Massachusetts has just joined the long list of cities and states to file a lawsuit against the vape giant Juul and its parent company Pax Labs. The lawsuit accuses Juul of specifically targeting teens through their marketing, encouraging an unhealthy addiction and trying to make vaping look cool and appealing. It goes on to make shocking allegations claiming Juul’s advertisements wound up on children’s websites, according to CNN .
The lawsuit states that Juul’s advertisements have popped up on websites in connection to the children’s television network Nickelodeon and even on more academic websites that are supposed to be helping kids with their homework. This only helped further deceive youth into thinking that vaping was safe and posed no health threats which is quite simply not the case.
In addition, the lawsuit alleges that Juul as a company has taken on a completely different direction than the way it claims to have intended, which was to help adult longtime smokers kick the habit. Nevertheless, many of Juul’s consumers are people who never smoked a cigarette before and had no need of the product. Now they’re hooked on nicotine.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey explained the reason behind the lawsuit.
“Over and over we’ve heard Juul say that it came to market to offer a device that was an alternative to cigarettes, and in fact would even help adults switch and stop smoking. But our investigation showed that that was not true.”
The lawsuit continues to accuse the vape giant of specifically choosing young models for their advertisements, even though only legal adults were supposed to be using the products. This also goes against the company’s original claims about targeting adult longtime cigarette smokers.
“Juul’s employees and its board of directors acknowledged concern that models photographed for the Vaporized Campaign appeared to be too young,” the suit continues.
While showing an ID is required to purchase this device or the pods needed to use it at a gas station or store, young people found ways around it. They ordered the products online by lying about their age and had them shipped to their homes. Juul shipped their products to over 10,000 different Massachusetts residences between 2015 and 2018 and allegedly didn’t verify the address of the consumer.
“This is a public health crisis. And today we’re suing the company that started it,” Healey concluded.
As The Inquisitr previously reported, the government has recently raised the age one must be to legally by vaping products, cigars or cigarettes from 18-years-old to 21-years-old.