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A person smokes a Juul Labs Inc. e-cigarette in a photograph taken in New York, last year.
Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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NPR Education
San Diego Schools Sue Juul Labs Over Youth Vaping Epidemic
Scott Neuman
January 9, 2020
San Diego's public school schools have filed suit against Juul Labs,
Inc., the largest U.S. producer of e-cigarettes, accusing the company
of deliberately marketing its vaping products to young people,
effectively rolling back years of progress made by anti-smoking
campaigns.
A 40-page complaint filed in San Diego Superior Court on behalf of the
San Diego Unified School District on Tuesday alleges that Juul's
product "disrupts the learning environment," causing an increase in
student absences due to vaping-related illnesses and hurting the
schools "by diverting funding away from learning toward educational
campaigns, prevention, and treatment."
The school district, the second-largest in California, is seeking
monetary compensation for costs incurred as a result of the rise in the
use of e-cigarettes among youth.
"Our district is in the business of educating students in a healthy and
safe environment," San Diego Unified Superintendent Cindy Marten said,
according to ABC Channel 10 News. "This lawsuit supports district goals
by holding Juul accountable for its harmful marketing practices and
unsafe products."
Citing congressional testimony and a report by the U.S. Surgeon
General's office, the lawsuit claims that anti-smoking efforts had
caused a drop in use of tobacco products among young people from 28% in
2000 to just 7.6% in 2017. However, e-cigarettes dramatically reversed
that positive trend, with their use by high school students nearly
doubling in a single year, from 11.7% in 2017 to 20.8% in 2018.
The complaint calls the situation an "epidemic."
San Francisco, Calif.-based Juul says it has sought to stop underage
use of its products, offering a timeline of its efforts on the
company's website. In a statement sent to the San Diego Union Tribune
and other local media, Juul said it was working "with attorneys
general, regulators, public health officials and other stakeholders to
combat underage use and convert adult smokers from combustible
cigarettes."
"Our customer base is the world's 1 billion adult smokers and we do not
intend to attract underage users," Juul spokesman Ted Kwong said. "To
the extent these cases allege otherwise, they are without merit."
The school district's suit alleges that while numerous restrictions on
advertising have been imposed on traditional tobacco companies, such as
prohibitions on billboard advertising, sponsorship of events, free
samples and "flavored" cigarettes, that e-cigarette makers have
encountered none of those obstacles.
For Big Tobacco, those advertising avenues "were prohibited because of
their effectiveness at appealing to youth," according to the complaint,
even as "all of these activities figured prominently in Juul's
marketing campaign."
Among other things, Juul used "youth-appealing imagery" on billboards
in New York's Times Square and "held a series of at least 50 highly
stylized parties, typically with music entertainment, in cities across
the United States," the complaint said.
The school district alleges that Juul has so successfully inculcated
young people with its advertising campaign that students now often
refer to school restrooms — often "just a cloud" from all the vaping
smoke, the complaint says, as "the Juul room."
"Across the United States, schools have had to divert resources and
administrators have had to go to extreme lengths to respond to the
ever-growing number of students using Juuls on school grounds," the
complaint said.
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