Smoking Equals Death, So Why Is It Cool Again?

Summary

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Infamous – "Smoking Equals Death, So Why Is It Cool Again?"

Date: October 16, 2025
Hosts: Vanessa Grigoriadis, Gabriel Sherman, Natalie Robehmed
Producer Introduction: Lily Houston Smith

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Episode Overview

This episode of Infamous dives into the resurgence of smoking's cultural cachet and the rapid evolution of nicotine consumption—from combustible cigarettes to vaping juggernauts like Juul and its successors. Hosts Vanessa Grigoriadis and Natalie Robehmed trace how, despite decades of anti-smoking efforts and the advent of supposedly safer nicotine-delivery devices, both vaping and smoking are experiencing a renewed mainstream popularity, especially among youth. The conversation brings together first-person reporting, regulatory perspectives, and industry analysis—including expert insights from Dr. Robert Jackler, a Stanford anti-tobacco advocate, and Clive Bates, a public health consultant with a harm-reduction approach.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Cultural Comeback of Smoking

• [01:05] Producer Lily Houston Smith sets the stage:
  • Smoking's visual resurgence in pop culture (TV, movies, celebrities).
  • Notable recent on-screen smokers: Dakota Johnson ("Materialists"), the cast of "The Bear," and "Just Like That." Pop stars like Charli XCX signal a kind of glamorization.
• Smith wonders if smoking’s return is a backlash against hyper-health trends: “It seems... smoking’s re-emergence might be a cultural backlash to the hyper healthy Erewhon lifestyle, a rejection of protein maxing and intermittent fasting, or at least a cigarette-length break from it.” [01:39]

2. From Cigarettes to Vaping: The Rise (and Fall?) of Juul

• [02:59] Natalie Robehmed on vape ubiquity:
  • Vaping is “everywhere in a big way … I’ve seen people vape on trains, in restaurants, at bars, just puffing away mid-conversation.”
• The early e-cigarettes weren’t “cool,” but big, clunky, and visually unappealing, which stunted their mainstream impact.
• Juul, launched in 2015, “made vaping sleek, convenient and cool. Ditched the bulky boxes and lame cigarette mimics for a small, high-tech black device that looked almost like a USB.” [04:30]
• Juul’s meteoric rise:
  • “In the past year, Juul sales have skyrocketed almost 800%.” [04:54]
  • By 2018, Juul controlled “72% of the e-cigarette market … $38 billion, that’s Juul’s latest valuation.” [04:57] (Dr. Robert Jackler quoting data)

3. Juul’s Targeting of Youth & The “Youth Vaping Epidemic”

• Juul’s initial strategy included “seemingly kid-friendly flavors like mango and crème brûlée,” with lawsuits alleging targeted advertising on websites for children, such as Nick Jr. “[Juul] arguably kicked off what’s called the youth vaping epidemic, where students are vaping in the playground, in the hallways, even in class.” [05:34]
• According to the FDA (2024): “about 8% of high school students in the US said that they did currently smoke e-cigarettes…in countries with data on the subject, children are about nine times more likely than adults to vape.” [06:20]

4. Expert Insight: Dr. Robert Jackler on Juul’s Ethics and Design

• Jackler’s team interviewed Juul co-founder James Monseys. Monseys acknowledged using “Stanford’s tobacco advertising resource” to inform Juul’s marketing.
  • “When we were deciding how to market Juul, it was very helpful to us to be able to look at how the tobacco industry marketed.” [08:08]
• Jackler:
  • Juul’s “stealthy” design enabled concealed use among teens: “They had a very small vaporizer that didn’t look at all like a smoking device…if it was left on the bedside stand of a teenager, a parent wouldn’t recognize it as a smoking device. Also, it’s so small it can fit in your pocket…” [09:45]
  • On potency: “One little Juulpod… packs the same nicotine wallop into the user’s bloodstream as an entire pack of 20 Marlboro cigarettes.” [11:49]
  • The unintended consequence: “I do hold them accountable for hooking a large number. About 6 million American youth were using Juul.” [11:33]
• Jackler contends Juul’s founders “started with noble intentions”—wanting to help smokers quit by offering a less harmful alternative—but financial success changed priorities:
  • “As with so many Silicon Valley companies… as the money rolls in and they become very successful, it becomes more about the financial success than the implications to the population.” [12:46]

