The renowned San Francisco-based e-cig manufacturer has hired former Cardinal Health executive Douglas Roberts in order to lead its new “enterprise markets team,” which includes 17 employees, and is focused on striking deals with health plans, providers, self-insured employers and the public sector.
Juul has set up an ‘Enterprise Markets Team’, which will focus on striking deals with health plans, providers, self-insured employers and the public sector.
“It’s pretty consistent what we’re hearing, which is what’s out there today is not working, and people are really looking to get their arms around how do they provide alternatives to large groups and large masses of people who really haven’t had effective alternatives,” said Roberts.
He added, that Juul is planning to design a program which would help smokers switch from smoking to using the Juul device. He acknowledges that their products has not yet been classified as a smoking cessation tool and therefore can’t market itself as one yet.
The program would involve sending a survey to eligible participants, providing them with a website where they can sign up and buy discounted devices and nicotine pods. Additionally the website would also provide them with smoking cessation coaching and other support such as educational articles and instructional videos.
A study comparing bio-markers in smokers, Juul users, and non-users
A recent clinical trial which was presented at the annual conference by the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT), indicated that switching from smoking to using Juul, reduced smokers’ exposure to cigarette toxins at similar levels to quitting entirely.
The researchers tested 90 adult smokers for nine biomarkers associated with combustible cigarette smoke. They asked participants to abstain from smoking for 12 hours before they measured the baseline after which they divided them into six groups, with one group instructed to abstain altogether, one group assigned to smoke normally and the other four groups assigned to vape different flavors of Juul’s nicotine pods.
Switching to Juul has Similar Benefits to Quitting Completely
After five days, the researchers measured the level of biomarkers in the participants’ urine and blood samples and compared them with the baseline. In the abstinence group, the biomarkers were reduced by an aggregate of 85.3%, compared with an 85% reduction in the groups that used Juul. The researchers calculated that this equates to a 99.6 % relative reduction of biomarkers among the Juul group, in comparison to the smoking group.
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