The Devil's Playbook

“Joining us today is the author of The Devil's Playbook, a new book about the rise and fall of Juul, the sleek electronic cigarettes your kids probably hit.”

“So we talk about cigarettes, there's tobacco, there's nicotine, um, that the, throughout the book, there's this theme that actually it's nicotine. That's the substance that's really so addicting.”

“And what struck me in the book is that Scott Gottlieb, who was running the FDA, uh, under Trump for some time, who you describe as libertarian. Uh, even he was like, we are not going to have an epidemic of youth smoking under my watch or youth nicotine addiction under my watch.”

“Lauren Eder, the author of the devil's playbook. It's a great book about Juul. We've been talking about the rise and fall of Juul.”

“And not only that, they were talking about how internally, I think you have this detail in the book, they were talking about how the models look young and they were happy about that.”

“And I view this thing as such a tragedy. Honestly, I view, I view the juice jewel story as a, as a tragedy, because as I read your book, you know, I, I learned so much about the industry and I learned about how, you know, like we spoke about at the top, the damage is through the burning of”

“And the people that you write about in the book, they got engagement, the algorithm spread it. It wasn't paid for. It wasn't organic. It was, well, it was organic, you know, that it wasn't paid for, but it wasn't, uh, you know, people going directly to their page.”

“And we're back here for our final segment with Lauren Eder, author of the devil's playbook and also a reporter of Bloomberg, Bloomberg news book is great. You should buy it, especially if you're already here in a minute, uh, mid in the forties and the conversation, you'll like the book.”

“And yeah, that's great from a public accountability standpoint, but also it ended up, I don't know where Juul would be without those documents because the company's founders ended up combing through them and all the competitors ended up combing through it. And they essentially had, uh, maybe that's what it is, the playbook, you know, right.”

“And I asked that question cause I was tweeting out the end of your book, uh, which I think was great talking about. They didn't need to get, basically I was saying what we talked about, they didn't need to try to get this big and they could have been, uh, they could have been this force for good that”

“Uh, last thing I'll, I want to end with is there's a scene at the beginning of the book where the two jewel founders go into Altria, which again is the rebranded Philip Morris. Come on guys, stick with the name, you know, own what you've done, but okay. Altria, they go into Altria and, uh, they, uh, try to”

“The book is Devil's Playbook by Lauren Edder. Lauren, thank you for joining so much. It was, it was a pleasure reading the book and it was great getting a chance to speak with you about it.”

“But yeah, I think that, I think as I say in my book, there was this moment when, when Altria invest $12.8 billion where the glass shattered, where everybody was like, Oh shit. Like we kind of told ourselves for a while that we were the underdog”

“And there were all of these creators on social media that would like, you know, I write about this guy who created a Juul nation account and like Instagram. Yes. And you know, you have these people who had figured out how to monetize it on social media”

“So what I'll say is that, um, I've heard a lot of, um, feedback from Richmond, which is very interesting. There's a, Richmond is where Altria is based. That's the hometown of the tobacco industry. And, um, I know that there's a lot of interest there and, um, you know, I've gotten some interesting feedback and stuff like that”