Contaminated Juul Vape Pods May Have Led To Vaping Illness Epidemic

Juul vaping devices are turning out to be more of a gateway to nicotine addiction than a viable alternative to smoking cigarettes

Friday, November 1, 2019 - Teenagers in middle and high school as young as 12 years old are getting their hands on vape pens not fearing or even knowing of the guarantee of nicotine addiction that comes with vaping. A single vape cartridge has as much nicotine as an entire pack of cigarettes and "vapers" can easily go through one or two cartridges per day. Vape pens are just another nicotine delivery device like cigars or cigarettes. Executives at Juul Inc., maker of vaping pens and cartridges have been accused of deliberately targeting underage non-cigarette smokers with a sophisticated social media scheme and as a result, hundreds of thousands of young adults have taken up the vaping habit and become permanently nicotine-addicted. The company is under federal investigation for so doing. Through a marketing scheme that is known as an affiliate program, social media influencers, those with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers on Instagram and YouTube, were compensated a commission for everyone they sent to Juul as a percentage of the sales the customer made. Social media influencers reviewed vape products as if they were independent and objective and provided the commission-tracking link below in the description of their video. Most social media influencers audiences were young and under the legal age for smoking. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of youngsters have taken up the vaping habit and become nicotine-addicted from this unscrupulous campaign. Juul vape pen attorneys are national experienced attorneys with a distinguished track record winning major cases against multinational corporations on behalf of Americans harmed by negligence and corporate greed.

Juul is now being accused of selling more than one million vape "pods" (250,000 refill kits) that the company knew contained contaminated e-liquid to retailers by a company whistleblower who was subsequently fired by the company when they learned of the leak. According to Engadget.com, former Juul chief executive Kevin Burns, when confronted with the company's unwillingness to recall the shipment replied: "Half our customers are drunk and vaping like mo-fos, who the fuck is going to notice the quality of our pods?" The whistleblower, former senior vice president of global finance Siddharth Breja, has filed a lawsuit against Juul for wrongful termination but Breja's allegations may link the defective product with the vaping illness epidemic in select locations in the US.

The accusation of Juul's shipping of contaminated vaping liquid corresponds with the sudden outbreak of vaping sicknesses and deaths from selected areas around the United States. There are over 1600 suspected cases of vaping-related sicknesses so severe as to require immediate hospitalization by victims with severe lung pain, and extreme difficulty breathing. Many visiting emergency rooms were immediately rushed into intensive care. At last check, 37 deaths have been linked to the vaping sickness epidemic and the cause of the vaping illnesses is under investigation. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), "As of October 29, 2019, 1,888 cases of e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury (EVALI) have been reported to CDC from 49 states (all except Alaska), the District of Columbia, and 1 U.S. territory. Thirty-seven deaths have been confirmed in 24 states (as of October 29, 2019)." US hospitals are now required to report cases of pulmonary distress requiring hospitalization directly to the CDC using the acronym EVALI, which stands for e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury.

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Lawyers for JUUL Vape Pen Lawsuits

OnderLaw, LLC is a St. Louis personal injury law firm handling serious injury and death claims across the country. Its mission is the pursuit of justice, no matter how complex the case or strenuous the effort. The Onder Law Firm has represented clients throughout the United States in pharmaceutical and medical device litigation such as Pradaxa, Lexapro and Yasmin/Yaz, where the firm's attorneys held significant leadership roles in the litigation, as well as Actos, DePuy, Risperdal and others. The firm has represented thousands of persons in these and other products liability litigation, including DePuy hip replacement systems, which settled for $2.5 billion and Pradaxa internal bleeding, which settled for $650 million. The Onder Law Firm won over $300 million in four talcum powder ovarian cancer lawsuits in St. Louis to date and other law firms throughout the nation often seek its experience and expertise on complex litigation.