>Breja alleges that on March 12, 2019, in an executive team meeting, he learned that some batches of mint e-liquid had been found to be contaminated. Approximately 250,000 mint refill kits, the equivalent of one million pods, were manufactured with the contaminated e-liquid, shipped to retailers, and sold to customers.

I really wish the article detailed what exactly the contaminant is, especially considering the current hysteria over vaping.

>That same day, Breja “protested Juul’s refusal to issue a product recall for the contaminated pods, or at a minimum issue a public health and safety notice to consumers.” Then-chief finance officer Tim Danaher reportedly “questioned his financial acumen,” since these suggestions would lead to billions of dollars in lost sales and hurt Juul’s then-$38 billion valuation, according to the lawsuit. Danaher, whose departure was announced by the company on Tuesday, allegedly told Breja that he should remember his loyalty to Juul.

It's sad that there are so many people who would knowingly cause harm to others, just all for the opportunity to make just a little bit more money. They were already making money, and I'm pretty sure this debacle will cost them far more money in the long run than just doing a voluntary recall and coming clean. No better than the tobacco companies that came decades before.

Well as someone who goes through a pod every few days, I appreciate having at least _some_ kind of heads up. The article's plenty useful to Juul smokers--knowing that the mint flavor is the contaminated one means that I can switch to a different flavor until more news comes out.

All this attention.... and yet billions of cigarettes are smoked every day, and one could say every single one of those cigarettes has been "contaminated" for 50+ years.

Why are we not stopping cigarettes from being shipped around the U.S. immediately under these exact same concerns?

If money is you main motivation for doing what you do, you’re way more likely ending up making these kind of bad decisions.

Money and greed goes hand in hand and it deludes your moral compass.

If you instead are driven by true happiness which can come in many forms such as doing good, impacting people in a positive way or just improving the world in general, money becomes less important.

I do understand this way of thinking is a luxury and I myself had been in situations where I just needed money to buy food, but the people sitting in these positions, making these decisions usually have no issue with money, they just want more.

I've been a social smoker for ~15 years; I attempted Juul-ing about a month ago -- had to stop it as I was immediately (from the 1st puff) feeling unwell, super dizzy and occasionally with a massive headache. Even if this is not linked to any "contamination" of the pods, the amount of nicotine the put in those things is just insane. Didn't even bother giving the vaper to somebody else, I just threw it away

Siddharth Breja if you are reading this, I want to say thank you for standing up for what is right. I know it wasn't easy.

Yikes, has anyone reported what the contaminant was?

I also heard, and I'm not aware of any proof, so this unsubstantiated. As well as the black market THC pods causing lung damage, there were black market Juul pods causing lung damage. The story was empty Juul pods were being snuck out of the factory and filled, packaged and sold to distributors, who then sold it to retailers for the same price as official Juul pods. It sounds a little suspect to me like maybe the rumour was started by Juul itself.

Not like shipped cigarettes that come full of completely non-contaminated nicotine... this society is just a big f* joke.

FYI they've updated the article with this statement:

This story has been updated to include a response from Juul, a link to the lawsuit itself, and a clarification that the lawsuit did not specify which contaminant was allegedly in the pods.

The sad thing is that this is only an issue now, when the product is unexpectedly killing people in the short term. It's clear that killing people in the long term is part of their business model.

For example:

They created flavors clearly designed for non-smokers

They took major investment funds from big tobacco

The had to be forced to restrict certain marketing policies even though it was clear that vaping had become epidemic in high schools.

They pursue the same kinds of hyper aggressive promotion overseas the cigarette companies do, continuing with practices that are now prevented in the US

They happily ignore the evidence that many people in this new generation of addicts switch in-part or in-whole to cigarettes.

Am I the only one who thought about eXistenZ while reading this headline?

What is contaminated? Could be some no-big-deal impurity.

Lately I wonder if America's businesses have always been this corrupt and I just wasn't old enough to be tuned-in to it, or whether the current levels are a more recent phenomenon. Between Juul, WeWork, Boeing, PG&E, Equifax, the Sacklers. It's just mindblowing how rotten everything is. It's amazing society continues to function at all.

Fact is most DA's hate pursuing white collar crime because the workload for the cases is much higher than jailing evil poor people.

This is a really interesting story, but let's wait to see what the result of the suit is.

Tim Heidecker already LARP'd as Tim Danaher....2 years ago![0]

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YWJcqISKJQ

Contaminated with what?

I quit using Juul because the Mint pods gave me a headache and it was around the same time they claim they were contaminated..... Where's the class action?

> It's sad that there are so many people who would knowingly cause harm to others, just all for the opportunity to make just a little bit more money.

People like Tim Danaher should be behind bars. It's amazing to me that you can kill, injure, or put at risk hundreds of thousands of lives in the name of profit, but so long as you do it while working for a large enough business you get to continue to live in the luxury those profits afford you no matter how much innocent blood you spilled to gain them. I don't know exactly when we decided that serial killers in suits are perfectly acceptable to us, but even the companies themselves who allow this sort thing to happen are rarely punished enough to offset the gains they made exploiting their customers.

I expect there to be people in this world who will do anything to satisfy their greed, I just don't understand why we continue to let it happen again and again in industry after industry without holding anyone meaningfully accountable for their part in it.

Remember that lawsuits like these tend to exaggerate salacious details in hopes of attracting press attention, and forcing a quick settlement.

I paused vaping my Juul just long enough to read that it was primarily affecting Mint flavored cartridges. Back to vaping.

Whoops. Time to find my fix some other way.

Zero explanation of what the actual contaminant was.

This is a garbage clickbait article and Buzzfeed should be ashamed.

STOP nominating narcissistic sociopaths to paths of power. Yeah??? Real easy.