Officials from the Lamar County School District have voted to accept a settlement of $78,000 as a result of a class action lawsuit against two organizations involved in e-cigarettes and accessories, following a 2020 lawsuit alleging the companies targeted school-age children with vaping products, leading to underage vaping at schools across the country.
That decision was made at the October 9 meeting of the district’s board of directors, where board members voted to the provisions put forth by JUUL and Altria. JUUL is a San Francisco-based manufacturer of e-cigarettes and accessories, while Altria – according to its website – offers a portfolio of smoke-free products designed to transition adults to a smoke-free future via various nicotine options.
“Vaping, especially with young children in our high schools and middle schools, has reached epidemic proportions,” district superintendent Steven Hampton said. “It’s something that (kids see as) cool, and it’s an issue – students are buying vapes, and they don’t know what’s in the vapes.
“We’ve had some medical issues that we’ve had to deal with, from students that have passed out from vaping. So we felt it was important that – because we are seeing issues in our schools – that we participate in this lawsuit so that we can send the message that we do not support (vaping).”
District officials will use the funds from the settlement to further vaping awareness and prevention, and to educate students on the harmful side effects of that measure.
“(That will be) presentations, guest speakers, deterrent devices to detect vapes and things like that,” Hampton said. “It’ll be a multitude of things that we’ll be implemented.”
Board members voted to join the suit, which is being handled by Frantz Law Group out of Los Angeles, on August 10, 2020. The suit accused JUUL of design defect, failure to warn, negligence and being a public nuisance.
It also stated that the cigarette industry has a long history of marketing to young people under the age of 21, but while “Big Tobacco” is prohibited from many marketing tactics promoting cigarette use among young people, JUUL has been allowed to implement those strategies in order to build their customer base.
“The lawsuit says that JUUL has targeted teenagers,” school board attorney Rick Norton said in a previous story. “They’ve got a large, large share of the market – I think it’s 70 or 80 percent of the market of e-cigarettes for those under 21 years of age.
“And it has caused problems in our schools, with kids trying to vape between classes, before school, after school, et cetera. The lawsuit is asking for JUUL to stop targeting teenagers, and that’s the primary purpose.”
The lawsuit specifically referred to the Montebello Unified School District in California, which it said had been required to redirect valuable school resources, and administrators have had to strategize on how to best deal with the JUUL problem. Some schools responded by taking extreme measures such as removing bathroom doors or shutting bathrooms down.
“Schools have had to ban flash drives to avoid any confusion between flash drives and JUULS,” the suit stated. “Schools have also paid thousands of dollars to install special monitors to detect vaping, or pay for the costs of plumbing repairs spent as a result of students flushing vaping paraphernalia down toilets.
“Other school districts have sought to create new positions for tobacco prevention supervisors, who get alerts when vape smoke is detected in bathrooms. In order to implement … anti-vaping programs, teachers have to prepare lessons and study materials for these sessions with information on the marketing and health dangers of vaping – extra work which requires teachers to work extra hours in addition to the work required for the normal curriculum.”
The suit went on to say vaping hurts individual student learning and has led to a rise in student absences because of sickness.
“In addition to skipping class or being late to class to address their addiction, students often share vape devices, which accelerates the spread of viruses and other illnesses that impact student attendance,” the suit stated. “The district has had students end up in the emergency room as a result of vaping at school.”
The suit stated that a 2015 JUUL advertising campaign was particularly designed to appeal to young people, as the advertisements in that campaign included bright colors and models in their 20s posing in manners that were meant to evoke those of underage teenagers rather than adults. JUUL also has advertised on the front page of VICE Magazine, which has marketed itself as the “No. 1 youth media company in the world.”
The lawsuit also said that JUUL further targeted youth by manufacturing, selling, and promoting an array of youth-oriented flavors for its JUUL pods, which came in flavors including mango, fruit medley, cool mint, cool cucumber and crème brulee. According to one survey, 81 percent of youth e-cigarette users reported the first product they used was flavored, and 81.5 percent reported product flavoring as a reason for use.
In addition, JUUL also purchased banner advertisements on children’s television networks, including Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, as well as websites for children such as allfreekidscrafts.com, hellokids.com and kidsgamheroes.com.
“JUUL also purchased advertisements on a range of websites designed to help middle school and high school students develop their mathematics and social skill studies,” the lawsuit states. “JUUL purchased advertisements on websites for high school students hoping to attend college, such as colleconfidential.com and collegereview.com.
“JUUL targeted college students with its paid online advertisements and purchased video advertisements on sites such as collegehumor.com and thecollegeprepstercom, as well as banner ads on survivingcollege.com. The teen vaping epidemic, which JUUL has had a massive influence in creating and maintaining, has and will continue to have significant costs, both for individual users and for society overall.”
JUUL also held more than 50 parties in cities across the United States in the first year after its 2015 launch, at which young attendees were give free nicotine-filled JUUL pods. Afterwards, the company posted pictures of various young people using the products across its various social media channels.
The suit requested compensatory damages, costs to abate or mitigate vaping, injunctive relief and abatement, punitive damages, reasonable attorney’s fees, statutory pre-judgment, costs of the suit, and any and all other relief allowed by the court.
“Any type of vaping or nicotine delivery devices (are prohibited on our campuses),” Hampton said. “Now they even deliver THC, which is a controlled substance.
“So any type of tobacco or vaping paraphernalia is not allowed on our campuses. We haven’t had any instances in our district with this, but there have been reports with Fentanyl being loaded into them. We haven’t had that on our campuses, but we’re trying to be prepared if that does happen.”
