Adam Bowen and James Monsees, the founders of Juul, declined to take part in Big Vape, the new Netflix docuseries about their company based on the book of the same name by journalist Jamie Ducharme. It’s easy to understand why. They took plenty of public abuse throughout the moral panic over vaping, and, having exited the company as reported billionaires, they have little reason to volunteer for another turn in the barrel. But it’s a shame that they didn’t. Big Vape tells a story more nuanced than the cheap alarmism that characterized contemporary reporting on the company.
Over the course of four episodes, the documentary covers the “rise and fall of Juul” from its scrappy beginnings as a Silicon Valley startup determined to end smoking to its demonization for sparking a youth vaping epidemic and its partial sellout to Altria, the biggest of Big Tobacco companies.
