LOS ANGELES_The Los Angeles city attorney is seeking injunctions against three California-based electronic cigarette companies, alleging that they sell vaping products without proper age verification and market tobacco products to underage people.
Investigators at the city attorney's office were able to purchase vaping devices and nicotine liquids from the companies online using the email accounts of fictitious minors and paying with gift cards, City Attorney Mike Feuer said.
The e-cigarette companies did not ask the buyers to provide their birthdates, valid identification, or age attestation, according to court documents filed by the city attorney's office.
The injunction requests come after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in September announced a crackdown on e-cigarette manufacturers nationwide, citing an "epidemic of nicotine addiction" among American youths.
"Underage vaping is an emerging public health epidemic, and luring kids to use dangerous and addictive vaping products, as we allege here, has got to stop," Feuer said. "In fact, kids shouldn't have access to these products at all. The lawsuits we filed today send a strong message that if you put children at risk for the sake of profit, you'll face serious consequences."
The companies named in the lawsuits are Los Angeles-based VapeCo Distribution, its parent company NEwhere Inc. and Santa Barbrara-based Kandypens Inc. The city accuses them of selling vaping products on the internet without the use of appropriate age-verification procedures, selling new tobacco products without FDA approval, not using child-resistant packaging, and targeting young people in their marketing. The city attorney's office is seeking an injunction to stop those activities.
The companies did not respond to requests for comment.
VapeCo and NEwhere operate websites and social media accounts that critics say glamorize vaping by featuring young models, cartoon characters and videos of vaping "tricks," where smokers blow rings against psychedelic backdrops. Various screenshots of the posts were included in the filing.
One of the companies' retail websites sells liquids for vaping devices that are flavored to mimic sweet candy products like lollipops and doughnuts and come in bright colors. The FDA recently sent a warning letter to the company for marketing a liquid product that resembled a popular brand's apple juice box. That product is no longer available.
The city attorney's office also alleges that the companies' various Instagram accounts do not use an "age gate" feature to block minors from accessing content.
The city attorney's office also alleges that Kandypens uses product placement in music videos and in posts by "social media influences" to promote teen usage.
The company has an "artists" section on its website that features videos of pop and rap stars using their devices, including one music video for rapper DJ Khaled's song "No Brainer" that has over 169 millions views on YouTube. In the video, the artist uses a Kandypen device.
The court documents allege that Kandypens does not use an "age gate" for its social media content and does not feature the FDA's required health warning about the addictive properties of nicotine.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that e-cigarettes have become the tobacco product of choice among middle and high school students.
In 2017, 11.7 percent of high schoolers who participated in the CDC's National Youth Tobacco Survey said they had vaped a tobacco product within the last month, up from 1.5 percent in 2011. In addition, 3.3 percent of middle school students called themselves current users of e-cigarettes, up from 0.6 percent in 2011.
