August 14, 2019 – Illinois state prosecutors on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Juul Labs, accusing the e-cigarette company of using targeted marketing practices to appeal to youth and intentionally get them addicted to their nicotine product. This is the first Illinois Juul lawsuit filed against the manufacturer.

The lawsuit, which is filed in Lake County, Illinois, is one of numerous identical state lawsuits filed against Juul labs recently. Michael Nerheim, the state’s attorney in Lake County, said that his office will be working with several private Chicago law firms in the Illinois Juul Lawsuit.

“Companies like Juul Labs are preying on our teens and pre-teens by turning them into addicts,” Nerheim said. “Like dope dealers on a street corner, Juul intentionally created addicted teen customers, to get them to continuously come back for life.”

The Illinois Juul lawsuit claims that Juul Labs utilized their social media presence in order to influence teens to post selfies using their Juul device.

Juul Labs stated that their company’s marketing team has never attempted to influence teens in this matter. However, the company has deleted their Instagram and Facebook. They claim to be making efforts to remove all inappropriate use of their product from social media platforms.

June 15, 2019 – A Congressional House subcommittee on Thursday finished its two day hearing on JUUL e-cigarettes and the rise in youth vaping nationwide. Multiple ongoing investigations into JUUL Labs, conducted by the FDA as well as two state attorney generals, prompted this week’s Congressional hearing. Among matters discussed were JUUL’s advertising strategies and JUUL’s “Youth Prevention” cigarette risk education program. The Youth Prevention program was initially established by JUUL as a response to the public’s growing concern about youth vaping. JUUL organized Youth Prevention events nationwide claiming its commitment to combat the growing epidemic by educating kids on the dangers of smoking. According to JUUL’s Youth Prevention website, “JUUL Labs is committed to improving the lives of the world’s one billion adult smokers by eliminating cigarettes. We don’t’ want anyone who doesn’t smoke or already use nicotine, to use JUUL products. We certainly don’t want youth using the product. It is bad for public health, and it is bad for our mission.” As part of this mission, JUUL held numerous in-school presentations for students. JUUL offered $10,000 to each of the schools for the right to hold discussions with students. According to a JUUL spokesperson, the company has funded six grants of unspecified amounts to schools and youth programs in order to conduct “vaping prevention activities.” At one such event at the Dwight School in New York City, a JUUL representative met with students – with no teachers or adult supervision present – and told the students that while cigarettes were dangerous, JUUL e-cigarettes were “totally safe”. After donating $90,000 to the Richmond, California Police Activities League, JUUL held a Youth Prevention program for local middle school and high school student, specifically students who had faced suspension for using cigarettes. Juul “deployed a sophisticated program to enter schools and convey it’s messaging directly to teenage children, recruited thousands of online influencers to market its vaping devices to youths and targeted children as young as 8 in summer camp,” wrote a Congressional subcommittee staffer in a memo prepared for the hearing. Representative Katie Hill (CA) accused JUUL of financing two specific Youth Prevention programs in exchange for data about student test scores, surveys, and activity logs. At one point during the hearing, Hill directly addressed JUUL chief administrative officer Ashley Gould, asking why JUUL would need any of that information. Gould said she was not aware that that data was collected, but defended the data collection stating, “anything we undertook in the educational space was intended to keep kids away from using the product.” In total, the subcommittee collected thousands of documents from JUUL and the agencies currently investigating JUUL, which the subcommittee used to base its findings. These documents included internal emails between JUUL employees. In an email dating from April of last year, JUUL director of youth prevention and education program Julie Henderson discussed whether the company should attend a health fair at Hinsdale Central High School, in the suburbs of Chicago. Henderson wrote to two consultants, “Just spoke with Ashley and she shares my concern about the optics of us attending a student health fair given our new understanding of how much our efforts seem to duplicate those of Big Tobacco.” The documents presented in the hearing also included a detailed plan to recruit celebrity “influencers” to promote the brand and products. The FDA has previously questioned whether JUUL used specific marketing tactics, including using social media “influencers” to advertise their products to an underage market. The marketing plan stated that JUUL aimed to use influencers in pop-culture with large audiences in various sectors such as music, movies, social, pop-media, etc. Defending against claims that JUUL marketed its products to appeal to youth, JUUL co-founder James Monsees addressed the subcommittee emphasizing JUUL’s discontinued in-store sales of flavored nicotine products, affording those sales especially to their website, which requires age-verified sales. Multiple hearing presenters contended Monsees argument, saying that JUUL’s efforts fell short. The subcommittee decided that JUUL’s claimed intentions for the Youth Prevention programs were a farce and that the company had used these programs to familiarize teenagers with its products. Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (IL) stated that the company had also failed to actually discourage youth vaping by removing flavored products. “Although you say you took all the flavors out of the stores, you left the mint flavor,” he said. “Mint is a flavor and it took the place of other flavors,” Krishnamoorthi stated. JUUL continues to claim that the benefits of JUUL – helping cigarette smokers to transition away from cigarettes – are a benefit to public health. The FDA’s investigation is still ongoing. JUUL has until May 2020 to prove to the FDA that JUUL products are more of a benefit than a liability to public health, otherwise, the FDA could decide to pull JUUL off the market.

