WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Tom Udall , along with 10 Senate Democrats, questioned JUUL CEO Kevin Burns about the company’s partnership with Big Tobacco giant Altria, and requested information about its marketing tactics to children as youth e-cigarette use soars to epidemic levels in large part due to kid-appealing flavors and easy to conceal devices. Federal public health agencies have identified JUUL as being largely responsible for fueling this epidemic among America’s youth and evidence has emerged in the United States that most of JUUL’s users are new to nicotine exposing that the device is not being primarily used as a tobacco cessation tool.
In addition to Udall, the letter was sent by U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).
“While JUUL has promised to address youth vaping through its modest voluntary efforts, by accepting $12.8 billion from Altria—a tobacco giant with such a disturbing record of deceptive marketing to hook children onto cigarettes—JUUL has lost what little remaining credibility the company had when it claimed to care about the public health,” the Senators wrote. “While you and your investors may be perfectly content with hooking an entire new generation of children on your tobacco products in order to increase your profit margins, we will not rest until your dangerous products are out of the hands of our nation’s children.”
In December, Altria announced an investment of $12.8 billion for a 35 percent stake in JUUL, which appears to create a clear customer pipeline for the tobacco giant, known for its kid-popular Marlboro brand, to hook a new generation of users onto its cigarettes.
Over the past year, the U.S. Surgeon General and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner have called youth use of e-cigarettes a “public health epidemic.” According to the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS), 20.8 percent of high-school students and 4.9 percent of middle-school students—more than 3.6 million children—currently use e-cigarettes. Over the past year alone, e-cigarette use among children increased by an alarming 78 percent in high-school students and 48 percent in middle-school students. And, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), JUUL is driving this epidemic.
During a
March hearing
, Udall questioned former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb on the alarming national increase of high school students using e-cigarettes and has
led numerous efforts in Congress
to protect children from the potential dangers of e-cigarettes.
The full text of the letter to JUUL is available HERE .
