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For many lawmakers, the key to the teen vaping epidemic currently sweeping our country is Juul advertising, particularly on social media. Juul Labs Inc. has long been blamed for the rise in teen and youth vaping, and that blame has resulted in a slew of lawsuits against the company. The most recent legal action facing the company is a lawsuit being filed by three Maryland counties alleging that Juul advertising is intentionally targeted at children.
Juul is one of the largest manufacturers of e-cigarettes and vaping products in the world. While these devices have been advertised as a safer alternative to smoking, they still contain the most addictive chemical in cigarettes: nicotine. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reports that more than five million middle and high school students were current vape users in 2019, with nearly one million using e-cigarettes daily.
Juul on Social Media
A recent study published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine attempted to measure the number of conversations surrounding Juul that were happening on social media between 2017 and 2018. The researchers trained a “supervised learning classifier” to identify tweets relating to Juul. The tweets were then geolocated and assessed by researchers.
According to the study, the number of Juul-related tweets being published increased by 67 times between 2017 and 2018. In the first quarter of 2017, there were roughly 20,000 tweets about Juul. In the last quarter of 2018, there were 1,300,000. The study also found that in 34 percent of U.S. counties there were more than six Juul-related posts per 10,000 people. However, over the course of the study, the number of non-Juul related e-cigarette posts decreased by 25 percent. In conclusion, the study found that, despite efforts by the FDA, Juul’s presence on social media grew during the study period across the country.
Juul Advertising Lawsuits
According to the Daily Mail, three Maryland counties are the newest additions to the ever-growing list of those suing over Juul advertising allegedly targeting children. The suit alleges that Juul violated Maryland public nuisance laws as well as federal racketeering statutes by marketing their products at children, using social media for Juul advertising, and other “deceptive” marketing tactics meant to hook kids on addictive, nicotine-based products.
Among the allegations listed are efforts made by the company to use social media influencers to target kids and advertising their products on youth-centered websites. The suit claims that this youth-focused advertising allowed Juul to “operate an even more pervasive, insidious, and successful viral marketing campaign than its predecessors in the tobacco industry.”
The counties allege that Juul advertising targeted at kids compelled “a generation of youth, who were never cigarette smokers, into nicotine addiction and forced local governments to spend significant amounts of time and resources combating the youth vaping crisis sweeping their communities.”
Juul for their part claims that they never intentionally targeted children with their ads.
“We will continue to reset the vapor category in the U.S. and seek to earn the trust of society by working cooperatively with attorneys general, regulators, public health officials, and other stakeholders to combat underage use and transition adult smokers from combustible cigarettes,” Juul said in a statement reported by the Baltimore Sun.
The Maryland lawsuit comes just six months after a lawsuit was filed against the vape company by Montgomery County. That lawsuit accused Juul of negligence and unjust enrichment. The suit alleged that Juul advertising on the packaging and labeling of their products was particularly designed to attract kids who could also easily conceal the products among their schoolwork.
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