Juul stops advertising in the United States and replaces the CEO

The company also promised not to fight a proposed ban on flavors

• By
  
  Mary Beth Griggs
  

• sure September 25, 2019 10h13

Juul, the heavyweight of the besieged e-cigarette, is shaking up his leadership and marketing practices as the company faces increasing regulatory scrutiny. Juul announced Wednesday that CEO Kevin Burns is being replaced by K.C. Crosthwaite, executive of Altria tobacco company, who bought 35% of Juul in December.

In the same announcement, Juul said he "suspended all advertising for audiovisual, print and digital products in the United States." The move comes one week after media companies CBS, Viacom and WarnerMedia decided to follow CNN's initiative and ban advertising for e-cigarettes. including Juul, from their networks.

Marketing is a particularly sensitive topic for Juul, which is currently under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission on its marketing practices. Several states and the Food and Drug Administration are also studying Juul's advertising methods. The FDA, in particular, recently discovered that Juul had illegally argued that his product was less harmful than ordinary cigarettes. The company would also be the subject of a criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in California, but the nature of this investigation remains unknown.

Juul's decision to derive marketing is not new to society. In 2018, when the FDA was discussing for the first time the ban on flavored electronic cigarette products, the company removed all of its flavored products from tablets and closed its accounts on social networks.

Public health authorities have also been paying more attention to Juul since last year, when data revealed that 3.6 million high school students and college students in the United States had used electronic cigarettes – a sharp rise over the previous year – according to the majority of children. that they used flavored products. The US surgeon general quickly added to the pressure by saying that the young people were an epidemic in a rare opinion specifically mentioning Juul's booming sales and its high nicotine content.

In 2018, the FDA ruled that most of the sweet flavors of the vape were limited to places where people under 18 could not shop freely, but it did not put an end to a complete ban on products. flavored. This year, the industry has been increasingly taken into account, which is partly due to the epidemic of vaping-related lung injury that alarms public health experts.

The two distinct public health problems – miners' vaping and the epidemic – have prompted governments to quickly adopt regulations in recent weeks. India recently announced a complete ban on e-cigarette products despite the vape epidemic that it itself has caused in young people. In the United States, several states have announced the banning of e-cigarette products, including Michigan, flavored wine bans and trade restrictions for electronic cigarette companies, and Massachusetts, which has just announced that it banned all electronic cigarette products. four months.

At the federal level, the Trump administration has ordered the FDA to take a tougher stance on vaping, potentially banning flavored sprays throughout the country. In his statement today, Juul said he would not fight the FDA policy. The company "refrains from putting pressure on the administration about its draft directive and pledges to fully support and comply with the final policy when it will be effective".

Juul has long argued that its products are only for people who want to stop smoking, even if their effectiveness as a tool for quitting smoking is not yet at the rendezvous. In an interview with CBS last month, then-CEO Burns told nonsmokers not to buy the company's product. "Do not vape," he said. "Do not use Juul."