California Sues Juul For Selling Nicotine To Minors

The state of California filed a lawsuit against e-cigarette company Juul for its marketing and sales malpractice, mostly dealing with sales to teenagers, lack of health warning on the effects of their products to the health and more.

In an announcement, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey and the County of Los Angeles proclaimed their move against the company that they believe is targetting Californians with their deceptive marketing tactics and failure to make sure that minors do not have access to their products.

“We’ve worked too hard, committed our hard-earned money for too long combatting harmful tobacco use to stand idly by as we now lose Californians to vaping and nicotine addiction,” said Attorney General Becerra.

“JUUL adopted the tobacco industry’s infamous playbook, employing advertisements that had no regard for public health and searching out vulnerable targets. Today we take legal action against the deceptive practices that JUUL and the e-cigarette industry employ to lure our kids into their vaping web. We will hold JUUL and any other company that fuels a public health crisis accountable.”

Juul has not yet issued a general company statement about the lawsuit but Engadget reached out to them and this is what they had to comment:

“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 convert adult smokers from combustible cigarettes,” Juul spokesperson Austin Finan said.

This is not the first time that the company has been put into the question about their marketing and selling practices and the threat that their product poses, especially to teenagers.

A couple of months ago, Juul was called out by the FDA for promoting their products as “safe,” apparently without the approval of the FDA. Such claims can only be made once it has been approved by the government and the FDA pointed out that no permission was issued to the company for it.