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Howard Willard lusted after Juul. As the CEO of tobacco giant Philip Morris's parent company and a veteran of the industry's long fight to avoid being regulated out of existence, he grew obsessed with a prize he believed could save his company - the e-cigarette, a product with all the addictive upside of the original without the same apparent health risks and bad press. Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, Adam Bowen and James Monsees began working on a device that was meant to save lives and destroy Big Tobacco, but they ended up baking the industry's DNA into their invention's science and marketing. Ultimately, Juul's e-cigarette was so effective and so market-dominating that it put the company on a collision course with Philip Morris and sparked one of the most explosive public health crises in recent memory.



About the Author

Lauren Etter

LAUREN ETTER is an award-winning investigative reporter at Bloomberg News, where she writes in-depth corporate features and investigative stories. Previously she was a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal, and she has written for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. She holds master's degrees in journalism and in law from Northwestern University.



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