https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/13/18092914/juul-electronic-cigarettes-fda-flavor-ban-social-media
E-cigarette company Juul Labs will stop supplying over 90,000 brick-and-mortar stores with its fruity and dessert-flavored pods, the company announced today. It’s also quitting Facebook and Instagram in an effort to dampen the popular vape’s appeal to underage consumers. The announcement follows rumors from last week that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will soon announce a flavor ban to combat youth vaping.
E-cigarettes are teens’ favorite way to get nicotine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And the number of teenage vapers is rising: at an event hosted by The Washington Post today, FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb teased research that’s due to be announced this week that he says shows that high school vaping has increased 75 percent since last year. For middle school students, the increase was 50 percent.
The FDA has been putting pressure on Juul, in particular. The agency raided the company’s San Francisco headquarters earlier this fall in search of product design and marketing details that could help explain the product’s popularity among teens. In a statement posted to Juul’s webpage today, CEO Kevin Burns called the underage use of e-cigarettes like Juul an “unintended and serious problem.” He echoed Gottlieb’s own words, saying, “We want to be the off-ramp for adult smokers to switch from cigarettes, not an on-ramp for America’s youth to initiate on nicotine.”
To that end, Juul announced today how it plans to keep kids from vaping. For one thing, it will temporarily stop distributing its mango, fruit, creme, and cucumber pod flavors to stores across the country. (The tobacco, mint, and menthol flavors will stay on shelves.) The company also pledges to step up the number of undercover shoppers it sends to stores to ensure that retailers aren’t selling their products in bulk or to anyone underage.
Online, Juul will only sell flavored products through its website and only to people who can prove that they’re at least 21 years old. That means working with platforms like Amazon to crack down on third-party sales. And it also means amping up age verification on their own website. The company is working to include a two-factor ID step that links a user’s phone number to their Juul account and will require that people upload a picture of their faces to compare with their ID.
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