Tobacco giant Altria invested $12.8 billion into U.S. e-cigarette company Juul Labs last year, acquiring a 35% stake in the company that may be one of its most concerning competitors, and now eleven democratic senators led by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) are requesting more information on the deal from the company.
The senators, who made the request via a letter sent to Juul Labs, are asking the e-cigarette giant for records pertaining to both advertising and marketing of Juul’s vaping products. They’re also asking for information on any changes that may have been made to the company’s Youth Prevention Plan in the wake of Altria’s investment.
In response to the request from senate democrats, a spokesperson for Juul Labs said that Juul welcomes the opportunity to share information on their “commitment to curbing underage use” of their vaping products while fulfilling their “mission to eliminate combustible cigarettes,” which the spokesperson referred to as “the number one cause of preventable death” in the United States.
The spokesperson went on to cite Juul’s deployment of their “action plan” aimed at keeping their products out of the hands of youth, their efforts to strengthen both their retail compliance and their secret shopper program, “enhanced” online age-verification, the pulling of certain pod flavors from traditional retail store shelves, and their exit from social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. In addition, the spokesperson stated that Juul is “continuously working to remove inappropriate third-party social media content.”
Juul Labs has until the 25th of April to provide the senators with the information and answers that they are currently seeking in their letter.
Altria’s investments in recent years stem beyond their minority stake in Juul Labs and have stretched to include investments in Canada’s cannabis industry as well as in smoke-free tobacco alternatives such as snus and heat-not-burn systems like IQOS. Bringing their motives into question in a blog post, US vape company Northland Vapor has questioned whether their motivation to invest in competing products might ultimately be aimed at increasing the cost of those products to consumers and in turn pushing customers back to combustible tobacco products like cigarettes, which have been declining in popularity while competing smoke-free products like e-cigarettes have risen greatly in popularity.
