The FDA raided Juul's headquarters last week as concerns grow over the company's marketing efforts towards teenagers The Food and Drug Administration raided Juul’s headquarters last week as concern grows about the e-cigarette company’s marketing efforts towards teenagers. The FDA said that they seized over 1,000 pages of documents in the surprise raid at Juul’s San Francisco offices in their search for “further documentation related to Juul’s sales and marketing practices,” according to Today. Get push notifications with news, features and more. The raid was a continuation of the FDA’s investigation into the rise of e-cigarette use among underage teenagers. The agency first requested information on Juul’s marketing practices in April, and the company said that they’ve provided more than 50,000 documents since then. “We are committed to preventing underage use, and we want to engage with FDA, lawmakers, public health advocates and others to keep JUUL out of the hands of young people,” Juul’s CEO Kevin Burns tells PEOPLE in a statement. RELATED VIDEO: Sean Penn Smoking & on Ambien: Fans React to Actor’s Memorable Late-Night Appearance But after undercover operations over the summer found that many national retailers like Walgreens and 7-Eleven are illegally selling e-cigarettes to minors, the FDA sent warning letters to Juul and other manufacturers telling them that they were not doing enough to curb teen use. The FDA also gave the companies 60 days to submit plans for how they were going to stop youth access to their products. Burns said Juul is actively working on their plan. “We look forward to presenting our plan to address youth access in the 60-day time frame as outlined by FDA,” he said. “We want to be part of the solution in preventing underage use, and we believe it will take industry and regulators working together to restrict youth access.” Juuls in particular became popular with high school students for their easily concealable size — they look similar to a flash drive — and the variety of fruit flavors, like mango and coconut. The Juul vaping system in Washington, DC. Juul e-cigarette and various flavor pods | Credit: Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post/Getty They also contain a higher dose of nicotine than cigarettes, making them more addictive. And the problems increase from there — a study released Tuesday found that teens who use e-cigarettes are more likely to start smoking regular cigarettes, and eventually increase their use of both products. At the end of August, the National Youth Tobacco Survey found that 11.7 percent of high school students and 3.3 percent of middle school student — over 2.1 million total — reported using an e-cigarette in 2017, though the number is thought to be much higher.<doc-sep>The Food and Drug Administration conducted a surprise inspection of the headquarters of the e-cigarette maker Juul Labs last Friday, carting away more than a thousand documents it said were related to the company’s sales and marketing practices. The move, announced on Tuesday, was seen as an attempt to ratchet up pressure on the company, which controls 72 percent of the e-cigarette market in the United States and whose products have become popular in high schools. The F.D.A. said it was particularly interested in whether Juul deliberately targeted minors as consumers. “The new and highly disturbing data we have on youth use demonstrates plainly that e-cigarettes are creating an epidemic of regular nicotine use among teens,” the F.D.A. said in a statement. “It is vital that we take action to understand and address the particular appeal of, and ease of access to, these products among kids.” F.D.A. officials described the surprise inspection as a follow-up to a request the agency made for Juul’s research and marketing data in April. Kevin Burns, Juul’s chief executive officer, said the company had already handed over more than 50,000 pages of internal documents to the F.D.A. in response to that request.<doc-sep>SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The Food and Drug Administration is now reviewing documents that were seized in a surprise inspection from the San Francisco headquarters of JUUL Labs -- America's largest seller of electronic cigarettes.Agents collected material related to JUUL's sales and marketing practices in a surprise inspection last Friday. The FDA tells ABC News the surprise inspection was part of ongoing efforts to prevent e-cigarette use among young people. In addition to Tuesday's raid of more than 1,000 documents pertaining to the company's marketing practices, the FDA has also cracked down on the company in the past with unannounced on-site inspections.At Jeet Big Times smoke shop on Polk Street in San Francisco, the JUUL is just one of the dozens of e-cigarette products, but number one in sales. "I sell it every day. Three or four packages or more," says employee Bal K.C.In 18 months, JUUL has made a meteoric rise. Now, according to UCSF's "Center for Tobacco Control, Research and Education," it's dominating 70 percent of the e-cigarette market. "It became a high school and college phenomenon," says Pamela Ling, professor of medicine at UCSF. "JUUL even admitted when they started out they were marketing to youth. They had Instagram accounts, did a lot of social media promotion -- they later admitted it was a mistake." says Ling.A high school student named Alonso outside of Mission High School says he sees ads for the device all over and knows his peers are using it. "I smell it in the hallways," he said.While JUUL comes in a variety of flavors like other e-cigarette products, what sets JUUL apart is its small USB-like shape which is easily concealable in a setting like a school or at home. Its high concentration of nicotine is the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes per cartridge, giving users a faster head rush. Users are also drawn to the device's bright rainbow lights called "party mode," which is activated once the user takes a drag and waves the device back and forth. "It doesn't have the stigma and on a sub-level, it's something you keep in your pocket," says Ling.A spokesperson for JUUL sent ABC7 News this statement, saying in part, the company is "committed to preventing underage use and want to engage with FDA, lawmakers, public health advocates and others to keep JUUL out of the hands of young people," adding they already "released 50,000 pages of document to the FDA since April."