By Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul sued e-cigarette manufacturer JUUL on Thursday, alleging the company targeted youth, misrepresented nicotine levels and marketed its product as a smoking cessation device without approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
“If you visit any of the high schools and even middle schools in your neighborhood, they are now referring to the restroom as the vaping room,” Raoul said Thursday in Chicago. “That can lead to minors using other forms of tobacco and to addiction challenges that go beyond the use of tobacco.”
Raoul is using the state’s consumer fraud act in the lawsuit against California-based JUUL. He filed the suit in Cook County Circuit Court.
“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 Senior Director of Communications Austin Finan said in a statement.
“As part of that process,” Finan wrote, “we recently stopped accepting orders for our Mint JUULpods in the U.S., suspended all broadcast, print, and digital product advertising in the U.S. and are investing in scientific research to ensure the quality of our FDA Premarket Tobacco Product Application (PMTA) application and expanding our commitment to develop new technology to reduce youth use. Our customer base is the world’s 1 billion adult smokers and we do not intend to attract underage users.”
Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike joined Raoul on Thursday. Ezike said youth smoking declined from nearly one-in-four to one-in-20 over ten years, but youth use of vaping products jumped to more than one-in-four.
“We cannot stand idly by and watch as the e-cigarette industry erase the incredible progress of the last ten years,” Ezike said.
Ezike also updated the number of lung injury cases related to vaping, upping it to 201 cases since July. That’s part of 2,200 across the country, she said. The age range in cases in Illinois was 13 to 85, but the median age is 22.
“Enticements to vape with flavors such as strawberry, watermelon, mango, draw youth in,” she said.
“Undoing the work that has been done to lower youth smoking rates must be part of a comprehensive solution and today we are starting, we are starting with JUUL,” Raoul said.
Raoul said his office’s lawsuit against JUUL wasn’t the only action on the table.
“My office is also focusing on policy changes and enforcement actions that will build on the work I announced today,” Raoul said.
Some state lawmakers have sought legislation to ban flavored nicotine products, saying flavors appeal to youth.
Marco Altamore, the treasurer of the Smoke Free Alternatives Coalition of Illinois, said over 95 percent of adult customers use flavored products.
“I’m sure there are bad actors in the industry and some have made mistakes, but we are not here to sell to youth, that’s not our business model,” Altamore said. “We’re here for smokers, we’re here to make ex-smokers.”
Altamore said they’d rather see stiffer penalties on shops that sell to minors, stricter online verification standards and even possibly requiring IDs to be scanned at the point of sale.
Illinois Radio Network can be reached at [email protected].
