. With these, he says, "we can more closely mimic a nicotine distribution similar to a cigarette."
Fontem, Juul and their competitors all want to get as close as possible to the experience of smoking to seduce smokers. "Like many new technology companies in Silicon Valley, our growth is the result of a superior product that disrupts an archaic industry," said Victoria Davis, Juul spokesperson. The edge in an e-mail, echoing the previous statements. "When adult smokers find an effective alternative to smoking, they talk to other adult smokers."
But we have already seen how the call could escalate into addiction when we talked about products containing nicotine. This dependence can be painful: Juul users across the country sued the company, alleging that the vapes had made them hooked. We do not yet know whether nicotine salts are significantly more or less addictive than the nicotine-free form. We are still waiting for rigorous independent studies and we may be waiting a bit. The most compelling version of these studies would require that people who do not use nicotine try various products to identify addicts, says Peyton of the state of Portland. "Boy, it might be difficult to get the review committee's approval to do this study."
On the other hand, vapes are considered less risky than adult smoking cigarettes – although much remains to be learned about these largely unregulated products. That is, they really help people quit smoking, and according to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, the jury still has not answered the question. The truth is we do not know yet.
It is a double-edged sword that the FDA is forced to rely on, based on evidence that children are out of breath in record numbers. They want adults to stop smoking, but they do not want kids to start using nicotine, and these products have the potential to do both. The new restrictions imposed by the agency on flavored products will reduce Juul's bottom line, but it remains to be seen whether it will equalize the odds for its competitors. No matter how you cut the cake from the electronic cigarette market, salts give electronic cigarettes a more conventional feel – for better or for worse.
Source link
