Juul’s latest premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) for its next-generation e-cigarette introduces new technology to guard against counterfeit products and underage use—and the potential to expand the product line.
So what does the new product, which must be authorized by the Food and Drug Administration before it can be legally sold in the United States, have that the old Juul does not?
One of the key features is a unique pod ID chip, which communicates with the device, Juul Labs told CSP Daily News. When a new pod is paired with Juul’s next-generation device (which doesn’t yet have a commercial name), it will authenticate that pod.
“If it’s authentic Juul, then you can use it,” Juul told CSP. “If it’s one of those third-party knock offs or counterfeit, it won’t authenticate it and you can’t use it.”
The Washington, D.C.-based company is hoping this will solve the influx of illicit, compatible Juul products that third parties will sell, often in flavors that aren’t allowed in the United States.
The device is also Bluetooth enabled, and corresponds with an application that can be used with a smartphone or through a web-based app.
The next-generation Juul user must go through independent age-verification to connect the app with the device, Juul said. If users connect the next-generation device with the mobile app, they can lock the product at their discretion to restrict access, Juul said.
Juul has further technology that would allow it to lock a specific product, and to lock a product after a set amount of time. But the product for which they most recently submitted the PMTA for is an unlocked, tobacco-flavored, 18-milligram nicotine concentration level device and pod.
In the future, this locking technology could potentially open the door for other flavors, like menthol, Juul said.
“The reason for that is informed by what FDA has said in the space,” Juul said, which is that tobacco-flavored products have a lower-risk for youth initiation than flavored products. “But for flavored products, menthol flavors, we need something else. … And so we have the technology in the future to do that 'something else' of locking products with this tech.”
The advanced technology in the next-generation product also has an improved aerosol delivery rate, Juul said. Vape pods on the market today typically have higher nicotine concentration’s than Juul’s new 18-milligram version. For example, a 5% nicotine concentration pod would contain about 59 milligrams.
“It will be lower nicotine delivery than a cigarette, but competitive,” he said of the next-generation Juul.
Ultimately, with 28 million smokers in the country that haven’t tried or have rejected e-cigarettes, Juul said it hopes that this will help people transition.
If Juul’s current e-cigarettes pass FDA review, those PMTAs were denied then stayed pending further review, that and the next-generation product (assuming it also gets authorized) could be marketed side-by-side, Juul said.
The company believes the next-generation product has just as good of a chance of getting approval as the first one—"It was not an attempt to clean up prior PMTAs,” Juul said. The next-generation technology, which launched in Europe in 2021, has been five years in the making.
As for what else Juul is working on, the company was tight-lipped, but said the pipeline is robust.