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Overseas media complains about Juul: the settlement agreement is about money, not the truth

Overseas media complains about Juul: the settlement agreement is about money, not the truth

2022-09-14

On September 14th, the overseas e-cigarette media Filter published an article saying that the settlement agreement with Juul in 34 states and territories in the United States is about money, not the truth.


The following is the full text:


Juul is back in the news, this time tentatively agreeing to a multistate agreement to pay up to $438.5 million to settle multiple charges related to teen vaping (without admitting wrongdoing). The money will be paid out over 6 to 10 years.


In a Sept. 6 press release, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, who led the investigation and negotiations, said they had relentlessly marketed vaping products to minors, manipulating their chemical composition to make inexperienced users palatable... misleading Consumers' addiction to nicotine content and their products.


In a press conference, he said: "We have no illusions and cannot claim that the settlement will stop young people from vaping. It's still an epidemic. This is still a huge problem.


It is deeply disturbing that, in a high-profile case, the attorney general could get away with falsehoods that peddled these omissions, exaggerations and outright lies.


Furthermore, it hints at how biased and dishonest the two-year investigation into Juul was.


The truth, the whole truth, only the truth? Not so much.


An epidemic of teen vaping never existed. It's the invention of fanatical anti-vaping groups, most notably the Movement for Tobacco Free Kids, the Truth Initiative and Parents Against Vaping (PAVe). They have huge cash and connections at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), sparking a nationwide drug scare against Juul.


The reality is that youth experimentation with Juul e-cigarettes is a trend that collapsed within four years. This decline is well documented by federal government research.


High school vaping increased from 12 percent in 2017 to 27 percent in 2019, but dropped to 11 percent in 2021. The number of high school vapers has dropped by a staggering 58% compared to the 2019 peak. These figures include any use within the past 30 days; daily use is only a small fraction of the overall. Most importantly, high school smoking rates dropped from 8% to 2%.


These numbers should be celebrated and widely circulated in the mainstream media and every state government office. But that's not the case, as it would undermine the narrative of the Juul-fueled teen vaping epidemic (indeed, those teens who are still vaping today prefer disposables made by other companies).


AG Tong revolves around nicotine with classic fear-based messaging as if it were a dangerous drug.


Nicotine acts like caffeine. He claimed that Juul misled consumers about nicotine levels and manipulated the chemical composition to make it more acceptable to inexperienced users. He did not provide any evidence.


The vast majority of Juul users are current or former smokers, not inexperienced users of nicotine.


The company openly admits that its scientists match the nicotine content of each cartridge to that of cigarettes to help entrenched smokers make a difference — a positive thing if you care about saving lives. It overshadowed Juul's widely circulated novel that tried to add a new generation of teens to addiction.


The Manhattan millionaire moms who lead the Bloomberg-funded advocacy group PAVe, whose stated goal is to get Juul out of office, quickly reached a settlement.


Co-founder Meredith Berkman said: "No amount of money can eliminate the harm done by Juul's targeting and marketing of teens, many of whom suffer severe nicotine addiction and bodily harm, using invisible flavored products designed by the company.


Lies and exaggerations. There's no evidence Juul's marketing strategy is specifically targeting teens; hiring young (but not underage) models for print ads, hosting launches, and selling flavors that most adults love doesn't. As for their stealth-designed e-cigarette, Juul's founders designed it to not look like a cigarette in order to help adult smokers quit.


Berkman, who co-hosts the misnamed podcast Big Tobacco Messed with the Wrong Moms, likes to make sweeping, disastrous predictions and elevate them to a comical level.


“The human cost of targeting and marketing Juul to children is unquantifiable,” she claims. "It has had a hugely devastating impact on the public health of an entire generation of children, and we will see increases in public health care costs for decades to come."


What the hell is she talking about? Most kids have never used Juul! As the recent National Youth Tobacco Survey showed, teen use has plummeted, with the vast majority vaping occasionally for fun, to keep calm or to rebel to boost performance or mood. Then millions of people don't use it anymore.


So where is the hugely damaging effect of vaping on an entire generation of kids when most kids quit smoking?


When AG Tong said: "We've basically taken a chunk out of the one-time market leader, he revealed the real motive behind the lawsuit - to extract hundreds of millions of dollars from Juul." The company has been relentlessly maligned by corporate media such as the New York Times, and has been scapegoated by powerful regulatory federal agencies from the FDA to the CDC and even the U.S. Congress for the so-called teen vaping epidemic.


This all-out war against Juul puts the company's very existence at stake. A coalition of 39 state attorneys general took advantage of the situation and took deadly action.


Connecticut will receive $16.2 million in settlement funding, Oregon $18.8 million and Texas $42.8 million. Tong said Connecticut plans to spend Juul money on stopping, preventing and mitigating, but don't bet on it.


If the $246 billion Master Tobacco Settlement Agreement signed in 1998 is any guide, states will shift funding to initiatives unrelated to vaping or smoking prevention. Connecticut has allocated $0 in state funding for tobacco control programs since 2017. The last year the state spent its own money to stop teens from vaping was 2016.


It's not about teens who quit smoking and smoking for the most part, it's about money.


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