Juul Reaches $462 Million Settlement With New York, California and Other States

This month, Juul settled claims filed by West Virginia for $7.9 million.

In the Minnesota trial that began a few weeks ago, Keith Ellison, the state attorney general, opened the proceedings by accusing the company of getting teenagers hooked on e-cigarettes “so they could make money.”

“They baited, deceived, and addicted a whole new generation of kids after Minnesotans slashed youth smoking rates down to the lowest level in a generation,” Mr. Ellison said.

Like other settlements, the latest requires Juul to refrain from marketing to youths. The agreement also requires Juul to stop offering free or “nominally priced” products to consumers, and from using the marketing technique of “product placement” in virtual reality systems.

Meanwhile, Juul’s business continues to struggle to find its footing. In 2018, the company dominated the vaping space, with revenues of nearly $1 billion that year. These days, Juul has fallen behind in market share to Vuse, its competitor, which is owned by British American Tobacco. Juul does not disclose its revenues, but B.A.T. said its vapor category in the United States, which includes its popular Vuse Alto product, had about $1 billion in revenues last year, up more than 60 percent from the year earlier.

Tobacco giant Altria had pinned its smokeless future on Juul. In 2018, it paid nearly $13 billion for a 35 percent stake in the vaping company only to watch as Juul became the target of blame for teenage nicotine addiction, and the defendant in myriad investigations and thousands of lawsuits. At the end of last year, Altria valued that stake at $250 million and earlier this year, it swapped its stake in exchange for Juul’s intellectual property around heated tobacco.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/health/juul-vaping-settlement-new-york-california.html