5. Are Vapes Actually Safer? The Health Question

• Jackler warns that while tar is removed, “There’s nothing especially natural about breathing propylene glycol and glycerin mist with all these flavoring chemicals in your lungs over and over. … We will not know the effect of routine e-cigarette uses for 20, 30, 40 years.” [16:05]
• He notes a possible "gateway effect": Vaping hooks teens on nicotine, making them more likely to seek it from other sources, including cigarettes.
• He criticizes US regulatory inaction: “The regulations so far in America, at least the federal government, has really not been effective in helping to protect young people.” [17:26]

6. Big Tobacco Jumps Aboard—and the Regulatory Backlash

• In 2018, Altria (parent of Philip Morris) invested $12.8 billion for a 35% stake in Juul.
  • Jackler: “What Juul proved is you could make money with vapor products…this is part of a master plan to dominate and really to reverse the worldwide downward trend in cigarette use.” [18:03]
• Government clampdown:
  • In 2022, the FDA issued a full ban on the sale of all Juul products; later, Juul paid out almost half a billion dollars to settle underage marketing suits. [18:46]

7. Alternate Perspective: Harm Reduction with Clive Bates

• Bates, former Director of Action on Smoking and Health (UK), argues for pragmatic harm reduction:
  • “If you could separate the problem of smoke from the behavioral use of nicotine, which is the reason why people smoke, then you could potentially save thousands, maybe millions of lives.” [19:43]
  • “The drug itself (nicotine) is relatively benign. It’s not responsible for cancer, heart disease, obstructive lung disease…” [20:33]
  • “The World Health Organization has tried to characterize vaping as essentially a tobacco industry ploy, a gambit to hook kids and get them into the smoking franchise…” [21:18]
• Bates is sharply critical of the anti-vaping stance taken by many public health agencies, attributing it in part to funding and “policy priors” from major philanthropists like Michael Bloomberg:
  • “Bloomberg is all over this landscape and has quite strong policy priors… Michael Bloomberg himself is on the record as being in favor of prohibiting outright vaping.” [22:25]
• Bates unpacks panics of the late 2010s:
  • "The lung injury outbreak ... was nothing to do with nicotine vaping at all. ... At the time it was spun and understood to be a consequence of vaping." [23:58]

8. Juul’s Real Impact: Contrasting Narratives

• Vanessa challenges Bates: Has Juul been unfairly villainized?
• Bates’s nuanced response:
  • “Juul set off with a tech company, Silicon Valley mindset…let’s go for it.” [28:08]
  • “The data on Juul switching smokers and reducing cigarette consumption is amazing … there was a period of accelerated decline in cigarette consumption in the United States…largely attributable to the rise of Juul.” [29:00]
  • “Juul’s secret is that they created a nicotine experience that was not quite, but nearly equivalent to using a cigarette … in a form that was small, relatively inexpensive, convenient.” [29:25]
  • “I suspect Juul has done more for smoking cessation than any other company, pharma or any other, in the history of smoking in the United States.” [30:00]
  • But: “Juul did do some stupid things. Some of their marketing was too youth orientated…But I think there’s a very strong upside story…” [30:59]

9. Where Are We Now? Vaping’s New Phase

• Juul’s brand collapse hasn’t ended youth vaping. “These days, Juul is basically over. The vaping very much lives on ... That’s Elf Bar, which according to the FDA is the brand of choice for more than a third of the high schoolers who use E-cigarettes.” [31:34]
• Robehmed’s closing reflection: “Vaping seems, or at least seemed, like a healthy alternative to a traditional vice ... But at the end of the day, whether it’s really better for you, the jury’s out on that. It might just be another vice in a different form.” [32:20]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Lily Houston Smith (on the smoking comeback):
  • “Smoking cigarettes is well and truly cool again. We might have Charli XCX to thank for that.”
  • [01:19]
• Dr. Robert Jackler (on Juul copying big tobacco):
  • “Monseys said to me, ‘Thank you so much for your wonderful Stanford tobacco advertising resource, because when we were deciding how to market Juul, it was very helpful to us to be able to look at how the tobacco industry marketed.’” [08:15]
  • “One little Juulpod, little tiny pod, packs the same nicotine wallop…as an entire pack of 20 Marlboro cigarettes.” [11:49]
  • “I do hold them accountable for hooking a large number. About six million American youth were using Juul.” [11:33]
• Clive Bates (on the harm reduction philosophy):
  • “The drug itself is relatively benign. It’s not responsible for cancer, heart disease, obstructive lung disease...” [20:33]
  • “If you can find a way to avoid [burning tobacco], still giving people nicotine, you greatly reduce the risks to their health.” [21:00]
  • “I suspect Juul has done more for smoking cessation than any other company, pharma or any other, in the history of smoking in the United States.” [30:00]
• Natalie Robehmed (on youth vaping’s endurance):
  • “These days, Juul is basically over. The vaping very much lives on. … Not Juul, that’s Elf Bar, which … is the brand of choice for more than a third of the high schoolers who use e-cigarettes.” [31:34]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

