Month: April 2023

On Wednesday, electronic cigarette manufacturer Juul Labs has reached an agreement to pay $462 million to settle multiple lawsuits alleging it marketed vapes to minors. New York Attorney General Letitia James said during a press conference (alongside attorneys general for Washington, D.C., California, Illinois and Massachusetts) that the settlement is the largest multistate settlement which includes the most “stringent restrictions on the company’s marketing and sales to protect and to prevent minors from vaping … JUUL’s lies lead to a nationwide public health crisis and put addictive products in the hands of minors who thought they were doing something harmless … There is no doubt that JUUL played a central role in the youth vaping epidemic. Today, Juul is paying for the widespread harm it caused and will undergo severe restrictions on its marketing and sales practice.”  Two other states, Colorado and New Mexico, are also recipients of the funds from the settlement.

The attorneys general said on Wednesday that JUUL’s decision to target underaged students was widespread, with James alleging that the e-cigarette company targeted middle and high school students in New York using “colorful ads featuring young models and flashing parties in New York City and the Hamptons, all while downplaying the harmful effects of vaping.” D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb claimed JUUL’s “online verification systems were riddled with flaws and loopholes that allow kids of any age to purchase the products it knew but did not care,” and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Cambell said JUUL’s “targeting of young people rolled back decades of progress in combating underage tobacco and nicotine use and has led to a nationwide public health crisis for young people all across this country.”

Juul released a statement about the settlement, saying in part it was a “total resolution of the company’s historical legal challenges … With this settlement, we are nearing total resolution of the company’s historical legal challenges and securing certainty for our future. We have now settled with 47 states and territories, providing over $1 billion to participating states, in addition to our global resolution of the U.S. private litigation. Since our company-wide reset in the fall of 2019, underage use of JUUL products has declined by 95% based on the National Youth Tobacco Survey. Now we are positioned to dedicate even greater focus on our path forward to maximize the value and impact of our product technology and scientific foundation.”

A substantial portion of the funds acquired in the settlement will be directed towards education to lessen the effect of JUUL’s vaping in the next generation. James said that New York’s $112 million will be used to “help government agencies and educational organizations to prevent young vaping to support community and school based anti vaping programs to help individuals quit vaping to help localities and counties enforce vaping laws and regulations and monitor and research efforts to read to reduce vaping.”

Editorial credit: Steve Heap/ Shutterstock.com

National Public Radio plans to shut down its official Twitter accounts, saying a recent decision by the platform to label it as “government-funded media” undermines its credibility. Being labeled as “government-funded media”  or “state-affiliated media” is a warning often applied to media outlets controlled by authoritarian governments such as Russia, China, and Iran.

NPR said in a statement that Twitter was “falsely implying that we are not editorially independent ..We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public’s understanding of our editorial independence.” 

In a separate statement, NPR CEO John Lansing said, “Actions by Twitter or other social media companies to tarnish the independence of any public media institution are exceptionally harmful and set a dangerous precedent.”  Lansing emailed NPR staff, saying, “It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards.”

The 52 official Twitter accounts associated with NPR will now fall silent as a result of the the company’s decision on Wednesday. On its website, NPR describes itself as “an independent, non-profit media organization” and says less than 1% of its budget comes from grants from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies and departments.

Editorial credit: Piotr Swat / Shutterstock.com