EdLawConnect Blog

Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an investigation to determine whether the popular vaporizer/e-cigarette company Juul intentionally marketed its devices to young people. As part of that inquiry, the FDA ordered Juul to produce the company’s research and marketing documents, including information on focus groups and toxicology reports. The attorney general of Massachusetts is also conducting an investigation of the company to review Juul’s efforts to audit its own website and other online retailers that sell its products to determine how effective they are at preventing minors from accessing Juul devices.

On April 18, 2018, six leading public health and medical organizations insisted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take immediate action to address the rise in teenage usage of Juul electronic cigarettes. (See our April 10, 2018 blog entry about Juul devices here.) The groups cited recent research conducted by the Truth Initiative and published in the journal Tobacco Control, which revealed that 63 percent of current Juul users aged 15-24 did not know the product contains nicotine. Additionally, the research indicated that 25 percent of users may not even realize the product is an e-cigarette or tobacco product.

Use of the best-selling e-cigarette on the market is spreading quickly throughout middle and high schools. The nicotine vaporizer, called Juul, looks like a flash drive; it can even be charged in a USB port. By the end of 2017, Juul sales made up a third of the e-cigarette market.

In June the U.S. Department of Education launched a new website related to student privacy issues. The website serves as the primary source of best-practice tips, technical assistance, and training on the administration of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and other topics related to student privacy. (Access the website at https://studentprivacy.ed.gov/.)

The website replaces the ...