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===2021 May 14 - [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-05-14/teens-addicted-to-juul-flavor-pods-have-parents-furious-devil-s-playbook?fbclid=IwAR3V2Xm1JaW4VVcMTk8O1qTTlcjJT_4eFp-Plqn5KHkVDRntjfJw-CU0y_w Juul Finds Hell Hath No Fury Like an Army of Really Rich Parents]=== | ===2021 May 14 - [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-05-14/teens-addicted-to-juul-flavor-pods-have-parents-furious-devil-s-playbook?fbclid=IwAR3V2Xm1JaW4VVcMTk8O1qTTlcjJT_4eFp-Plqn5KHkVDRntjfJw-CU0y_w Juul Finds Hell Hath No Fury Like an Army of Really Rich Parents]=== | ||
*Pete Briger is the billionaire co-CEO at Fortress Investment Group. Briger had made a career at Goldman Sachs as a trader in distressed debt, raking in untold sums for the bank and becoming a pre-IPO partner before moving to Fortress and opening an office for the firm in San Francisco. | |||
*David Burke was a former managing director of the Stanford Management Co., where he oversaw private equity and venture capital investments for the university’s endowment. He’d had a long career at Makena Capital Management, an investment management firm he started with another Stanford alum, and he sat on numerous boards, including the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the University of Virginia, and Sacred Heart. | |||
*Many people knew Jim Steyer because of his younger brother, Tom, the billionaire founder of the San Francisco hedge fund Farallon Capital Management and a former member of Stanford’s board of trustees. Jim was eminent in his own right, as a civil rights professor at Stanford and longtime advocate for children. A believer in the power of early education to beget a just and thriving society, Steyer had founded a group called Children Now, which helped shape policy in California and across the nation around issues such as access to immunizations and health insurance. Steyer had also long been concerned with youth exposure to sex, violence, and commercialism in media, and in 2003 he’d started another nonprofit, Common Sense Media. Originally a source for movie and media ratings for parents, it had become a grassroots army, with almost 150 million users. | |||
*Meanwhile in New York, a well-connected group of angry mothers whose own children had become all too familiar with Juul began organizing a group that was eventually called Parents Against Vaping E-cigarettes, or PAVe. | |||
*Over the next year the fury of powerful parents like Briger, Burke, and Steyer was echoed by more American moms and dads who’d discovered Juul devices stashed in their kids’ backpacks or colorful plastic nicotine pods littering their bedrooms. The tide soon began to turn against Silicon Valley’s most dazzling startup. '''Briger and Burke donated money to a prominent Stanford researcher who evangelized about the dangers of tobacco use and vaping. Briger also became the first donor to <span style="background-color: rgb(200, 400, 700);" data-mce-style="background-color: #ffff00;">PAVe (Parents Against Vaping e-Cigarettes)</span>''', which went on to mobilize activists in almost every state to support antivaping laws and influence policy debates about e-cigarettes in city halls and statehouses, and, at least once, in the White House. Steyer and others joined a pitched battle in San Francisco against Juul that resulted in upholding a moratorium on e-cigarette sales in the city, kneecapping the company in its hometown. (Michael Bloomberg, majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which publishes Bloomberg Businessweek, was the largest donor to the campaign.) | *Over the next year the fury of powerful parents like Briger, Burke, and Steyer was echoed by more American moms and dads who’d discovered Juul devices stashed in their kids’ backpacks or colorful plastic nicotine pods littering their bedrooms. The tide soon began to turn against Silicon Valley’s most dazzling startup. '''Briger and Burke donated money to a prominent Stanford researcher who evangelized about the dangers of tobacco use and vaping. Briger also became the first donor to <span style="background-color: rgb(200, 400, 700);" data-mce-style="background-color: #ffff00;">PAVe (Parents Against Vaping e-Cigarettes)</span>''', which went on to mobilize activists in almost every state to support antivaping laws and influence policy debates about e-cigarettes in city halls and statehouses, and, at least once, in the White House. Steyer and others joined a pitched battle in San Francisco against Juul that resulted in upholding a moratorium on e-cigarette sales in the city, kneecapping the company in its hometown. (Michael Bloomberg, majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which publishes Bloomberg Businessweek, was the largest donor to the campaign.) | ||
*Quoted from an excerpt of The Devil’s Playbook: Big Tobacco, Juul, and the Addiction of a New Generation, by Lauren Etter. | |||
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===2021 Apr 7: [https://www.parentsagainstvaping.org/conference Clear the Vapor Conference 2021: The Way Forward]=== | ===2021 Apr 7: [https://www.parentsagainstvaping.org/conference Clear the Vapor Conference 2021: The Way Forward]=== | ||
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