‘YOUTH VAPING EPIDEMIC’
AG Healey suing Juul for targeting e-cig ads toward young people
Attorney General Maura Healey is suing e-cigarette and vaping giant Juul for “creating a youth vaping epidemic” in a lawsuit that uncovers details about the company’s predatory marketing and advertising campaigns.
“I remember watching my addiction and my sense of urgency to fulfill it tearing apart my relationships with the people that I love,” said 19-year-old Northeastern student Emma Tigerman at a press conference hosted by Healey on Wednesday.
Tigerman got addicted to Juul in high school and said she still struggles with it now. “Unfortunately I will have to consider myself an addict for the rest of my life and that is at the hands of Juul.”
Healey launched an investigation into Juul in the summer of 2018 and filed a complaint Wednesday in Suffolk Superior Court.
Healey said, “Juul’s own documents show that the company intentionally chose fashionable models and images that appeal to young people for its ads,” and even rejected an initial ad proposal intended to target adult smokers.
Ads for the campaign were posted on websites for kids such as Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., The Cartoon Network and Seventeen Magazine.
The lawsuit also found the company knowingly collected email addresses associated with users who were not age-verified and illegally made more than 10,000 shipments of its products to customers in the Bay State who were not age-verified.
The suit even found a Juul customer service representative told an underage customer in Massachusetts how to get around laws to access the products.
The email exchange showed a Juul representative said, “The legal age to purchase nicotine products in Milton, MA is 21 years old and above. If you have friends or relatives in Quincy, MA, you may use their address as a shipping address for your order.”
Dr. Jonathan Winickoff, director of pediatric research at the Tobacco Research and Treatment Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, said, “I have patients who I’ve known for years coming in with nicotine addiction to electronic cigarettes. E-cigarettes have been a dream come true for the tobacco industry.”
Juul has denied that it has ever marketed to young people and said no one underage should use their nicotine vaping products.
Juul spokesman Austin Finan said in a statement,
“Our customer base is the world’s 1 billion adult smokers and we do not intend to attract underage users.”
The statement read, “While we have not yet reviewed the complaint, we remain focused on resetting the vapor category in the U.S. and earning the trust of society by working cooperatively with attorneys general, regulators, public health officials, and other stakeholders to combat underage use and transition adult smokers from combustible cigarettes.”
Former Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley works at Juul full time as a member of the company’s government affairs team.
When asked by reporters about Coakley, Healey brushed off questions, but said, “It’s disappointing.”
Juul did not respond to the Herald’s request to interview Coakley.
On Wednesday, the state Public Health Council approved regulations restricting the sale of flavored e-cigarettes to smoking bars. They also restrict the sale of vape products with more than 35 milligrams of nicotine per milliliter to retail tobacco stores and smoking bars.