Colorado Attorney General Phil Weisers is investigating Juul Labs, Inc. – a.k.a. Big Vape – in anticipation of joining or initiating a lawsuit to hold the company accountable. The company’s lust for money causes addictions, illnesses, and death.

Weiser is right to do this and he should make it among his highest priorities. His state suffers from this crisis of greed more than any other.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined Colorado high schoolers use vaping products at twice the national average. State health surveys find that only 50% of teens consider vaping risky.

Juul already faces more than 200 lawsuits from state attorneys general, municipalities and other jurisdictions. Colorado counties Pitkin, Boulder and Eagle have joined a lawsuit against Juul. Other government entities, including school districts, are preparing to sue.

Weiser calls the epidemic of teen vaping, caused mostly by Juul, “a scary phenomenon.” He compares Juul’s efforts to addict children to the old Joe Camel ads and other tobacco marketing efforts directed at youths.

A lawsuit filed by California details how Juul founders Adam Bowen and James Monsees studied the tactics, practices, and strategies of Big Tobacco when developing their business plan. The Juul founders, who met as students at Stanford, have each amassed more than a billion dollars in personal wealth since inventing their commercial e-cigarette in 2005 and launching their company as Ploom in 2007. Their company, renamed Juul, had a valuation of $15 billion in 2018.

Physician and Stanford Professor Robert Jackler, who researches tobacco, blasted Bowen and Monsees for marketing Juul to kids on social media.

“Jackler says the company’s marketing clearly appealed to youth, most overtly from mid-2015 to 2016, the year following Juul’s launch,” explains an article in Forbes. “His archived Juul ads are filled with attractive young models socializing and flirtatiously sharing the flash-drive shaped device, displaying behavior like dancing to club-like music and clothing styles more characteristic of teens than mature adults… Juul’s launch events and parties also often featured youth-oriented bands… alongside ads that made pods seem like ‘sweet treats’…”

In their quest for riches, the men seemingly had no compunction undermining decades of progress in reducing nicotine use among children. Along with promoting addiction, the vaping trend has caused dozens of deaths nationally as vape users contract a serious lung disease from consuming nicotine and/or marijuana with vaping products.

Of course, Juul targeted kids for addition. No one could make billions in a few years by settling for the handful of customers who take up nicotine consumption as full-grown adults – a percentage in the single digits.

Weiser ran for attorney general because he loves Colorado and cares about the health and welfare of all the state’s residents. As the people’s lawyer, he should join a suit or file one with Colorado as the sole plaintiff.

The pursuit of profits typically strives to solve problems and improve the health, safety and financial welfare of ordinary people. Our pro-business attorney general knows this better than most. The peddling of addiction, by contrast, only exacerbates problems and diminishes society’s health, safety, and financial welfare.

Weiser and others should seek severe punitive and compensatory damages in defense of children who will struggle with addiction for the rest of their lives. Doing so could dissuade anyone else from pursuing another ignorant, get-rich-quick from addiction scheme.