but that's hardly news, this article is so terrible you only need the first sentence to understand the narrative they pushing. Here is that sentence; "Leading e-cigarette company Juul Labs spurred a "widespread rush" of companies seeking to boost their own nicotine concentrations in order to mirror Juul's success, according to a paper published Thursday in the BMJ journal Tobacco Control."
You can search out on your own if you're so depraved you wish to read the article, but I can't recommend it. This "study" that they used, which you can find at this link, is the scientific equivalent of doing a rather non comprehensive incredibly biased series of google searches. Right from the study itself; "Objective - Until recently, purveyors of vaping products marketed e-liquids in the 1%–3% range of nicotine concentration with those at 3% described as ‘super high’ intended for two packs/day smokers. The goal of this study is to evaluate the degree to which JUUL, with its 5% nicotine and 75% US market share, has spurred other e-liquid vendors to raise the nicotine levels of their products."
Oh okay, that's a bit interesting, but in no way related to science, if you're going to be generous you could call it market research, but it's barely even that when you consider the methods they used in writing this paper. "Methods - online search to identify brands offering e-liquid in exceptionally high nicotine concentration (≥5%) and to catalogue the appearance of devices which emulate JUUL."
That's it. Seriously this tiny bit of freshmen level research constitutes as a valid source to spin an anti-vape article over at CNN? Well I guess so, but the science here is just a convenient vehicle for the anti-vape narrative and the article goes on pushing with; "The cost of nicotine addiction has fallen" as the byline.
Notice how the focus isn't the cost of smoking or nicotine cessation has fallen. They quite literally do not care that vaping and eLiquids are reducing the risk in consuming nicotine and do not even mention that quitting combustible cigarettes is the whole point to vaping. Journalism is hard, I guess they should try learning to code.