May 15, 2019 – Federal judge Paul W Grimm ruled to fast-track an ongoing safety review of thousands of vaping products currently being conducted by the FDA. The decision is part of a lawsuit filed against the FDA by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), along with other health organizations. The AAP and associates claim that the FDA unjustifiably delayed safety and health reviews on the impact of e-cigarettes and cigars. Judge Grimm “ruled that, in 2017, the agency acted illegally by allowing e-cigarettes to remain on the market until 2022 before companies applied for FDA authorization and by permitting products to remain on the market indefinitely during review.” said Michael Felberbaum, FDA spokesperson. Felberbaum went on to say, “The agency has and will continue to tackle the troubling epidemic of e-cigarette use among kids. This includes preventing youth access to, and appeal of, flavored tobacco products like e-cigarettes and cigars, taking action against manufacturers and retailers who illegally market or sell these products to minors, and educating youth about the dangers of e-cigarettes and other tobacco products.” Grimm allotted a 30-day period for both the Plaintiff and Defense to devise plans to move forward with the vaping products review.

May 21, 2019 – a Pennsylvania teen was diagnosed with “wet lung” (hypersensitivity pneumonitis), a respiratory inflammatory disease caused by inhaling toxins and synonymous with e-cigarette usage. The 18-year-old female, who remains unnamed, admits to using vaping products for a period of two to three weeks before her diagnosis. She arrived at the emergency room with complaints of severe chest pain, coughing and issues breathing. She remained on breathing machines and tubes for five days. Other than minor asthmatic issues, which rarely required an inhaler, the teen has never had pulmonary issues previously. Wet lung presented “a life-threatening health risk of e-cigarette use in an adolescent patient,” the teen’s doctors concluded. The doctors advise pediatricians to discuss the risks associated with vaping with their patients. According to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, this is the first case reported of in an adolescent as a risk of e-cigarette use.

March 10, 2019 – Last year, the FDA put into place a 4-year window which allows e-cigarette manufacturers to continue production without any scrutiny from the government watchdog agency. The reprieve will allow E-cigarette manufacturers to continue to produce their approved products without the oversite requested by a number of advocacy groups and health organizations. The health effects and safety concerns revolving around e-cigarettes is in contention; the industry continues to claim that e-cigarettes are a healthy alternative to traditional smoking products, while some health experts believe that e-cigarettes pose the same risks, if not more of a risk to users. Now that e-cigarette products have been “fast-tracked” through the FDA’s pre-market process, these advocacy groups and health organizations are mounting up to file suit against the FDA on grounds that the FDA unjustifiably delayed safety and health reviews for e-cigarette products.

November 30, 2018 – The FDA has warned yet another e-cigarette liquid maker for advertising products depicting food for children. Electric Lotus LLC, a California-based company, has been issued a warning for “advertising its e-cigarette liquids with nicotine in a way that may cause the products to resemble kid-friendly food like juice boxes and cookies.”