| Time | Topic | |-------------|------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:05–02:59 | Smoking’s return in pop culture and the roots of vaping’s appeal | | 02:59–05:32 | The birth and mainstreaming of Juul | | 05:32–07:48 | Juul’s strategy, youth uptake, and regulatory concerns | | 07:48–13:31 | Dr. Jackler’s interview: marketing, design, impact | | 15:38–17:40 | Is vaping safer? Health uncertainties, potential consequences | | 17:40–18:46 | Big Tobacco investment and intentions | | 18:46–19:18 | Regulatory crackdown and settlements | | 19:18–27:30 | Clive Bates interview: harm reduction, global policy, panics | | 27:30–31:34 | Contrasting narratives—Juul’s benefits and mistakes | | 31:34–end | The future: Juul fades, vaping endures, health ambiguities |

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Tone and Style

Throughout, the episode balances the Infamous blend of skepticism, investigative rigor, and conversational intrigue. The hosts and guests mix critique with empathy, presenting conflicting evidence and perspectives without losing sight of who profits, who is harmed, and what the science (and marketing) really say about modern nicotine culture.

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This summary provides a full, nuanced account of the episode’s key arguments and moments, complete with speaker quotes and timestamped highlights, for listeners who want the facts and flavor without sitting through the ads.

Transcript

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[Lily Houston Smith]

Campsite Media Hey Infamous listeners. Producer Lily Houston Smith here. I don't know if you've noticed, but on screen at least, smoking is sort of back. We've got Dakota Johnson puffing on cigarettes in the romantic dramedy Materialists, the cast of the Bear chain smoking cigs, and on just like that, Carrie's new best friend Seema even goes so far as to light up in bed. It's almost like the good old days of Sex and the City. Smoking cigarettes is well and truly cool again. We might have Charli XCX to thank for that, at least partially. She's a proud smoker who recently handed out platters of cigarettes at her wedding and once even received a bouquet of cigarettes from singer Rosalia. Of course we all know that smoking is bad for you, but it seems to me like smoking's re emergence might be a cultural backlash to the hyper healthy erewhon lifestyle, a rejection of protein maxing and intermittent fasting, or at least a cigarette length break from it. Here at Infamous, we've been interested in the return of smoking in part because there was a time not so long ago when it seemed like smoking was going to be rendered obsolete. Not just because of all of the anti smoking education that I grew up with and that worked. Smoking rates have gone down a lot in the US over the last few decades, but also by vaping e cigarettes were going to turn smokers into vapers and maybe save lives in the process. But now we're going back to smoking and we're also still vaping all the time, too. So how on earth did this happen? This week, Vanessa and Natalie are going to talk about vaping, its original promise, the rise and fall of Juul, the company that really brought it to the fore, and the problem of teenagers vaping. So here's Natalie to kick it off.

[Natalie Ropamed]

From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is infamous. I'm Natalie Ropamed. So you've probably noticed that in addition to regular cigarettes, vapes are everywhere in a big way. I've seen people vape on trains, in restaurants, at bars, just puffing away mid conversation. And when they're not, they're often clutching the vapes unconsciously in their hands like another phone. But it's easy to forget that these little vapes, the ones that are so small and discreet, you can keep them in your bag like a Tide pen or a pack of gum, they're actually still a pretty recent phenomenon. Vapes and their predecessors, E cigarettes started out as a way to replace smoking.

[Lily Houston Smith]

I'm Jenny McCarthy and I finally found a smarter alternative to cigarettes, blue E cigs.

[Natalie Ropamed]

The promise of the vape was that it was better for you than cigarettes and more convenient. But it took a while for vaping to really take off, in part because it just didn't look cool. After those skinny little E cigarettes, there were these really big, clunky vaping rigs that looked almost like camcorders, they were so large. I personally went down weird YouTube rabbit holes watching videos of guys blowing huge clouds of vapor in these strange vaping competitions.

