While Juul treats the teenage vaping epidemic, the CEO tells parents

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 an "adolescent epidemic", has a message for parents whose children are addicted to 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 vapes are incredibly popular with teenagers.

The Food and Drug Administration said the vaping epidemic was an "epidemic," citing federal survey data that showed nearly 21 percent of high school students had fainted year-round. last. Former FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, and health care advocates blame Juul for the rise of adolescence.

Carl Quintanilla, of CNBC, interviewed Burns as part of a documentary titled "Vaporized: E-cigarette Addiction in America," which will be presented Monday at 10 pm. AND. 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 of all, I would tell them I'm sorry their child is using the product," said Burns, who joined Juul at the end of 2017. "That's not for them. that nothing we have done has done As a parent of a 16 year old child, I am sorry for them, and I have empathy for them, regarding the challenges that they are faced. "

The company has attempted to fight youth use by closing its social media accounts and removing fruity flavors like cream and mango from retailers. Until now, 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.

Pam Debono's daughter, Grace, found a Juul in the summer of 2017. At the age of 15, Juul was starting to take off. Pam Debono calls this "the summer of Juul", when she began to find everywhere plastic sheets that she "did not really have a clue of 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. "Like, that would always be right with me, you know, and so I always just wanted, as if I was hitting because it was so easy."

Stanford Pediatric Professor Bonnie Halpern-Felsher said her research team found that the children were "more dependent" on Juul than other products because the level of nicotine in Juul's pods was "astronomically high". Juul pods contain 5% nicotine, while others before Juul's introduction contained an average of 1 to 2.4%, according to the Truth Initiative, a nonprofit 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 point out, however, that the company's initial advertising campaign, which featured bright colors and young models, proves 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 too lifestyle-oriented, too flashy," he said. "It lasted less than six months – it was at the very beginning of the product launch – we think it had no impact on sales."

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 anymore if he has made the right decision.

"It's a good question [whether the delay was a mistake]and that's a question I'm asking myself all the time, "Gottlieb said. And we struggle with it. "

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 that it is too early to judge electronic cigarettes because there is not enough data and that they have not been around long enough to understand the effects of a long-term use.

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

Despite the unknowns, some researchers say that electronic cigarettes could help the United States. 34.3 million 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 15th at 10 pm Eastern Time.

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a contributor to CNBC.