7/15/19: Kevin Burns, the CEO of Juul Labs, the leader in vaping technology, wants parents to know how sorry he is that his company made a product that got their teens addicted to nicotine.
One in five American teens now vaping.
Not so sorry, of course, that he would stop pushing the company’s product. Nor is he sorry enough to return the $12.8 billion Altira, the leading cigarette manufacturer, recently paid for a 35 percent stake in Juul.
“First of all, I’d tell them that I’m sorry that their child’s using the product [emphasis added],” Burns told a reporter he’d tell parents. “It’s not intended for them. I hope there was nothing that we did that made it appealing to them. As a parent of a 16-year-old, I’m sorry for them, and I have empathy for them, in terms of the challenges they’re going through.”
Testimony from teens who spoke before Congress
undercut Burns’ claims. Juul paid schools for permission to talk to teens about
“healthy lifestyles.” A charter school operation in Baltimore took a check for $134,000 to allow the
company to implement a five-week summer camp to teach teens about “good
choices.” Others received checks for $10,000 to allow company reps to talk
about addiction, and these reps told youthful audiences that Juul products were
“totally safe.”
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A healthy lifestyle? |
For one group of ninth graders who listened, this was reassuring. “For my classmates who were already vaping, it was a sign of relief because now they were able to vape without any concern,” remembered one impressionable listener. “I believe that after this meeting, kids were more inclined to vape because now they thought it was just a flavor device that didn’t have any harmful substances in it.”
According to the Food and Drug Administration, vaping is now an “epidemic,” with one in five American teens using the electronic “cigarettes,” and many addicted to nicotine.
The CEO of Juul is sorry.
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