October 31, 2018 – According to Buzzfeed News, “Juul offered to pay schools as much as $20,000 to introduce a vaping curriculum that would explicitly place more of the blame on peer pressure,” However, “Juul consultants…encouraged students to try meditation and mindfulness exercises as an alternative to the vape pen, but failed to teach them about the dangers of vaping, experts said.” Also, “according to an analysis of the curriculum published earlier this month in the Journal of Adolescent Health, Juul did not include information about how young people are especially susceptible to nicotine addiction.” Experts in the analysis “also expressed concern that the company didn’t mention its marketing or flavors.”

October 25, 2018 – In response to the FDA crackdown on e-cigarette manufacturers marketing to youth, one company decided to pull their MarkTen Elite and Apex by MarkTen pod-based products from the market. Altria will also be narrowing down their e-cigarette flavor options to tobacco, mint, and menthol. In a letter to the head of the FDA, Altria CEO Howard Willard III issued the following statement: “We believe e-vapor products present an important opportunity for adult smokers to switch from combustible cigarettes,” said. “Yet, the current situation with youth use of e-cigarette products, left unchecked, has the potential to undermine that opportunity for adult smokers.”

October 12, 2018 – The FDA issued a warning to China-based HelloCig Electronic Technology Co. for selling vaping e-liquid products containing active ingredients used in erectile dysfunction drugs Cialis and Viagra. While the ingredients are approved for those specific pharmaceutical drugs, they are not approved for e-cigarette products. According to the FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, “Prescription drugs are carefully evaluated and labeled to reflect the risks of the medications and their potential interactions with other medicines, and vaping active drug ingredients is an ineffective route of delivery and can be dangerous. There are no e-liquids that contain prescription drugs that have been proven safe or effective through this route of administration.”

October 2, 2018 – Studies conducted have shown that e-cigarettes can contain dangerous chemicals that could be putting user’s health at risk. These chemicals include formaldehyde, a probable carcinogen, that is released when heated by high-voltage batteries and diacetyl, a flavoring chemical, found to be associated with bronchiolitis obliterans or Popcorn lung, a dangerous respiratory disease. CNN reported that a previous study looked at 51 of the 7,000 e-cigarette flavors currently marketed to consumers and found that diacetyl rates were higher than laboratory normal levels in 39 of the flavors. The Center on Addiction reported similar findings and stated that “Diacetyl and other chemical flavorings found in e-juice may be considered safe to ingest in small quantities, but are dangerous when inhaled deeply and repeatedly into the lungs.”

October 2, 2018 – The FDA seized more than 1,000 documents from Juul Labs headquarters in San Francisco in a surprise inspection. The inspection “followed a request in April for documents that would help the agency better understand the high rates of use and appeal among the youth of Juul products.” According to a report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Juul sales surged between 2016 and 2017. Retail sales data published in JAMA found that Juul’s sales increased from 2.2 million devices sold in 2016 to 16.2 million in 2017, with many of those customers being under the age of 18. The FDA said the surprise inspection was conducted because of particular interest in whether Juul deliberately marketed to minors.

June 5, 2018 – Voters in San Francisco approved an ordinance that would ban the sale of flavored vaping liquids and also prohibit the sales of menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products. Becoming the first city in the nation to pass a ban of this kind, San Francisco has set a precedent for other cities to follow suit.

