Juuled in the face? maybe here’s why

Posted on October 10, 2018. Filed under: Uncategorized |

I am not exaggerating when I say that I get Juuled in the face every single day walking around New York City. For those that don’t know, Juul is the most popular vaping device in the country. The company recently raised money from fancy investors like Tiger Global at a reported $15B valuation, reflecting it’s explosive growth over the last few years. I’ve read the statistics…last year 11% of high schoolers vaped. This year north of 20%…but even still, when I walk around New York I find myself wondering if it’s possible that THIS MANY more people are inhaling nicotine than pre-Juul days.

Last night, as I dodged a plume of mist coming at me on my walk to the grocery store, I realized the moment of the act was not a typical smoking moment. It was a transitional moment…a guy was stopped at a crosswalk, reached into his pocket, took a single hit from his Juul, and then put it away and crossed the street. It was a moment that a non-vaper who, like all of us, is addicted to the phone, would have pulled out a device and thoughtlessly checked some notification or feed.

When you light a cigarette, there’s a commitment to the minute or two that you will dedicate to enjoying it/feeding your addiction. You have to take out your lighter, stop to light it, and then be in a situation where you know you’re going to have time to finish smoking it. It’s intentional. Juul, I believe, has changed that paradigm…there’s no commitment in taking a sip form your vape…and as such, I feel like Juul has increased the addressable market of moments that a user can consume nicotine. It’s broken the core unit of nicotine consumption down into a smaller size, that fits in everywhere, and in this low friction model, people are consuming it in a way that’s closer to phone consumption than cigarette consumption.

So as I walk down the street…yes…there are more people vaping than there have been smoking in a long time, but also, the volume and frequency with which they are doing so, I would bet, is increasing…many more acts because the friction is lower to engage…When Twitter reduced the size of a public expression from 3 paragraphs for a blog post, to 140 characters for a tweet, they removed significant friction from the act of publishing. The effect was a significant increase in the number of people publicly “speaking” and also an increase in the frequency with which they published. I fear that Juul has done the same thing for smoking…