PORT ANGELES — Seven school districts on the North Olympic Peninsula are set to receive more than $200,000 as part of a $1.7 billion settlement with e-cigarette manufacturer Juul Labs.
They were among some 1,600 school districts across the country that accused the company of encouraging vaping use in young people through deceptive marketing strategies.
The multi-district federal lawsuit against Juul Labs filed in October 2019 in U.S. district court in San Francisco sought to recover costs districts incurred for vaping prevention programs, intervention, counseling, education, the installation of vaping detectors and other expenses related to e-cigarettes. (It was separate from Washington state’s $22.5 million settlement in April 2022 with Juul that accused the company of failing to warn young people of its products contained high levels of nicotine and were addictive.)
According to the Wall Street Journal, Juul Labs’ $1.7 billion settlement covered more than 5,000 lawsuits that included local governments, tribal entities and consumers, and about 10,000 individual plaintiffs.
The seven Peninsula districts together received a total of $212,463. Frantz Law Group will retain 20 percent of the settlement in addition to some costs incurred litigating the suit.
Allocation of the funds was primarily determined by the number of students in a district and will be paid out in four installments over the next four years.
There are no restrictions on how the funds can be used.
Quillayute Valley ($80,985) received the largest allocation on the Peninsula, followed by Port Angeles ($73,883); Sequim ($49,136); Chimacum ($23,416); Quilcene ($12,593); and Crescent ($8,325) and Port Townsend ($8,325). Cape Flattery and Brinnon did not join the Juul lawsuit.
Vaping in schools
Port Angeles Superintendent Marty Brewer said that vaping in schools was a daily occurrence.
“Vaping with our adolescents and young adults is significant here in the school district,” Brewer said. “Unfortunately, we have vaping incidences all the way down to elementary schools.”
Brewer said that although gathering the information Frantz required to substantiate and support the district’s claim was burdensome, joining the lawsuit had been worth it.
“I believe the lawsuit held Juul accountable for strategically targeting adolescents.” Brewer said. “We felt it was important enough to be able to get some resources to be able to address some of the concerns we’re seeing around our students and young adults vaping.”
Unlike the good old days when being on the alert for student smoking was a relatively straightforward task of following one’s nose and finding a pack of cigarettes, identifying the presence of e-cigarettes can be more difficult. They are odorless and often disguised as everyday objects like highlighters, USB drives, cell phone cases and asthma inhalers.
“It comes in so many different shapes and sizes,” Brewer said. “It could look like a pen, but lo and behold, it’s a device. A pack of cigarettes in a backpack — you can smell it, but vaping you can’t smell it.”
Port Angeles and other districts on the Peninsula have equipped schools with electronic vaping detectors to identify where it is occurring and to act as deterrents. The detectors, which can cost up to $1,000 each, send a text alert to a staff member when they are activated.
Spending the settlement
Districts are still in the process of considering how money from the settlement might best be spent.
Sequim Superintendent Regan Nickels said that the board was seeking a collaborative effort among school stakeholders.
“We have an interest in our high school and our middle school administrators and getting some student voice involved around what they experience and how to use the money toward improving either our students’ awareness about the issues involved with vaping, working on detection factors or helping mitigate the use of such devices in schools and among our student body,” Nickels said.
Quilcene Superintendent Frank Redmon said the funds might go toward offsetting the cost of vaping detectors the district had already installed. Chimacum Superintendent Scott Mauk said he had originally planned to apply any settlement funds against the cost of a $100,000 vaping detection system the district installed after it joined the lawsuit, but in all likelihood it will go into the district’s general fund.
Considering the amount valuable staff and instructor time invested in preparing documentation for the lawsuit that was diverted from their primary roles in the classroom and helping students, Mauk said, “I don’t think of this as free money.”
Brewer said applying Port Angeles’ settlement toward efforts that involved families and its tribal and health partners might be the most effective way of addressing a problem that went beyond the schools.
“When the funds are secure, then we can kind of take our path on how to utilize them,” Brewer said. “We might want to use this to educate our community around the health risks related to vaping. It’s not a whole lot of money where we’ll be able to do a massive campaign, but we would be able to use the money in an intentional way.”
While the settlement money was nice, districts said, it wouldn’t solve the problem of students vaping.
Marisa Katz, a staff attorney with the Public Health Law Center in St. Paul, Minn., said it would take more than lawsuits for raising awareness about the risks of youths and e-cigarettes and limiting their access to vaping products.
“It’s not just using what’s recovered in litigation to help you with the money you spent dealing with problem,” Katz said. “We need regulatory authority, we need the FDA to be more proactive to ban and online sales of e-cigarettes so that minors can’t access them. We need local governments to strengthen their retail ordinances.”
Youth vaping
According to the CDC, e-cigarettes have been the most commonly used t0bacco product among youths since 2014. Its findings align with the 2018 Washington State Healthy Youth Survey, which found that cigarette smoking had declined among eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders between 2016 and 2018, while vaping had dramatically increased.
Vaping use among youths in Clallam and Jefferson county is higher than that reported in state and national survey data according to the CDC and the Washington State Healthy Youth Survey.
In 2021, 9.2 percent of Clallam County eighth-graders reported vaping, compared to 4.8 percent across the state and the 2022 national percent for middle schoolers was 3.3.
Among Clallam County 12th-graders, 21.9 percent reported vaping, which was higher than both the state percentage of 15.1 and the 2022 national percentage for high school students was 14.1.
In Jefferson County, 8.9 percent of eighth-graders and 21.3 percent of 12th-graders reported vaping.
In Washington state, the sale of e-cigarettes to a person under the age of 21 and the purchase or possession of e-cigarettes by anyone under 18 years of age is prohibited.
Paula Hunt can be reached at 360-425-2345, ext. 50583, or by email at paula.hunt@peninsuladailynews.com.
