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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every

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Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most

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Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more

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Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple podcast, SoundCloud

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Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. Just this week,

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Speaker 1: at least five lawsuits have been filed against Jewel Labs,

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Speaker 1: the top seller of e cigarettes, including suits by the

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Speaker 1: states of New York and California. The states alleged that

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Speaker 1: Jewel targeted teenagers with its deceptive and misleading marketing of

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Speaker 1: its East cigarettes, contributing to a youth vaping epidemic. Here

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Speaker 1: our attorneys General Javier Biserra of California and Latitia James

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Speaker 1: of New York. Our lawsuit alleges that Jewel targeted under

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Speaker 1: age Californians with its marketing and sales practices of its

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Speaker 1: nicotine addictive vaping products. Jewel basically took a page from

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Speaker 1: Big Tobacco's playbook by marketing its products in a manner

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Speaker 1: that was appealing to underage youth. It misled consumers about

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Speaker 1: the nigotine content of Jeweles products. It misrepresented the safety

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Speaker 1: and the therapeutic value of its products by saying they

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Speaker 1: were safer than cigarettes and suggesting that consumers make the switch.

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Speaker 1: Joining me is Edvar Peterson, Bloomberg News Legal reporter Edward

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Speaker 1: the allegations of the lawsuits by New York and California

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Speaker 1: are very similar. Tell us about them well, I think

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Speaker 1: I focused mainly on false advertising, deceptive advertising, and false

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Speaker 1: business practices, and the general ideas that both California and

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Speaker 1: New York allergs that Jewel targeted under age children teenagers

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Speaker 1: with their advertising for their East Sacrets. That is illegal

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Speaker 1: because in the United States, no one under twenty one

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Speaker 1: is allowed to buy a cigarettes, so you can't advertise

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Speaker 1: them to this group either. And what California particularly has

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Speaker 1: been alleging is that Jewels advertising campaign sought out young

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Speaker 1: people to portray vaping as a hip and cool alternative

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Speaker 1: to cigarettes or just something you can start even if

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Speaker 1: you haven't spoke before. And they used social media day

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Speaker 1: enlisted influencers on Instagram, They went to outdoor events whe

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Speaker 1: there were lots of young children to hand out free samples,

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Speaker 1: so basically sought out a young audience and that implicitly

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Speaker 1: captured a lot of people who were too young to

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Speaker 1: buy tobacco products. Both states alleged that Jewel took a

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Speaker 1: page from Big Tobacco's playbook. How so, well, they meant

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Speaker 1: that quite literally, because the founders of Jewel, well there

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Speaker 1: at Stanford University, went to the library and read up

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Speaker 1: on tobacco's marketing practices. And this is because the Big

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Speaker 1: Tobacco settlement with states from while back. As part of that,

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Speaker 1: the tobacco industry disclosed a lot of their internal information

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Speaker 1: about how they went about marketing cigarettes. And it's the

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Speaker 1: same idea, just as in the forties and the fifties

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Speaker 1: they portrayed cigarettes as being cool, like they used the

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Speaker 1: Marilyn Monroe James Dean as sort of role models that smoked.

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Speaker 1: And in the same way, jew will try to sort

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Speaker 1: of create his image of vaping as something cool and

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Speaker 1: hip and you know, fashion forward. Do you have any

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Speaker 1: idea how much money is involved what the states are

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Speaker 1: asking for here, Well, California is asking for as much

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Speaker 1: as two an half thousand dollars per violations of its

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Speaker 1: business and advertising laws, so that could end up to

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Speaker 1: a lot of money. For one thing, California has Proposition

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Speaker 1: sixty makes it a violation not to disclose harmful products,

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Speaker 1: harmful chemicals, and your products. California says that You'll violated

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Speaker 1: this by, among of the things, handing out samples that

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Speaker 1: were outside of the packaging, so people didn't didn't have

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Speaker 1: any warning what's in it and that it was harmful

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Speaker 1: to them. And at some point, you know, it wasn't

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Speaker 1: disclosed that there was nicotine in Jewels parts. And the

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Speaker 1: interesting fact is that a lot of teenagers that vape

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Speaker 1: or jewel as they call it, don't even know there's

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Speaker 1: nicotine in that that product. So that's you know, chronic

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Speaker 1: California that violates a lot of disclosure loss. Explain the

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Speaker 1: allegation that Jewels didn't do enough to verify the ages

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Speaker 1: of the buyers online. Yeah, this is a very big

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Speaker 1: part of the California case. At least they used an

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Speaker 1: internal verification process and a lot of you know, customers

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Speaker 1: buy these products online through the Jewel website and you

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Speaker 1: have to sort of proof that you're twenty one to

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Speaker 1: do so. And the verification process that Jewel use the

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Speaker 1: quin California so shoddy that it allowed people to use

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Speaker 1: multiple efforts to get a pass. And they lower the

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Speaker 1: standards so they use only fragments of address to verify

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Speaker 1: somebody's identity. But also corny California, there were people who

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Speaker 1: just used obvious fake fake names like beer Can to

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Speaker 1: buy Jewel products and successfully buy jewel products. So that

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Speaker 1: basically what California is LA think this verification system was

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Speaker 1: designed so that as many people as possible would pass it,

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Speaker 1: rather than to actually strictly filter out those people who

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Speaker 1: are too young to buy a tobacco products. Has Jewel

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Speaker 1: responded to any of the lawsuits against it, Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: said they have taken steps to reduce the marketing to

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Speaker 1: children or to eliminate it. I suppose they're not selling

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Speaker 1: a lot of these fruit flavors anymore that were extremely

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Speaker 1: popular with teenagers in particular, So they have been, you know,

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Speaker 1: making steps, but I imagined California and New York didn't

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Speaker 1: think these steps went far enough. And they see, you know,

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Speaker 1: there's an acquit damn as an epidemical for teenagers vaping,

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Speaker 1: and to what California said, just like one in four

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Speaker 1: high school students vapes, and so there is a huge

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Speaker 1: problem and they want Jule to take responsibility for that

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Speaker 1: and you know, help fix it. Thanks Edvard, that's Edward Peterson,

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg News legal reporter. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show

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Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg