E-cigarette maker Juul was once the darling of Silicon Valley, attracting huge investment as sales of its sleek vaping products boomed—that is, until the company came under siege for marketing to young people and fueling an underage vaping epidemic. Now, Juul is abandoning San Francisco for Washington, D.C., to be closer to lawmakers and regulators who will determine the firm’s future.
The company, beset by regulatory crackdowns, lawsuits and federal investigations, thinks it’s better to be near the lawmakers and agencies—including the Federal Drug Administration—that will decide whether its products, and those of its competitors, can remain on the market. Analysts say Juul also wants to shed Silicon Valley’s growth-at-all-costs ethos in order to gain the market’s trust—while it continues to sell vaping devices under partial federal restrictions on flavored products targeted to young people. Another reason to leave San Francisco: Juul’s hometown has enacted tough anti-vaping policies, including an e-cigarette sales ban.
And finally, a new study from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health points to the benefits of long-term treatment with the addiction-withdrawal medication buprenorphine. The study found that those who continued using the drug had significantly lower rates of prescription opioid use and medically treated overdoses than participants who stopped—confirming that such medications should play a critical role in drug treatment.