It began with a smoke break.

THIS IS A STORY OF AMBITION AND GREED

James Monsees and Adam Bowen were two ambitious graduate students at Stanford, and in between puffs after class they dreamed of a way to quit smoking. Their solution became the Juul, a sleek, modern device that could vaporize nicotine into a conveniently potent dose.

THIS IS A STORY OF BOOM AND BUST

The business they built around that device, Juul Labs, would go on to become a $38 billion company and draw blame for addicting a whole new generation of underage tobacco users.

THIS IS A STORY OF OUR TIME

With rigorous reporting and piercing insight into a Silicon Valley startup, Big Vape uses the dramatic rise of Juul to tell a larger story of big business, Big Tobacco, and the high cost of a product that was too good to be true.