North Carolina’s attorney general is asking a state judge to bar popular e-cigarette maker Juul Labs from selling to minors and force it to end slick marketing campaigns that appeal to them.
His lawsuit, filed Wednesday in state court, is the first against Juul by a state over the promotion of vaping products to teenagers.
“Juul’s business practices are not only reckless, they’re illegal. And I intend to put a stop to them,” Attorney General Josh Stein said. “We cannot allow another generation of young people to become addicted to nicotine.”
Juul took deliberate steps to make its products attractive to young people, including by developing fruity and dessert-like flavors, manipulating the chemical content to “make the vapor less harsh” on throats, and creating a “sleek design” that would appeal to minors, he said.
The company also hired influencers to promote the brand, used social media platforms popular among young people, and understated the risks of nicotine addiction, Stein claims in the lawsuit.
Juul said in a statement it shares the “attorney general’s concerns about youth vaping, which is why we have been cooperating with his office and why we have taken the most aggressive actions of anyone in the industry to combat youth usage.” In November, the company said it would stop selling most of its flavored pods, including mango, fruit, and cucumber, to retail stores, and shut down its accounts on Facebook and Instagram.
[Also read: Juul-funded study finds that nearly half of smokers quit after three months of vaping]
The company and its rivals are facing growing scrutiny from federal regulators as vaping among young people increases rapidly. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in February that tobacco use among middle and high school students grew by more than 30%, with the number of young people using any type of tobacco product soaring to over 4.9 million in 2018.
To combat that, the Food and Drug Administration unveiled a new policy designed to stop retailers from selling to minors. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who resigned his post in March, also warned that the devices might be banned if rates of teen vaping continued to rise.
Last week, Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, said it would no longer sell fruit- and dessert-flavored vaping products and will sell tobacco only to people 21 years or older.
The federal minimum age to buy tobacco is 18, but Gottlieb in February said he supported raising it to 21. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., plans to introduce legislation boosting the nationwide minimum age to purchase tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, to that level.
