'Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul' on Netflix: Smoke and mirrors around e-cigarette product

Once valued at about $40 billion, a new four-part Netflix docuseries Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul tracks the epic downfall of the e-cigarette company, now worth less than five per cent of that value.

Watch Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul on Netflix

Directed by R.J. Cutler, based on the book “Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul” by TIME correspondent Jamie Ducharme, Big Vape starts from the moments when James Monsees and Adam Bowen initially came up with the idea for Juul, to the marketing tools used that led to the "youth vaping epidemic," and finally ending in the massive fall for the company.

Monsees declined to participate in the series "at the advice of legal council," while Bowen did not respond to requests for comment by the docuseries team.

How did Juul start?

As the docuseries explains, Monsees and Bowen were on-campus smokers at Stanford when they started thinking about a way to maintain the social aspect of the cancer-causing activity, without the combustion process of smoking a cigarette.

As Steven Parris, former senior vice president of Philip Morris states, the "holy grail" was to figure out a way to generate smoke without setting the tobacco on fire.

"Every major tobacco company lied saying that there is no way to deliver nicotine in a way safer than a cigarette," Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, says in the docuseries.

Watch Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul on Netflix

But Monsees and Bowen went through a few different iterations of electronic cigarettes, including the Ploom and PAX (which was mostly adopted for marijuana use) before landing on the Juul model. The creation of the Juul was largely possible due to a $10 million investment from Japan Tobacco International (JTI), an investment that was later paid back when JTI wanted to part ways.

Bowen is described by a former classmate as "an incredible engineer" and "highly competitive," while Monsees was highlighted as particularly brilliant in terms of design, in addition to engineering.

It's those skills that led the Juul to become particularly sleek in its look, but also achieve a very strong nicotine delivery through the device, which was unique in the vaping space.

The youth vaping epidemic: Is Juul to blame?

A large component of the Big Vape docuseries is focused on the marketing of Juul, under Richard Mumby, particularly the "vaporized" campaign executed by Steve Baillie, that showed young people in vibrant colours, dancing around with a Juul.

What some people were quick to point out is that this marketing tactic goes back to old tobacco advertising. Selling youth, adventure, glamour, sophistication. Essentially, making vaping look "cool," not unlike the goal of cigarette ads of the past.

Tactics like giving out free products at sampling bars were used to promote the product, in addition to a focus on influencer marketing.

It absolutely worked, with Juul being incredibly in-demand by the time we get to 2016, including being photographed in the hands of celebrities, from Bella Hadid to Leonardo DiCaprio.

With its compact design, and limited regulations for the new product, Juul was getting in the hands of kids and teens. The docuseries includes some individuals who said a Juul was so discrete that they would use it in the middle of high school classes, and charge them out in the open.

As it's identified in Big Vape, Juul was "recruiting the next generation of nicotine addicts."

But for many young Juul users, some only 12 years old, they were too young to actually understand that there was addictive nicotine in the product.

While adults who worked for Juul felt very strongly about the device being a possible life saver for adults who were trying to quit smoking cigarettes, that doesn't work when you have teens, some of which never smoked, picking up a Juul and becoming addicted to nicotine.

That's when Big Vape looks at all the teens who were being hospitalized for vape-related health emergencies, including Chance Ammirata, whose lung collapsed after vaping.

Many young people were being admitted into hospitals for e-cigarette or vaping use-associated lung injury (EVALI). Health experts have identified that vitamin E acetate, which is in some THC-containing e-cigarettes, is a "primary" cause of EVALI. In terms of Juul, the docuseries tracks how several of these cases were linked to vitamin E acetate present in counterfeit or illegal THC vape products being used with the Juul device, not necessarily the Juul-produced pods themselves.

There is significant hypocrisy with the legacy of Juul, specifically when Altria, parent company of Philip Morris, paid US$12.8 million for a 35 per cent stake in Juul. But Big Vape does a thorough job at addressing and integrating different arguments in support of and against Juul for the audience.

While many people in Big Vape talk about how it could save the lives of current habitual cigarette smokers, the science isn't particularly concrete that vaping will certainly save someone from lung cancer.

As it's described in the docuseries, using a Juul may be less carcinogenic than smoking a cigarette, but "that's like saying jumping out of the 15th story isn't as dangerous as jumping out of the 50th story."

Big Vape isn't necessarily revolutionary in terms of the information being presented, but in building up these arguments about Juul, integrating comic-esque visual elements and the way it weaves through the complexities of viewpoints, are key elements of the series that keep you engaged. Maybe with a few more questions to ask yourself about this whole vaping space.