Juul Labs Inc. has agreed to pay $38.8 million to Pennsylvania’s Department of Health as part of a settlement in a lawsuit over its marketing practices, brought by the state Attorney General’s office.
Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is also Pennsylvania’s governor-elect, said in a statement that the company had “knowingly targeted young people with tactics similar to the tobacco companies’ playbook,” according to the Philadelphia Enquirer.
Pennsylvania is one of many states that have sued Juul over its marketing practices. The company will pay an estimated $1.7 billion to settle more than 5,000 lawsuits by school districts, local governments, and individuals, primarily in California.
A Commonwealth Court judge on Wednesday allowed Pennsylvania medical marijuana companies to resume selling vapes that were taken off the shelves in February in a controversial recall. The state is expected to appeal the ruling.
“We are thrilled about this decision,” said Judith D. Cassel, an attorney for a group of cannabis companies that sued state regulators in February, alleging that the recall was unfounded, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“The vapes can go immediately back on the shelves and the grower processors can continue or commence producing these vapes,” said Cassel, a partner at Hawke McKeon & Sniscak LLP in Harrisburg.
The ruling is a blow to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, which in February mandated a massive recall and ban of 670 types of cannabis concentrates for vaping — 330,000 units — that they had previously approved for sale in Pennsylvania’s more than 150 marijuana dispensaries
Pennsylvania regulators recalled hundreds of medical marijuana vape products because the state says they contain ingredients unapproved for inhalation. The state health department released a list of more than 500 cannabis vape products with ingredients not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“Although some of these added ingredients may be considered safe in other non-inhaled products, patient safety is the top priority of the Medical Marijuana Program,” the state wrote in an email announcing the recall, according to the Pittsburgh City Paper (PCP), as reported by MJBiz Daily.
Credit: Promesa Art Studio
The PCP stated that the agency did not respond to a request for more information. The FDA has not approved any cannabis product for marketing. The agency does not have the authority to approve the marketing for or the regulation of any cannabis products, unless a company makes health claims.
The recall comes after a months-long process in which Pennsylvania officials reviewed medical marijuana vaping products. In November, state regulators gave licensed grower/processors two weeks to resubmit vaporized cannabis products that contain additives, including flavors or terpenes, for approval.
Nicotine is addictive. Most people who have smoked 60 cigarettes are going to be daily smokers. According to Jonathan Foulds, professor of public health sciences and psychiatry and co-director of Penn State Center for Research on Tobacco and Health, the average middle-aged smoker has made about 20 serious attempts to quit.
Jonathan Foulds, Penn State Cancer Institute
After deciding to try to quit, the average smoker has a 95 percent chance of still smoking a year later. Even with counselling and using a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved cessation medicine, there is still an 80 percent chance they will be smoking again in a year.
Speaking during the Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum (GTNF), Foulds said that people smoke for the psychological effects of nicotine, but they suffer the health effects created by inhaling combustible tobacco. To lessen the harms of nicotine consumption, regulators should focus on ways to get cigarette smokers to switch to less-risky forms of nicotine intake.
“If it were not for the nicotine in tobacco smoke, people would be little more inclined to smoke than they are to blow bubbles,” he said. “Blowing bubbles is fun, but no one wants to do it 20 times a day for the rest of their life. It’s the nicotine that’s key to [people smoking].”
Despite the addictiveness of nicotine, cigarette consumption in the United States has been falling consistently over the past 20 years. Cigarette consumption has fallen more than 50 percent since 1997. That is equal to approximately 200 billion fewer cigarettes being sold per year since 1997, and there are now many more people in the U.S. Foulds said there is also evidence that the decline has been accelerating over the past few years [alongside the growing popularity of vapor products].
Meanwhile, youth smoking rates have declined dramatically. In the 1970s, an average of 30 percent of high school seniors smoked cigarettes. In 1995, that number dropped to 25 percent. Today, less than 2 percent of high school seniors smoke cigarettes.
“The massive cigarette sales that the industry has been used to—clearly, that is coming to an end. I mean, the end is in sight from the cigarette industry,” Foulds told the GTNF audience. “What I’m trying to get across here to many of you—who are from the industry—is that we may be coming to a tipping point where it would be much better, rather than to just fight [regulators], it may actually be a wiser strategy to accept that this is happening sooner or later in terms of cigarettes and get ahead of it and embrace it.”
For cigarette manufacturers to survive, Foulds said they must promote less-risky forms of nicotine intake. Lower nicotine cigarettes are one example of how manufacturers can help push people to other products, such as e-cigarettes. He was unconcerned about consumers compensating for lower amounts of nicotine by smoking more cigarettes. “There’s now a bunch of studies—almost a dozen studies and they’re fairly consistent—showing that compensatory smoking really isn’t a thing that happens with these kinds of cigarettes,” he said. “The smokers learn pretty quickly that they can puff as much as they like, and they’re not going to get any satisfying amount of nicotine out of them.”
Another concern is that if only lower nicotine cigarettes are available, this would push smokers to the black market for higher nicotine cigarettes. Foulds says several studies have shown that that is not true. Smokers would be more likely to move to products such as e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn systems to get the nicotine they crave.
E-cigarettes are not without health risks, according to Foulds. “They are likely to be far less harmful than combustible tobacco cigarettes,” he clarified. “E-cigarettes contain fewer numbers and lower levels of toxicant substances than conventional cigarettes. There’s been more and more evidence that e-cigarettes deliver far, far lower levels of harmful toxicants than cigarettes. It’s become very, very consistent … e-cigarettes can help people quit.”
If regulators allow high-nicotine, reduced-harm products, like e-cigarettes, to remain in the market, Foulds says that it is highly likely that many current smokers will reduce their smoking, quit or switch to reduced toxic-exposure products, resulting in a substantial improvement in overall public health. “It is time for major cigarette manufacturers to support nicotine reduction in combustibles as perhaps their best chance of still being in business in 2030,” he said.
More than 86,000 unapproved vaping products, worth an estimated $1.72 million, were intercepted on the way to the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.
The shipment from China arrived Sept. 18 in the United States, identified as “LED lights” and addressed to a location in Northampton County, officials said.
Instead of lights, the shipment was actually 216 boxes of about 86,000 Alphaa Onee Plus flavored electronic cigarettes. The flavors included mojito, apple blue razz, strawberry milk, energy drink and pomegranate strawberry, according to a story on lehighvalley.com.
CBP officers at the Port of Lehigh Valley in Allentown detained the shipment and contacted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Earlier this month, the FDA examined the e-cigarettes and determined they violated the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act as misbranded consumer goods being imported by an unauthorized agent.
