Juul to pay about $439 million to settle e-cigarette marketing probe
(Reuters) -Juul Labs Inc will pay $438.5 million to settle a two-year investigation into the e-cigarette maker’s marketing and sales practices, Connecticut’s attorney general said on Tuesday.
The deal resolves claims by 34 U.S. states and territories, led by Connecticut, Florida, Nevada, Oregon and Texas, that Juul’s marketing downplayed its products’ risks and targeted underage buyers. The company has agreed to refrain from some kinds of marketing, including the use of cartoons, product placement and depictions of users under 35.
Juul in a statement called the settlement “a significant part of our ongoing commitment to resolve issues from the past” and that its restrictions were “aligned with our current business practices which we started to implement after our company-wide reset in the fall of 2019.”
The company previously settled similar claims by Arizona, North Carolina, Louisiana and Washington. Some states, including New York and Massachusetts, are continuing to pursue claims against Juul, which is also facing thousands of lawsuits by local governments and consumers.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in June briefly banned Juul’s e-cigarettes, though it put the ban on hold and agreed to reconsider after the company appealed.
Nonetheless, Marlboro cigarette maker Altria Group Inc in July said its 35% stake in Juul was worth just $450 million, down from $12.8 billion in March 2018, amid fears that the company would not ultimately secure approval.
(Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru and Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta, Anil D’Silva and Richard Chang)