Senators' scathing letter to Juul demands answers about tactics targeting youth, ties to Big Tobacco

[Eugene]

Source: CNN

Senators' scathing letter to Juul demands answers about tactics targeting youth, ties to Big Tobacco

By Michael Nedelman, CNN
Updated 1816 GMT (0216 HKT) April 8, 2019

(CNN) — Leading e-cigarette company Juul Labs is under the microscope again, with 11 senators demanding answers from the company at the center of the youth vaping "epidemic" whose business practices have been shrouded in "immense secrecy," the senators said in a letter to Juul on Monday.

They are requesting data, plans and other information from Juul related to its popularity among youth and its relationship with tobacco giant Altria, which invested nearly $13 billion in the company late last year.

The Altria deal signaled that Juul is "more interested in padding its profit margins than protecting our nation's children," says the letter, signed by Democrats including Dick Durbin of Illinois, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

"Altria has a long and sordid history of spending billions to entice children to smoke through targeted campaigns that intentionally lied about the science and health effects from cigarettes," the letter says.

-snip-

Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/08/health/juul-senators/index.html

[mr_lebowski]

1. I've heard plenty of their ads on the radio and never once felt they were in any way 'targeting

youths'. They entirely target 'smokers ... who don't want to reek of cigarettes all the time and feel ostracized because of it', which is ... pretty much everyone who smokes.

And there's nothing illegal about being 'tied to tobacco companies'.

I've also never once seen a 'youth' utilizing that company's products, and I seriously doubt they have any data showing that 'Juul' is remotely 'popular with youths'. In fact I've yet to see someone I could TELL was under 18 ... vaping at all. Which is not say it's not happening, it probably is. But I'd be pretty damn surprised to see that their numbers reach anything CLOSE to 'epidemic' levels. Plus, anyone you DO see vaping, you have no idea whether they'd be smoking cigarettes instead ... if they weren't vaping.

Another point of fact is that their product is MASSIVELY overpriced compared to what one pays by buying a refillable vaping 'mod' (as they are known) and purchasing e-juice in larger containers. Not to mention, their product also sucks compared to mods and custom-made juices. And it also has absolutely none of cache that a proper 'mod' unit has.

Put it this way, using Juul, despite it being an inferior product, costs as much as smoking cigs. Using a custom mod and e-juice costs about 1/3 to 1/2 as much as cigs. Sure, there's an initial outlay of buying the mod (40-150 bucks), but once you have it, you're saving mucho dollars every day thereafter.

And kids ... are generally very astute when it comes to prices, and always want the 'cool' thing, not some corporate-mass-produced, overpriced bullshit product like Juul.

I like the people involved here, of course, but this sounds like BS grandstanding. We got a LOT more important, pressing problems than youths taking up vaping to begin with.