[Lily Houston Smith]

We're here at the World Vapor Expo in Miami, Florida on the 15th.

[Jonathan Van Ness]

Stop for the VC Trick Championship.

[Natalie Ropamed]

But vaping really hit the mainstream with the advent of Juul. Founded in 2015 by two Stanford grads, Juul's whole premise was that it made vaping sleek, convenient and cool. It ditched the bulky boxes and lame cigarette mimics for a small, high tech black device that looked almost like a usb. And pretty much right away, Juul took off.

[Lily Houston Smith]

In the past year, Juul sales have skyrocketed almost 800%.

[Dr. Robert Jackler]

It's estimated to make up 72% of the e cigarette market. $38 billion. That's Juul's latest valuation.

[Natalie Ropamed]

Juul's promise was that it would deliver the same buzz of cigarettes without any of the bad stuff. No more gross smells and no more cancer. Juul was going to help adult smokers quit and maybe even save lives. And it was hugely successful. You see, Juul's secret sauce was that Its pods contained a hell of a lot of nicotine. Part of that maybe was to hook adult smokers to convert them over to Juul from cigarettes. But the problem with that, of course is that if you're only trying to convert pre existing adult smokers, well, that's a pretty limited user base. If you want to grow your users, you need new customers, young ones. Juul offered seemingly kid friendly flavors like mango and creme brulee. One lawsuit filed against the company claimed they were even buying banner ads on kid friendly websites, including nickjr.com that's the kids website for Nickelodeon. And the government came down pretty hard on it, which we'll get to in a bit. But the biggest part of Juul's cultural impact is that it arguably kicked off what's called the youth vaping epidemic, where students are vaping in the playground, in the hallways, even in class. And if this seems just like another moral panic about something the kids are doing, well, some people definitely argue that. But According to the FDA, in 2024, about 8% of high school students in the US said that they did currently smoke E cigarettes. The overwhelming majority of those used flavored E cigarettes. And in countries with data on the subject, children are about nine times more likely than adults to vape. So is Juul to blame for this? For what it's worth, Juul has repeatedly denied targeting young people. But the first person you're going to hear from, he studied Juul's advertising strategy and he says it was and that it was even more intentional than you might have realized. So the first guest today is Dr. Robert Jackler. He's a professor at Stanford's medical school. And he studied the advertising methods of big tobacco. And he also studied the advertising methods of e cigarettes, which it turns out, maybe unsurprisingly, are very linked. He even testified in front of Congress when Juul came under fire for contributing to the youth nicotine epidemic. He's going to start by telling Vanessa about an internship group he led that actually met with James Mon of the co founders of Juul. And note Vanessa's just using a phone for this interview. So if she sounds a little muffled, that's why.

[Dr. Robert Jackler]

Our Summer Internship Group, August 2018, we actually went up to Juul. This was in the beginning when parents all over the country, school teachers were beginning to become very concerned about the Juul phenomenon and the FDA was starting to get concerned. And so Juul was trying to reach out to various groups to see ways they might adapt. And I was expecting to meet with lower level people. But in comes James Monseys and, and the first thing Mr. Mansi says to me, good to see you again. And I said, oh, I didn't recall we'd met. And he said, when I was a Stanford graduate student, I came and met with you and chatted with you about tobacco advertising. Monsey said to me, thank you so much for your wonderful Stanford tobacco advertising resource, because when we were deciding how to market juul, it was very helpful to us to be able to look at how the tobacco industry marketed. Now in congressional testimony, he said, yes, indeed, it was helpful. But he claimed it was helpful because Juul would know what not to do. Now, of course, that was really incredulous. And in fact, if you look at the way Juul advertised, they're very smart. Cigarettes were the most amazingly successful advertising and promotional effort of any commercial product. I mean, you need to drive a car, you need to eat food. But smoking a piece of paper wrapped around shredded tobacco leaf, that isn't a natural thing at all. But these companies, through public relations and advertising, made it an essential part of daily life in the 20th century. So I think it's very clear to me that they decided they were going to emulate the proven effective techniques used in initiating young people into smoking.

[Vanessa (Interviewer)]

So do you remember the first time you saw the Juul device and what went through your mind?

