Juul Accused by School Districts of Creating Vaping ‘Nuisance’

(Bloomberg) -- School districts across the U.S. sued Juul Labs Inc. in federal courts over the economic burden created by teen vaping, opening a new legal front as the country grapples with a widening public-health crisis.

Suburban districts near New York City, Kansas City and St. Louis accused Juul of intentionally targeting teens with its product and creating a public nuisance with the health problems tied to vaping. A fourth suit in Washington state included Juul investor Altria Group Inc. as a defendant. The complaints filed Monday make many of the same arguments local governments are using against opioid makers over a nationwide addiction epidemic.

Juul dominates the U.S. market for e-cigarettes, and its sleek vaporizer has been especially popular with younger users. Altria invested about $13 billion in the closely held San Francisco-based company last year in exchange for a 35% stake.

Juul’s conduct “has given rise to an epidemic of vaping across America and within plaintiff’s school district,” administrators of the Three Village Central School District in Long Island, New York, said in their complaint. The district said it’s been forced to pay out “significant resources combating this public nuisance of defendant’s creation” and will continue to do so.

Josh Raffel, a Juul spokesman, had no immediate comment Monday on the suits.

Juul has rapidly shifted its business practices following a surge in underage e-cigarette use and a rash of mysterious lung injuries that U.S. public-health officials have linked to vaping. In recent weeks, the company installed a new chief executive officer, stopped advertising entirely, and vowed to end its lobbying in Washington.

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At least 18 deaths in the U.S. have been tied to vaping by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention along with more than 1,000 lung injuries. Meanwhile, suits against e-cigarette makers have been piling up.

Juul is a defendant in almost a dozen federal lawsuits consolidated in San Francisco for pre-trial information exchanges. Some also target Altria. Juul also faces more than 40 suits in state courts. Some plaintiffs include parents claiming their children have become nicotine addicts as a result of using e-cigarettes.

Altria spokesman Steven Callahan said Monday those suits are “meritless” and that the conduct alleged in them occurred before Altria had an economic interest in Juul. He declined to comment further Tuesday after the Washington suit became public.

“This won’t be the same magnitude as opioid or tobacco litigation, because vaping hasn’t been around for 30 years, but it bears some similarities.” said Holly Froum, a Bloomberg Intelligence litigation analyst.

Public Nuisance

The public-nuisance legal claims against Juul are similar to those against opioid makers and distributors. More than 2,000 lawsuits have been filed by states, cities and counties who say opioid painkillers were illegally marketed, prompting a rise in addiction that led to a public-health crisis. Some analysts say the companies may have to pay as much as $150 billion to resolve the cases.

Lawyers for the school districts claim Juul and other e-cigarette makers created a public nuisance by flavoring their products and aggressively marketing them to teens. Juul created “a condition dangerous to the public’s health” through its actions, the district in Johnson County, Kansas, said in its suit.

Similar claims were made in lawsuits filed by Missouri’s Francis Howell School District and Washington’s La Conner School District.

Schools have struggled to get a handle on vaping, administrators say. The smallest devices are easy to conceal and use on the sly, and many kids have been drawn in by products with sweet flavors. An estimated 5 million middle and high school students now use e-cigarettes, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

‘Can’t Stay in Class’

Brian Zahn, a principal at Southampton High School in New York, held a town hall earlier this month with about 200 parents and teachers. Zahn estimated that 65% to 75% of the school’s 650 students are vaping, and that the national numbers look low compared to what he discusses with other principals. Southampton High School isn’t involved in the litigation.

“I’ve had numerous cases of my top learners take nosedives because they are now hooked,” Zahn said. “They can’t even stay in a class for a full 40 minutes -- my athletes as well.”

The principal said the problem is a drain on his staff’s time as teachers deal with students sneaking vapes in class or need special training to help them identify vaping devices that can look like thumb drives or pens. He estimates that Southampton High spends around $200,000 on additional staff, like social workers, to deal with the problem.

“Instead of spending taxpayer money on educational programming, I’m now diverting our funds to deal with a generation of addicted students,” Zahn said in a phone interview on Friday.

The cases are Three Village Central School District v. Juul Labs, 19-5662, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York; Unified School District No. 233, Johnson County, Kansas v. Juul Labs, 19-cv-2608, U.S. District Court, District of Kansas; Francis Howell School District v. Juul Labs, 19-cv-02713, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Missouri; and La Conner School District v. Juul, Altria, 19-cv-01600, U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington (Seattle).

--With assistance from Ellen Huet.

To contact the reporters on this story: Tiffany Kary in New York at tkary@bloomberg.net;Jef Feeley in Wilmington, Delaware at jfeeley@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Anne Riley Moffat, Timothy Annett

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