The CEO of Juul Labs apologized to the parents of teen vapers in a documentary that aired Monday night.
“I’m sorry that their child is using the product,” Kevin Burns said. “It’s not intended for them.”
In the course of a year, the number of high school students using tobacco products increased by about 38%, according to the National Youth Tobacco Survey released in February.
E-cigarettes saw the most meaningful increase, surging nearly 78%, even though a reported 2 million high school students vaped in 2017.
Burns added that he hoped there was “nothing that we did that made it appealing” to teenagers.
The father to a 16-year-old said that he acknowledges and is sorry for the challenges the parents must go through. That being said, when asked about the lifelong effects of Juul-ing, Burns admitted the research doesn’t extend too far.
“We have not done the long-term, longitudinal clinical testing that we need to do.”
Juul co-founder Adam Bowen, along with his counterpart James Monsees, is worth over $1 billion. He said that the initial advertising Juul used was “inappropriate.”
“When we launched Juul, we had a campaign that was arguably too … lifestyle-oriented, too flashy,” Bowen said. “It was in the early days of the production introduction. We think it had no impact on sales.”
Last year, co-founder Monsees stated that teenagers vaping doesn’t do the company any favors.
“[Underage use] is an issue we desperately want to resolve,” he said. “Any underage consumers using this product are absolutely a negative for our business. We don’t want them. We will never market to them. We never have.”