[Dr. Robert Jackler]

Well, once I saw it, I realized instead of being tube like and looking like a cigarette or a big hose or box, they did something different. They had a very small vaporizer that didn't look at all like a smoking device. In fact, it closely emulated the USB flash drive. Now, it turns out that was a very important driver to its success in the marketplace in young people, because if it was left on the bedside stand of a teenager, a parent wouldn't recognize it as a smoking device. Also, it's so small it can fit in your pocket, in your backpack. It's very easy to hide in the palm of your hand, for that matter. It also has a subtle plume. So it doesn't necessarily give away that it's a big vaping device. And teenagers and even middle school students were using it in classroom and then blowing it down the front of their shirt or blowing it into the backpack. And the only thing that teachers could notice is the telltale smell, the fruity and sweet smell from the juul. So the fact that it was stealthy and small and also really simple to use. I mean, when you take it, you just suck on it. You don't have to press Any buttons, you don't have to pour in any liquids. So it was really designed from the beginning to be very convenient for use by young people. And in fact, their marketing for quite a long time was very focused on teenagers and preteenagers. And it went truly viral amongst those groups. And here's the rub. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. And as the money's rolling in, an enormous profitability, an enormous growth, it became the fastest growing company to reach $10 billion valuation, a DECA unicorn. And it supplanted another company in so doing called Facebook. So it became an incredibly rich phenomenon. And I think the owners and the board and the founders, they all became so enamored with their incredible success and enormous newfound wealth that they really didn't care that they were selling it to young people. They made excuses, they denied it when it was absolutely undeniable. And it was very clear cut what was happening. And I do hold them accountable for hooking a large number. About 6 million American youth were using Juul. It's less now because Juul is different in one very important way. The nicotine concentration in Juul is much higher than the predecessor E cigarette products. And in fact, Juul delivers one little Juulpod, little tiny pod packs the same nicotine wallop into the user's bloodstream as an entire pack of 20 Marlboro cigarettes. And teenagers typically don't understand addiction and they just don't understand that they have essentially one to two pack a day nicotine habit.

[Natalie Ropamed]

It's ironic actually, considering that the founders of Juul actually hoped Juul would help people quit smoking, not create a new class of users reliant on nicotine in a different way.

[Dr. Robert Jackler]

Their intentions were noble. Their intentions were to obsolete cigarettes. And their intentions, at least as they said, were to design something that would satisfy the adult smoker of regular combustible cigarettes so they'd be able to get off these deadly things and actually to be able to create a reduced risk product that would deliver the nicotine needed by adult smokers. But I think what happens, as with so many Silicon Valley companies, they start out, don't be evil. But over time, as the money rolls in and they become very successful, it becomes more about the financial success than the implications to the population of the use of their product.

[Lily Houston Smith]

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[Dr. Robert Jackler]

You're listening to Infamous from Campside Media.

[Natalie Ropamed]

So the big question around vaping, and one that started to bubble up for Juul especially as more and more young people started to use their products, was whether vaping was less harmful for you than smoking. Now, tobacco products are addictive because of the nicotine in them, but it's the tar from tobacco smoke that does most of the damage. And Juul vapor didn't contain tar, but it did have other chemicals in it.

[Dr. Robert Jackler]

Well, Juul in and of itself and vaping in and of itself. There's nothing especially natural about breathing propylene glycol and glycerin mistake with all these flavoring chemicals in your lungs over and over. And you might say, well, you know, people aren't dropping dead tomorrow. But what we don't know, you know, if a kid at the age of 16 starts smoking regular cigarettes, it isn't till 30 years later when they start getting lung cancer. It takes many decades. We know that using juul and these other e cigarette compounds cause inflammation in the lungs. We know that they suppress the immunity of the lungs. Chronic inflammation is what underlies the injury to the lungs over time. We will not know the effect of routine e cigarette uses for 20, 30, 40 years in the population at large. We think it's probably safer than regular smoking because the products of combustion have most of the cancer causing elements, we think, but it's certainly not a healthy thing to do. Now, having said that, one of the problems with a teenager beginning to vape is they get hooked on the nicotine and they start to explore other ways of getting their nicotine fixed, whether it's chewing tobacco or snooze or cigarettes. And it's the so called gateway effect of getting hooked on an e cigarette, often an e cigarette with sweet or fruity flavors. Gummy bear. So regulating these kinds of devices to protect young people is very important. And the regulations so far in America at least, the federal government has really not been effective in helping to protect young people.

