CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Vaping firm Juul Labs can pay West Virginia $7.9 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the corporate marketed merchandise to underage customers, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey introduced Monday.

The lawsuit accuses Juul of partaking in unfair or misleading practices within the design, manufacturing, advertising and sale of e-cigarettes in violation of the state’s Consumer Credit and Protection Act.

A 2020 report launched by West Virginia well being officers discovered that greater than 60% of highschool college students within the state reported making an attempt e-cigarettes in 2019, up from 44% in 2017.

“This settlement puts companies like Juul in check to not copy big tobacco’s playbook and gear marketing strategies toward underage people,” Morrisey mentioned in a press release. “In Juul’s case, we have alleged it has deceived consumers about its nicotine strength, misrepresented the nicotine equivalency of its products to traditional cigarettes and understated the risks of addiction that occur with such powerful levels of nicotine.”

It’s the most recent settlement involving the embattled e-cigarette big, which final yr laid off lots of of employees and settled 1000's of lawsuits consolidated in a California federal courtroom introduced by households of Juul customers, faculty districts, metropolis governments and Native American tribes.

In September, the San Francisco firm agreed to pay almost $440 million to settle a two-year investigation by 33 states into the advertising of its high-nicotine vaping merchandise.

Juul dropped all U.S. promoting and discontinued most of its flavors in 2019 amid lawsuits and authorities sanctions.

Last June, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ordered Juul to cease advertising and distributing its merchandise within the United States to guard public well being. Following a authorized problem from Juul, the FDA later positioned a brief maintain on its resolution and is conducting an extra assessment of the corporate’s merchandise.

A research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered that one in every of each 4 West Virginia adults have been people who smoke in 2018, the best fee within the nation.

“This settlement with the West Virginia Attorney General represents yet another step in Juul Labs’ ongoing commitment to resolve issues from the company’s past,” Juul Labs mentioned in a press release Monday. “The phrases of the settlement, like prior settlements, present monetary assets to additional fight underage use and develop cessation applications they usually replicate our present enterprise practices, which have been carried out as a part of our company-wide reset within the fall of 2019.

“With West Virginia having the highest cigarette-smoking rate in the U.S., we hope that some funds will go directly to interventions to reduce the use of combustible cigarettes and improve public health in the state,” the corporate mentioned.

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