An e-cigarette company has agreed to a $10 million settlement to end litigation brought by the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office that questioned Juul Labs’ marketing and sales practices and their impact on youth vaping in particular.
“This settlement is another step in our ongoing effort to reset our company, and we applaud the attorney general’s plan to deploy resources to combat underage use,” a Juul Labs spokesman told the Louisiana Record. “We will continue working with federal and state stakeholders to secure a fully regulated, science-based marketplace for vapor products.”
Attorney General Jeff Landry joined a multistate probe of Juul Labs in 2020. At the time, Landry raised concerns about recent increases in the number of middle and high school students who vaped regularly, raising health concerns.
In the settlement, the company did not admit to any wrongdoing, but it has voluntarily changed its business practices in recent years. In October 2019, Juul Labs moved to end the marketing of its nontraditional cigarette flavors, which were mint, fruit, cucumber, creme brulee and mango. Such flavors, which proved appealing to youth, were later outlawed by the federal government.
In addition, vaping among middle and high school students started to decline in 2020, according to the federal Food and Drug Administration’s National Youth Tobacco Survey. Monthly use of e-cigarettes among high school students dropped from 19.6% (3 million) in 2020 to 11.3% (1.7 million) in 2021, the study found. That represented a 42% decline in vaping among high schoolers.
E-cigarettes provide adult smokers with a way to transition from combustible products to an electronic device that produces nicotine vapor without the harmful tar that traditional cigarettes produce. But the popularity of vaping has also raised concern among health officials about potential health problems for youth.
Prior to 2020, Landry noted that the most popular e-cigarette brand among Louisiana’s school-age teens was Juul Labs. But the FDA’s youth tobacco survey reported that by 2021, the Juul brand was the fourth most popular brand among high school e-cigarette users throughout the nation. Only 5.7% of high schoolers reported that Juul was their usual brand, the survey found.
Photo courtesy of vaping360.com.