JUUL To Pay Washington $22.5M For Advertising Vapes To Minors

OLYMPIA, WA — Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson is declaring victory over vape manufacturer JUUL, following a successful suit against the company.

That lawsuit, filed back in fall 2020, alleged that the company designed their products to appeal to minors and lied to consumers about the addictiveness of their products. Now, more than a year later, Ferguson's office has obtained a consent decree ordering JUUL to pay the state $22.5 million over the next four years.

According to the Attorney General's Office, JUUL must also:

• Stop all advertising that appeals to youth.
• Cease most social media promotion of its products.
  • JUUL is now prohibited from marketing via Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and Youtube in most cases.
• Accurately market its products, including warnings about its nicotine content.
• Do more to confirm that JUUL consumers are legally old enough to buy nicotine.
  • This includes stricter age verification programs for online sales and the creation of a "robust secret shopper program" which will conduct at least 25 secret shopper checks per month at Washington-based JUUL retailers over the next two years, with at least one check in each of Washington's 39 counties.

Ferguson's office says that's the strictest secret shopper program in the company’s history, and a major win for Washington consumers.

“JUUL put profits before people,” Ferguson said. “The company fueled a staggering rise in vaping among teens. JUUL’s conduct reversed decades of progress fighting nicotine addiction, and today’s order compels JUUL to surrender tens of millions of dollars in profit and clean up its act by implementing a slate of corporate reforms that will keep JUUL products out of the hands of underage Washingtonians.”

Money obtained by the lawsuit will create a new Health Equity unit within the Attorney General's Office. That unit will work with other divisions like Civil Rights and Consumer Protection to respond to "deceptive and discriminatory health care practices", particularly those that disproportionately impact vulnerable Washingtonians and minority communities.

In the company's initial response to Ferguson's lawsuit, JUUL claimed its advertisements did not intentionally target children, but as JUUL's business grew, use of vapes and e-cigarettes among teens rose as well. The Attorney General's Office says that, in 2019, one in 10 middle schoolers used e-cigarettes. In comparison, in 2011 just 0.6 percent of middle schoolers did. Plus, a 2018 study of JUUL's Twitter followers found that as much as 80 percent of their audience was between the ages of 13 and 20.

Related: AG's Litigation Has Reclaimed $1 Billion For WA