[Natalie Ropamed]

So Juul set out to disrupt traditional tobacco. But in 2018, tobacco bought into it. Altria Group, the parent company of Philip Morris that owns cigarette brands such as Marlborough and Parliament, spent $12.8 billion to purchase 35% of Juul and in doing so rolled out a whole new game plan for hooking new customers, says Dr. Jeckler.

[Dr. Robert Jackler]

Major tobacco companies, they know that the only new smokers, the only new customers virtually are teenagers. Because once you've gotten them started as a teenager, you have them as customers for many decades. And that's what drives the products in the tobacco industry. Now When Altria invested $12.8 billion to buy 35% of Juul, they claim, oh no, that's just an investment. But what juul proved is you could make money with vapor products. So this is part of a master plan to dominate and really to reverse the worldwide downward trend in cigarette use.

[Natalie Ropamed]

So amidst the concern about Juul's targeting of young people and vaping's potential health implications, the government came down really hard on the company. In 2022, the FDA announced a full ban on the sale of all Juul products. A few months later, Juul paid nearly half a billion dollars to settle a probe into its advertising to underage customers and settled thousands of other lawsuits with plaintiffs. But our next guest believes that we may be thinking about Juul and vaping in general all wrong.

[Clive Bates]

So my name is Clive Bates. I'm the director of Counterfactual Consulting, which is a sustainability and public health consultancy. I used to be the on Smoking and Health in the uk, the main anti smoking organization. I've since been a senior civil servant with the UK government and United Nations.

[Natalie Ropamed]

Clive sees vaping as one of many potential strategies in smoking harm reduction.

[Clive Bates]

When I was Director of Action on Smoking and Health in the uk, we were very interested in smokeless tobacco or snus because its risk profile much, much lower than smoking. We have the example of Sweden on our doorstep where they have very, very low smoking rates, quite high use of snus, which is this smokeless tobacco, and much lower levels of smoking related disease or tobacco related disease. And to me that looked like proof of concept for a harm reduction strategy. The idea being that if you could separate the problem of smoke from the behavioral use of nicotine, which is the reason why people smoke, then you could potentially save thousands, maybe millions of lives. Because the problem is exposure to smoke, which is essentially the delivery system for the active drug, which is nicotine. The drug itself is relatively benign. It's not responsible for cancer, heart disease, obstructive lung disease and so on. The problem is in the particles of burnt tobacco and the hot gases that come from setting fire to tobacco in the tip of a cigarette. Now if you can find a way to avoid doing that, still giving people nicotine, you greatly reduce the risks to their health. The World Health Organization has tried to characterize vaping as essentially a tobacco industry ploy, a gambit to hook kids and get them into the smoking franchise. They're completely overlooking first of all the importance of if you're going to have tobacco cigarettes in the market, you should really, really want much safer products. And that's what the vaping industry has actually provided. And what it means is that smokers in their millions can switch from smoking to vaping and greatly reduce their incremental risk. It also means that anyone who taking up nicotine, which is after all a legal lifestyle drug available just about everywhere in society, can do so without using a life threatening product, you know, product that has a 1 in 2 chance of killing you if you use it for the long term. So this is a wholly good thing. Yet for reasons which we can go into, it's being opposed by WHO and many of the authorities in the public health establishment.

[Vanessa (Interviewer)]

Tell me why WHO specifically? What do you think the influence is there?

[Clive Bates]

It's a good question and I pondered this one a lot, to be honest. I think there are multiple causes, actually. The first thing I think is that vaping is kind of countercultural for that type of organization. So essentially it's a story of innovators and consumers coming together in a lightly regulated market entirely in the private sector, and solving a problem, namely smoking, in a way that the consumers find pleasurable and enjoyable. And I think we have to say it, there's a potential conflict of interest here. Who takes quite a lot of money from private entities such as the Bloomberg foundation and some of Bloomberg's funded organizations. They're surrounded by public interest groups that are also funded by Bloomberg. And Michael Bloomberg himself is on the record as being in favor of prohibiting outright vaping. So you have money, which is coming with quite a strong policy bias from the benefactor. And Bloomberg is all over this landscape and has quite strong policy priors. We had a situation where we had multiple crises. And I put crises in scare quotes because they weren't really crises, but they were playing in the media as crises. So we had one, the youth vaping epidemic, so called, in which we'd seen quite a large rise in the number of young people using E cigarettes. Secondly, we had the lung injury outbreak, which it turns out was nothing to do with nicotine vaping at all. But at the time it was spun and understood to be a consequence of vaping. These were very serious lung injuries, sometimes fatal. 2,800 people hospitalized, maybe 60, 68 or so killed. You know, non trivial, but effectively it was due to contamination of the cannabinoid vaping supply chain with an additive that should never have been put in consequence of illicit trade. We also had just a tremendous amount of noise about flavors and the idea that flavours of E cigarettes were somehow the trick that was luring the kids in. So we had a story for me which was that there was flavors used to hook kids on nicotine. Huge rise in teenage vaping with potentially fatal consequences. Okay, so you could see how that narrative, once constructive, would grab political attention.

