page_title: Electronic cigarette and e-cigarette liquid marketing
section_title: Marketing to youth investigations
hierarchical_section_title: Electronic cigarette and e-cigarette liquid marketing / Marketing to youth / Marketing to youth investigations
caption_attribution_description: E-cigarettes Shaped Like USB Flash DrivesOther devices are becoming available that look like USB flash drives. Examples include the MarkTen Elite, a nicotine delivery device, and the PAX Era, a marijuana delivery device that looks like JUUL.
context_page_description: Electronic cigarettes are marketed to smoking and non-smoking men, women, and children as being safer than traditional cigarettes. E-cigarette businesses have considerably accelerated their marketing spending. All of the large tobacco businesses are engaging in the marketing of e-cigarettes. For the majority of the large tobacco businesses these products are quickly becoming a substantial part of the total advertising spending. E-cigarette businesses have a vested interest in maximizing the number of long-term product users. The entrance of traditional transnational tobacco businesses in the marketing of such products is a serious threat to restricting tobacco use. E-cigarette businesses have been using intensive marketing strategies like those used to publicize traditional cigarettes in the 1950s and 1960s. While advertising of tobacco products is banned in most countries, television and radio e-cigarette advertising in several countries may be indirectly encouraging traditional cigarette use.
  E-cigarette advertisements have had marketing messages containing pseudoscientific health claims.
context_section_description: In April 2018, the US FDA began investigating Juul's marketing approaches. They were under investigation by the US FDA to determine if they were marketing Juul to youth. The US FDA made an unannounced inspection of Juul headquarters in late September 2018 to gather information on their marketing methods, among other things. The US FDA collected over a thousand pages of information on the company. "The inspection followed the agency's request for information that we issued to Juul Labs in April for documents that would help us to better understand the reportedly high rates of youth use and the youth appeal of Juul products, including documents related to marketing and product design," the FDA stated.
  The Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in July 2018 investigated Juul and other online e-cigarette sellers for purportedly marketing to children and minors. The Attorney General's Office sent letters to two online retailers in July 2018, telling them to desist offering for sale Juul and other products in the state without setting up a system to verify the age of customers as mandated by state law. The attorney Mike Feuer of Los Angeles, CA said on October 31, 2018 that VapeCo Distribution, its other company NEwhere Inc., and Kandypens Inc. were marketing e-cigarette products to minors. The city of Los Angeles stated that the three companies are offering for sale e-cigarette products online without providing an adequate age-verification system and are targeting minors in their marketing efforts, among other things. In 2018, the attorney's office of Los Angeles had been trying to get an injunction to put an end to those practices.
  There are e-cigarettes that are designed to look similar to everyday objects like USB flash drives in an effort to conceal their use from teachers and parents. For example, Juul looks like a USB flash drive that could contain music or photos. Teachers can easily be mislead into believing the device is a USB flash drive. Teachers believe the device's compact design and sugary flavors are targeted at minors. "The prevalence of JUULs has also been intensified due to marketing of JUULs to high schoolers. JUULs look like flash drives because kids must hide them. No adult needs to have a vape that looks like a flash drive; they don’t need to hide that," Sean Christensen, a high schooler from Towson, Maryland, stated in 2018.
  The US FDA announced on September 12, 2018 that a series of critical and historic enforcement actions related to the sale and marketing of e-cigarettes to youth. In the largest coordinated enforcement effort in the FDA's history, the agency issued more than 1,300 warning letters and civil money penalty complaints (fines) to retailers who illegally sold Juul and other e-cigarette products to minors during a nationwide, undercover blitz of brick-and-mortar and online stores this summer. As a result of these violations of the law – and other indications that e-cigarette use among youth has hit epidemic proportions – FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, signaled that the agency intends to take new and significant steps to address this challenge in a speech at the agency's headquarters. Juul's marketing approaches have come under scrutiny for its advertisements reportedly aimed at appealing to youth. In November 2018, Juul Labs announced they would holdoff on selling the majority of its flavored e-cigarette pods in retail stores and would cease promoting is products on social media. They also stated that they would resume sales of the flavored products at retail stores that put into practice an age-verification system. Reestablishing the sales of the flavored products to retailers was not specified during the Juul announcement. Tobacco, mint, and menthol pods will still be sold to retailers. In August 2019, Juul Labs announced new protocols in the US to curb e-cigarette use among minors. The company is setting up an age-verification point-of-sale system, called the Retail Access Control Standards (RACS) program, for retailers. Retailers have stated they support the system. Health advoca
caption: Graphic from the 2019 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's report entitled E-cigarettes Shaped Like USB Flash Drives: Information for Parents, Educators and Health Care Providers.[315]
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