Clay County, MO (KCTV) — A Clay County mother and her teenage daughter are suing Juul as part of a class-action lawsuit.
The lawsuit states the teen, known as “E.B.,” began vaping at 14 years old thinking it was a cool, fun thing to do but became hooked.
Lawyers argue E.B. now spends about half of her paychecks on Juul each week.
The complaint says E.B. now suffers from more sicknesses and is uncharacteristically irritable and anxious. The teen also reportedly suffers from frequent headaches.
The mother reports that she feels her daughter’s vaping has led to a personality change and she worries about her daughter’s deteriorating health.
The class-action lawsuit says Juul designed their cigarettes to target youth and used social media to hoping to gain customers for life.
KCTV5 News reached out to Juul for a response and they said in part, “We have never marketed to youth and do not want any non-nicotine users to try our products.”
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. Last year, we launched an aggressive action plan to combat underage use as it is antithetical to our mission.
This suit largely copies and pastes unfounded allegations previously raised in other lawsuits which we have been actively contesting for over a year. Like the prior cases that this one copies, it is without merit and we will defend our mission throughout this process.
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. 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.
