Attorney General said that Juul Labs, a vaping business, will pay West Virginia $7.9 million to resolve a claim that it advertised to minors.
In this case, Juul is charged with violating the state's Consumer Credit and Protection Act through the design, manufacture, marketing, and sale of e-cigarettes. Health authorities in West Virginia revealed in a study from 2020 that more than 60% of the state's high school students had tried e-cigarettes in 2019, up from 44% in 2017.
According to the lawyer, this settlement holds businesses like Juul accountable for not copying the marketing tactics of big tobacco and targeting children. Plaintiffs in Juul's action claim the company misled customers about the potency of its nicotine, misrepresented the nicotine equivalent of its products to traditional cigarettes, and underestimated the risks of addiction that come with such high nicotine levels.
The troubled e-cigarette firm, which last year fired hundreds of employees and resolved thousands of lawsuits consolidated in a federal court in California brought by families of Juul users, school districts, local governments, and Native American tribes, has reached yet another deal.
A two-year probe by 33 states investigating the marketing of its high-nicotine vaping products resulted in the San Francisco business agreeing to pay roughly $440 million in September. In 2019, Juul withdrew the majority of its flavors and stopped all U.S. advertising due to legal action and government penalties.
To safeguard the public's health, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ordered Juul to cease promoting and distributing its products in the country in June of last year. The FDA later put a temporary stop on its ruling and is now reviewing the company's goods after receiving a legal challenge from Juul. One in four adults in West Virginia smoked in 2018, according to a survey by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the highest prevalence in the country.
Juul Labs stated in a statement that this deal with the West Virginia Attorney General reflects yet another step in the company's continued effort to address concerns from the past. The parameters of the agreement mirror our current business practices, which were introduced as part of our company-wide reset in the autumn of 2019. They also give financial resources to further combat underage usage and create cessation programs.
We expect that some monies will go directly to programs to decrease the use of combustible cigarettes and enhance public health in the state of West Virginia, which has the highest cigarette smoking rate in the United States, the business stated.
