Nicotine addiction is coming back with a vengeance. With e-cigarette companies like Juul capturing the attention of teens, we are experiencing the second wave of Big Tobacco through vaping. But what happens when a company’s mission statement and its actions are at odds?

James Monsees and Adam Bowen, founders of Juul, were once Product Design Masters students here at Stanford. They claimed to have created a product that can transition smokers to their less harmful alternative, Juul. Although the product is used by ex-smokers, it is also used frequently by almost one million teens in the U.S.

In this episode of Stanford SciCast, Ruth Adu-Daako, MBA-MS student and Brook Getachew, a former researcher on Juul, explore the relationship between design and ethics by using Juul as a case study. To understand this link, they interview Dr. Robert Jackler, head of the Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising, James Patell, a Herbert Hoover Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Ken Shotts, a professor of Ethics and Political Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a teen Juul user.

Through these interviews, Ruth and Brook explore the balance between innovation and creating a product that, whether intentional or not, harms younger users.

To learn more about the history of Juul, visit http://tobacco.stanford.edu/tobacco_main/publications/JUUL_Marketing_Stanford.pdf

*Note: This episode was produced before the recent illnesses and deaths linked to vaping.

Image Credit: Holding a juul device up close by Sarah Johnson is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

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