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Jamie DeSharm didn't know just how big this story would become when she started reporting

it.

She's a health writer at Time Magazine and just released a new book called Big Vape, The

Incendiary Rise of Jewel.

I think for most people it felt like Jewel kind of exploded overnight, like all of a sudden

everybody you knew had one of these devices.

But the truth is it was a long time coming.

The two founders of Jewel Labs met in 2004 as graduate students at Stanford.

Their thesis project?

How to make combustible cigarettes obsolete?

Both of these guys were smokers.

They both had kind of conflicted feelings about that habit and they were looking for something

better.

Over the next decade or so these guys came up with a bunch of cigarette alternatives,

but none really took off until 2015 when Jewel hit the market.

Which was by far their most sophisticated product.

It looks like a flash drive if you've ever seen one.

It's very sleek and it has these very potent, very palatable little nicotine cartridges

that you can vaporize into a very user-friendly little whisp of vapor.

And as it rose in prominence, you probably know it became very popular with teenagers

and sort of set off this firestorm in the media.

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