KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Olathe Public Schools District 233 School Board will consider authorizing a lawsuit against e-cigarette manufacturer Juul and its distributors and retailers Friday at a special meeting.
According to an agenda posted online Thursday night, Superintendent John Allison will recommend passing a resolution that permits Olathe Public Schools to allow “legal counsel to initiate litigation and file suit against JUUL, a manufacturer, distributor and seller of electronic cigarettes and vaping products,” the agenda said.
The federal government regulates the use and sale of e-cigarettes, which have been deemed unsafe for minors, and the Food and Drug Administration declared a vaping epidemic among teens last year.
Now, more than 800 lung illnesses and 12 deaths have been linked to vaping, including two deaths in Kansas and one in Missouri.
Based on the fact that the FDA warned Juul about improper “marketing and labeling practices” that target teens, which has led to a spike in underage usage, Olathe Public Schools will file suit because the district “has experienced and continues to experience serious difficulties with students using JUUL devices,” a copy of the resolution — which hasn’t been formally adopted — says.
The district cites a disruption of educational programs, which has prompted a diversion of resources to combat the problem, and the increased health risk to students, faculty and staff among the damages Olathe Public Schools will seek to have recovered.
Several of the law firms cited in the draft of the unsigned resolution also are part of a lawsuit filed by the Goddard school district in suburban Wichita.
According to the presentation based on information from the CDC, which is scheduled to be presented at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, more than 20% of U.S. high school students have used e-cigarettes in the last month, an increase of 78% from 2017-18.
Juul said in a statement to 41 Action News that the company is "committed to eliminating combustible cigarettes, the number one cause of preventable death in the world. Our product has always only been intended to be a viable alternative for the one billion current adult smokers in the world. We have never marketed to youth and do not want any non-nicotine users to try our products."
Juul also touted its "aggressive action plan to combat underage use" and said it will continue to "strongly advocate for Tobacco 21 legislation" in the statement, saying it had halted "the sale of non-tobacco and non-menthol based flavored JUULpods to our traditional retail store partners, enhanced our online age-verification process, strengthened our retailer compliance program with over 2,000 secret shopper visits per month, and shut down our Facebook and Instagram accounts while working constantly to remove inappropriate social media content generated by others on those platforms."