<doc-sep>The Food and Drug Administration is tightening its leash on e-cigarette giant Juul Labs. On Friday, the FDA conducted a surprise inspection of the company’s headquarters, and took thousands of pages of documents in the process, CNBC reports. The inspection was part of the FDA’s efforts to curb youth vaping, the agency says in an email to The Verge. “The new and highly disturbing data we have on youth use demonstrates plainly that e-cigarettes are creating an epidemic of regular nicotine use among teens,” the FDA says. Back in April, the agency asked Juul to turn over information that might explain why the devices are so popular with young people. And on Friday, inspectors went to find documentation about Juul’s sales and marketing tactics for themselves. The inspection “resulted in the collection of over a thousand pages of documents,” the FDA says. “E-cigarettes are creating an epidemic of regular nicotine use among teens.” The FDA also inspected Juul’s contract manufacturing facilities earlier this year to check if they met FDA requirements, the FDA says. And just over two weeks ago, the agency gave an ultimatum to Juul and four other companies that manufacture the popular e-cig brands Vuse, MarkTen XL, blu, and Logic: the companies have until mid-November to prove that they can keep kids from using their vapes, or else face having their flavored products taken off the market. In a statement emailed to The Verge, Juul Labs CEO Kevin Burns says the company still plans to present the company’s “plan to address youth access in the 60-day time frame as outlined by FDA.” Burns characterizes the company’s interactions with the FDA last week as “a constructive and transparent dialogue,” and says Juul Labs has turned over 50,000 pages of documents to the FDA since April. “The meetings last week with FDA gave us the opportunity to provide information about our business from our marketing practices to our industry-leading online age-verification protocols to our youth prevention efforts,” he says. News of the raid comes on the same day as a report that confirms Juul really is taking over. Researchers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked e-cigarette sales in brick-and-mortar stores, and found that from 2013 to late 2017, British American Tobacco — which makes the Vype line of vapes — dominated the market. But from 2016 to 2017, Juul’s sales spiked by 641 percent to 16.2 million e-cigarettes in 2017. By December 2017, Juuls made up the biggest share of the market, according to the paper published today in the journal JAMA. That particular study didn’t address who was buying the vapes, or how old they were. But the researchers note that “Juul’s high nicotine concentration, discreet shape, and flavors could be particularly appealing to, and problematic, for youths.” And the FDA says it’s time to figure out what’s driving the epidemic of youth vaping, and stop it: “It is vital that we take action to understand and address the particular appeal of, and ease of access to, these products among kids.”<doc-sep>
Photo : Steven Senne ( AP ) In its ongoing crusade against rad teens, the Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that it made a surprise inspection of the headquarters of Juul Labs, which is under investigation for potentially marketing e-cigarettes to children. The “unannounced on-site inspection,” executed on Friday, resulted in the seizure of “thousands of pages of documents,” according to the FDA. The surprise inspection of Juul continues an aggressive new chapter in the FDA’s war on the “epidemic” of underage vaping, as FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb recently put it. The agency has cracked down on e-cigarette businesses in general and Juul in particular. “The JUUL inspection, which we completed on Friday, sought further documentation related to JUUL’s sales and marketing practices, among other things, and resulted in the collection of over a thousand pages of documents,” the FDA said in a statement emailed to Gizmodo. “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.” In a statement emailed to Gizmodo, Juul CEO Kevin Burns said his company plans to work with the FDA and other parties to prevent underage vaping and characterized the FDA’s surprise inspection on its headquarters as a “meeting.” “We are committed to preventing underage use, and we want to engage with FDA, lawmakers, public health advocates and others to keep JUUL out of the hands of young people. The meetings last week with FDA gave us the opportunity to provide information about our business from our marketing practices to our industry-leading online age-verification protocols to our youth prevention efforts. It was a constructive and transparent dialogue,” Burns said. “We’ve now released over 50,000 pages of documents to the FDA since April that support our public statements. We look forward to presenting our plan to address youth access in the 60-day time frame as outlined by FDA. We want to be part of the solution in preventing underage use, and we believe it will take industry and regulators working together to restrict youth access.” While there are hundreds of e-cigarettes on the market, Juul remains the most popular, especially among teenagers, according to Nielsen, which found that Juul represented nearly 55 percent of the e-cigarette retail market as of March. In late August, the New York Times reported that management within PAX Labs, which created Juul before it spun off into its own company, knew the company’s e-cigarettes were widely popular with teenagers and still failed to tweak its marketing strategy, according to a former senior manager at PAX. Last month, the FDA announced that it had issued 1,300 “warning letters” and fines to brick-and-mortar e-cigarette retailers that the agency said it had busted selling Juul vapes to minors during an “undercover blitz” carried out this summer. Although e-cigarettes are believed to be somewhat safer than tobacco cigarettes, and users can vape without nicotine, evidence shows they are still not safe, particularly for teens’ still-developing brains. (Disclosure: I vaped the entire time I was writing this article.) Clarification: A previous version of this article, including the headline, indicated that the FDA “raided” Juul’s offices. To avoid confusion about the context of this federal government action, we’ve updated the article.