[Lily Houston Smith]

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[Jonathan Van Ness]

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[Dr. Robert Jackler]

This is Infamous from Campside Media.

[Vanessa (Interviewer)]

So how do you see Jewel playing into this whole scenario? The public perception in America is they move too fast. They got all these kids addicted. They did the typical Silicon Valley break things and worry about it later. The government hammer came down on them and all is right. You know, vengeance was extracted from this company that was way overvalued and et cetera. What is wrong with that story? Or is that indeed the story? I mean, you do see if Jewel is gonna be, you know, just making a tobacco juul. I don't know who's smoking that.

[Clive Bates]

Okay, so you've explained the story. The Narrative about Jewel. Very well. The problem is where that narrative actually touches down with reality. So, first of all, I agree. Jules set off with a tech company, Silicon Valley mindset, which is, let's produce an alternative to cigarettes that's much safer. Let's go for it. We've got a secret formulation here that seems to work. Boom. We can get loads of people off cigarettes and we can make a ton of money. Okay? That's the starting point. That's basically what they were doing. Okay? So if you look at the way Juul rises, it completely dominates the convenience store market for vaping products. Now, this isn't children, this is adults. This is over 18s who are buying it instead of smoking. Okay? And the Juul data, the data on Juul switching smokers and reducing cigarette consumption is amazing to the point where it showed a measurable increase in the rate of decline in smoking in the United States. There was a period of accelerated decline in cigarette consumption in the United States, which is largely attributable to the rise of Juul. So the story that's missing from the account that you started with is the story of adults switching by the thousands. And Juul's secret is that they created a nicotine experience that was not quite, but nearly equivalent to using a cigarette, but in a form that was small, relatively inexpensive, convenient, and you could just go to the corner store, buy it, plug the pod in, and boom, off you go. It worked first time. And I suspect Juul has done more for smoking cessation than any other company, pharma or any other in the history of smoking in the United States. To me, it's an amazing, innovative, smart company that got its product formulation right. Now there is the story about youth vaping, but young people tend to do what adults do. And if it's proving immensely popular amongst adults, it's going to prove immensely popular among adolescents. But let's be clear here. Juul did do some stupid things. Some of their marketing was too youth orientated. I mean, they were using models in their twenties and so on. But I think there's a very strong upside story to what Joule has done that underpinned its value. And that's why it was sold at the high price it was. What has diminished its value has been the regulatory retaliation against it and the sense that the innovation has been beaten out of the company. It's been sort of made to apologize for its success and therefore the idea that it will no longer be the successful force in the adult market that it once was, and it will be overtaken by other pod producers, including pod producers that are on the market illegally, who are just profiting from Juul's success. But via a black market.

[Natalie Ropamed]

These days, Juul is basically over the Vaping very much lives on. Like those colorful little airpod case looking vapes you've been seeing. Not Juul, that's Elf bar, which according to the FDA is the brand of choice for more than a third of the high schoolers who use E cigarettes. And what's interesting to me about vaping and Juul by extension is that it all feels like it's part of our eternal quest for optimization, our forever journey for self improvement. Vaping seems, or at least seemed like a healthy alternative to a traditional vice, like getting a non alcoholic beer at a bar. But at the end of the day, whether it's really better for you, the jury's out on that. It might just be another vice in a different form. That's it for infamous. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and review and tell your friends. If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can find me at Natrob. That's N A T R O B E. And if you you want to support Vanessa's work, you can buy her book Blurred Lines Rethinking Sex, Power and Consent on Campus. See you next week.