Olathe School District will sue e-cigarette maker JUUL
District said JUUL Labs created threat to student health
District said JUUL Labs created threat to student health
District said JUUL Labs created threat to student health
The Olathe Public School District has taken action to sue e-cigarette maker JUUL, claiming the vaping epidemic and JUUL Labs has created a threat to students’ health.
The school board met Friday to discuss a resolution to authorize school attorneys to sue JUUL. The district says the lawsuit will not require the school district to allocate money to pay for the litigation.
"About one-third of whatever award might be made would go to the attorneys and the flip side, if there is no award, there is still no cost to the school district," superintendent John Allison said. "The law firms are going to bear the [upfront] cost of the suit."
Olathe is one of the first districts in Kansas to initiate a federal lawsuit against JUUL. Earlier this month Goddard Schools announced the district's intention to file a similar lawsuit after seeing "significant problems" with student usage.
Teenagers in both Missouri and Kansas have recently sued the company, and both states have reported deaths attributed to vaping lung disease, though the deaths are attributed to older individuals.
Statistics from the U.S. surgeon general show e-cigarette use increased 78 percent among high school students during the past year, from 11.7 percent in 2017 to 20.8 percent in 2018.
Through a spokesperson, JUUL Labs released the following statement about the Olathe Public Schools suit. It strikes similar themes to other statements the company has provided to other lawsuits.
Statement:
“We have not yet seen this proposed complaint. JUUL Labs is committed to eliminating combustible cigarettes, the number one cause of preventable death in the world. Our product has always only been intended to be a viable alternative for the one billion current adult smokers in the world. We have never marketed to youth and do not want any non-nicotine users to try our products. We have launched an aggressive action plan [newsroom.juul.com] to combat underage use as it is antithetical to our mission.
"We strongly advocate for Tobacco 21 legislation, we stopped the sale of non-tobacco and non-menthol based flavored JUULpods to our traditional retail store partners, enhanced our online age-verification process, strengthened our retailer compliance program with over 2,000 secret shopper visits per month, and shut down our Facebook and Instagram accounts while working constantly to remove inappropriate social media content generated by others on those platforms. Most recently [newsroom.juul.com], we announced the deployment of technology at retail stores that automatically restricts the sale of JUUL products until a government-issued ID is electronically scanned to verify age and ID validity. This technology also limits the amount of JUUL products that can be purchased to prevent reselling or sharing to those underage, and it will soon be mandatory for all JUUL product sales across the country.
"It was our hope that others in the category would self-impose similar restrictions to address youth usage, and it is now our hope that regulators will impose these same restrictions to protect youth and to preserve the opportunity to eliminate combustible cigarettes, the deadliest legal consumer product known to man."