Tag: San Francisco

Altria’s ‘Juul Trial’ Begins

Image: Tobacco Reporter archive
The trial of San Francisco’s public school system against Altria Group began on Monday, with Thomas Cartmell, a lawyer for the San Francisco Unified School District, stating to jurors, “This case is about Altria, the largest cigarette company in our country, who helped hook a whole new generation of our young people on nicotine, causing a vaping crisis, a youth epidemic,” reports Reuters.
Beth Wilkinson, a lawyer for Altria, told the jury in her opening statement that the company had aimed to boost sales among cigarette smokers seeking a less harmful option, not among teens. “You can’t forget about those smokers,” she said. “If you can get smokers away from cigarettes, it’s a worthy cause.”
The school district also sued Juul, which settled that lawsuit last year. Cartmell told jurors that Altria, which was Juul’s largest investor from 2018 until earlier this year, when it exchanged its stake for a license to certain Juul intellectual properties, was “at the heart” of Juul’s strategy to grow its business by appealing to teenagers with sweet flavors and flashy advertising.
According to Cartmell, Altria made its large investment in Juul after being unsuccessful with its own e-cigarette, and the company knew Juul’s success was driven by youth usage, according to Bloomberg. Juul’s device was “marketed to appeal to the young, cool, popular crowd” and was “packed with nicotine,” Cartmell said.
Wilkinson argued that evidence would not support this. Juul sales fell after Altria’s investment, and Altria’s investment occurred after Juul pulled most of its flavored products off the market, according to Wilkinson, reports Law.com.
The San Francisco schools’ lawsuit was chosen to go to trial as a test case.
April 25, 2023
Altria to Face First Juul Marketing Trial

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Altria Group is set to face trial April 24 in a lawsuit by San Francisco’s public school district accusing the company of fueling a teen vaping epidemic through its investment in Juul Labs, reports Reuters. The tobacco giant owned a 35 percent share in Juul Labs from late 2018 until March 2023, when it exchanged its stake for license to certain Juul Lab’s heated tobacco intellectual properties.
Through its lawsuit, the San Francisco Unified School District wants to make Altria pay for the cost of tackling student vaping on school grounds.
Thousands of individuals, local government entities and states have filed similar cases against Altria. U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco, who presides over much of the litigation, chose the San Francisco school district’s as a test case.
Suggesting the San Francisco case lacks merit, Altria vowed to defend itself vigorously. “Most of the allegations raised in this suit occurred years before we made a minority economic investment in Juul,” the company said in a statement on April 20.
The April 24 trial will mark the second time one of those cases goes before a jury. An earlier trial brought by the state of Minnesota, ended in a settlement, though the terms have yet to be disclosed.
April 21, 2023
Critics: San Francisco Flavor Ban Study Flawed

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New research refutes a May 2021 study suggesting San Francisco’s ban on all flavored tobacco products was tied to higher smoking rates in high school students compared to school districts without flavor policies in place, according to the Truth Initiative, an antitobacco organization.
Led by Harvard University’s School of Public Health’s Jessica Liu, the most recent research found that the data for the May 2021 study was collected too early to draw meaningful conclusions.
The San Francisco ban on flavored tobacco went into effect in July 2018. Enforcement, however, did not start until January 2019, according to the authors of the Harvard study.
The May 2021 study used data from the 2011-2019 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) to determine smoking rates in youth after San Francisco’s flavor ban went into effect. However, the 2019 YRBSS data in San Francisco were collected between September and December 2018, before the flavor law was enforced.
Given that compliance with flavored tobacco laws was relatively low in fall 2018 (17 percent in December 2018) and that few retailers were enforcing the restriction, data collected at this time are “an inappropriate data source for evaluating the effects of the city’s flavored tobacco sales restriction,” the authors write. “…the impact on actual access to flavored products did not really start to materialize until well after the YRBSS completed data collection in San Francisco.”
Liu’s team also looked at Oakland, whose survey data on tobacco use in youth were collected after that city started enforcing a flavored tobacco ban in January 2019. Researchers observed that high school youth vaping and cigarette use declined between 2017 and 2019 in Oakland.
April 22, 2022
Mixed Results from San Francisco Flavor Ban

Photo: Can Balcioglu
Sales of flavored tobacco products decreased significantly in the wake of San Francisco’s ban, but teenagers were also more likely to take up smoking relative to their peers in other cities, according to two separate studies.
In the summer of 2018, San Francisco residents voted overwhelmingly to ban the sale of flavored tobacco products, including nicotine vaping products and menthol cigarettes. By January 2019, when the prohibition took effect, almost every retailer in the city was immediately compliant.
A study from researchers at RTI International, Stanford University School of Medicine and the California Tobacco Control Program published in Tobacco Control measured changes in tobacco sales before and after San Francisco’s law prohibiting flavored tobacco products. The study found that sales of all flavored tobacco products—including menthol cigarettes and flavored e-cigarettes—were virtually eliminated in the city after implementation of the policy, with no evidence of widespread substitution of nonflavored products.
Sales of all flavored tobacco products decreased by 96 percent in San Francisco after implementation of the city law in early 2019. Total tobacco sales also significantly decreased over the same period, suggesting consumers did not broadly switch to unflavored tobacco products.
“A reduction in total tobacco sales in SF suggests there was not a one-to-one substitution of tobacco/unflavored products for flavored products,” the authors wrote.
However, a recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics, found that teenagers in San Francisco’s high schools were more likely to take up smoking than teenagers in other U.S. school districts after the city’s flavor ban took effect. (San Francisco later became the first U.S. city to ban sale of all e-cigarettes, but the effects of that were not the subject of the study.)
Prior to the flavor ban, smoking rates in San Francisco paralleled many cities across the country, showing fewer teens using combustible cigarettes over time. After the city enacted its policy, the odds of smoking among its high school students, relative to trends in comparison school districts, more than doubled.
The findings come as other cities are acting against flavored tobacco products. On June 16, the Los Angeles City Council voted to end the sale of flavored tobacco products in the city. The measure covers flavored e-cigarettes, menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars but exempts certain hookah products.
In California alone, more than 100 cities and counties have cracked down on flavored tobacco products. In 2020, the state acted to end the sale of flavored tobacco products, but the law is on hold because of an effort to overturn it through a November 2022 referendum.
June 18, 2021
Apartment Smoking Ban Sent Back to Committee

Photo: ninjason from Pixabay
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors on Tuesday rejected a proposed ban on smoking or vaping tobacco in apartments that it voted for just last week, reports The San Francisco Examiner.
The board must approve legislation in two separate votes. Typically, the second vote is perfunctory.
Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who initially supported the ban, said that he heard from many long-term tenants on fixed income raising concerns about the proposal since his vote and he was “remarkably moved in the last week by what I have heard from them.”
Critics expressed concern about the impacts the measure could have on longstanding renters, including fines of up to $1,000 per day and the potential for tenant harassment. The proposal does say a violation could not be grounds for an eviction.
“I really am fearful that the unintended impacts could cause more harm to long term tenants in my district and other districts,” Peskin said. “I do want to address the harm of secondhand smoke in multi-unit residential buildings, but I think there are better ways to address this.”
Approval of the legislation, which controversially exempted marijuana smoking, would have made San Francisco the largest city in the United States to adopt a smoking ban in multi-unit buildings.
Board President Norman Yee’s said he was disappointed by the failure of the measure to pass in the second vote.
“Today’s vote failed to prioritize the health of our most vulnerable community members,” Yee said. “It is completely backwards that we would defend the rights of people to smoke in their own homes over the rights of others to breathe safely.”
December 9, 2020