March 21, 2018 – In an effort that anti-smoking advocates are calling way overdue, the FDA is investigating the safety of menthol and other flavoring additives in tobacco products to determine if these additives should be more heavily restricted or even banned. This investigation comes as e-cigarettes continue to gain overwhelming popularity amongst consumers. The FDA wants to determine whether these potential health risks necessitate readdressing the restrictions placed on e-cigarettes and other tobacco products containing flavoring additives. Earlier this week, Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, announced that the FDA has issued an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) – a process of collecting data and hearing expert testimony on the costs and benefits of tobacco flavoring additives to determine whether these products should be more heavily restricted or even banned. The FDA conducted an ANPRM to determine whether to ban methanol and other flavoring additives in 2013. To the detest of anti-smoking groups, no changes followed this ANPRM. The current ANPRM pertains to e-cigarettes and other non-combustible tobacco products. Flavor additives in combustible tobacco have been banned since 2009. Almost all popular e-cigarettes contain some form of flavoring additive. Gottlieb noted that the intention of the flavoring additives in these products was obviously to appeal to the youth, middle-school and high-school students. Gottlieb said that he recognized the validity of the argument that these flavors help adult smokers to wean off of cigarettes. However, Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, disagreed with the validity of this claim. Myer explained that while there is an abundance of evidence that e-cigarette flavorings are associated with increased use among teens and young adults, there is almost no evidence that the flavoring will help cigarette smokers to quit. If the FDA does decide to restrict or ban some or all tobacco flavoring additives, the agency will conduct a follow-up comment period. Robin Koval, president of Truth Initiative, said that in the best-case scenario, it will be several years before the restrictions or bans are put into effect. “The FDA is taking the right actions, so we are optimistic that they are serious about this,” Koval said. “But time is of the essence. This has taken way too long.”

January 31, 2018 – A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that the nicotine in e-cigarettes seems to cause damage to DNA in ways that would increase the risk of certain cancers for e-cigarette users. According to lead researcher Moon-Zhong Tang, professor of environmental medicine at New York University School of Medicine, the study showed that the vaporized nicotine not only damaged DNA but also its ability to repair itself. The study is the first research to produce evidence that e-cigarettes could be carcinogenic. “It is certainly concerning, and certainly gives pause if one were to say e-cigarettes were safe and could be used by all people without consequences,” said Dr. Roy Herbst, chief of medical oncology at Yale Cancer Center and chair of the American Association for Cancer Research’s Tobacco and Cancer Subcommittee. In fact, this is not the first study to expose the dangers of smoking these devices. Previous research has connected e-cigarettes to the life-threatening respiratory disease known as popcorn lung. Tang and his colleagues conducted the research using laboratory, which they exposed to e-cigarette vapor containing nicotine and liquid solvents. The researchers also exposed mice to nicotine and liquid solvents separately. While previous studies conducted on the safety of e-cigarettes have used e-liquids heated at high levels of electricity, which resulted in other dangerous chemicals such as diacetyl being exposed, Tang’s team used lower levels of electricity, at or below the voltage that most all e-cigarettes operate. In testing the nicotine-solvent combination, as well as the solvent alone, the researchers found that the nicotine alone, and not the solvent, produces the effects that caused damage to the DNA. The researchers conducted similar tests on cultured human lung and bladder cells and found the same effects. Not all animal research results in similar outcomes when tested in humans, so researchers cannot say for certain that a human trial would result in similar DNA damage. However, if further research does confirm Tang’s results, Herbst says that could mean that e-cigarettes may carry their own cancer risk. Tang and his team are currently conducting research on the long-term effects of exposure to the nicotine in e-cigarettes using similar methods. From his research, Tang could not say whether he found e-cigarettes to be more dangerous than traditional cigarettes. “We just cannot guess with the data we have,” Tang explained.

October 16, 2017 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday asked 21 e-cigarette companies, including the makers and importers of Vuse Alto and Myblu, to cough up information about whether more than 40 products are being illegally marketed. This comes amid claims from consumers that the e-cigarette companies are using tactics to market their products to underage teenage consumers. Juul labs recently came under heat for potential illegal marketing practices, leading the FDA to conduct a full review of the manufacturers marketing practices. If found in contention with the rules and regulations of marketing, these companies could find their products removed from the US market altogether.

February 8, 2016 – E-cigarettes are adult products that should be kept out of the hands of children. That is the focus of legislation that passed both the U.S. House and Senate that will potentially save the lives of many children, as the debate regarding the regulation of the e-cigarette industry continues. President Obama signed the Child Nicotine Poisoning Prevention Act of 2015 into law on January 29. It requires manufacturers to put childproof caps on the small bottles of liquid nicotine used in e-cigarettes. Liquid nicotine is sold in concentrated form for use in e-cigarettes and is often packaged in easy-to-open, brightly colored vials with appealing flavors. Just a single teaspoon of highly concentrated liquid nicotine is potent enough to kill a small child, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers.