And what that may or may not mean for JUUL, going forward …. ??
Yes, it's a tricky position for JUUL. On the positive side, a step back by regulators might allow them to continue and sell more JUUL pods. It could also eventually increase the social acceptance of vaping, and stop the steady decline of nicotine users.
However, higher levels of nicotine customers is only good for them if they can maintain premium pricing on their products. If the products become commodities, it becomes little different from food and other similar industries which have little pricing power and low margins.
This is also the reality that is setting in on the cannabis companies, which CRON to their credit, correctly focused on from the beginning. CRON always said they wanted to develop and acquire premium brands that were "asset light" and to not be in the business of being "the farmer" of cannabis. It will take time, but they are financially solid compared to many others who wasted billions trying to be the biggest cannabis farmer. CRON now might be able to pick up valuable assets more cheaply due to others bad strategies.
So in reality, being the dominant brand, JUUL now likely wants and needs some pretty strong regulation that restricts and/or eliminates cheap competition. They obviously don't want regulation that crushes JUUL or the whole industry, but they don't want such light regulation that it is easy to open "micro-vape" companies (similar to what happened to major beer companies with the growth of micro-breweries).
That is a tough needle to thread down the middle. Especially when you are the dominant existing brand with high public visibility. You get stuck dealing with all the regulatory inquiries, negative press, and lawsuits - while the small guys can essentially flout the regulations since they have little to lose and aren't worth regulators & lawyers time going after until they get bigger.
So as the dominant e-vapor brand, JUUL can no longer be seen to be doing anything that promotes underage usage, while most of their competitors aggressively still largely can using many of the same tactics that JUUL initially used. By already pulling all their flavors, JUUL tried to get good press and get ahead of the law they thought was coming. Now that there might not be such regulation, their competitors might have an open field to capture a lot of JUUL's customers.
However, I would note that the FDA PMTA process is still in place, that doesn't need require any new laws to be passed. That alone might be the regulation that eventually crushes the small competitors. But it will likely be a rocky few years until all that is sorted out and becomes clear.