Manufacturer of e-cigarettes Juul Labs agreed to pay $438.5 million to 34 states and territories to conduct a two-year bipartisan investigation into its marketing and sales practices.

That multi-state investigation, which included Puerto Rico run by Connecticut. It found that Juul “deliberately” engaged in ad campaigns aimed at teens, leading to the company’s dominance of the vaping market, the Green Market Report reported.

What happened

The news came on the heels of the FDA decision in June to ban the sale of Juul products in the United States for allegedly missing data on the toxicological profile of the products. The move was part of the the agency’s plan to crack down on companies selling vaping products without FDA approval, considering that e-cigarettes and e-liquid contain nicotine considered a prescription drug since 2021.

However, per the subsequent federal court ruling, Juul was granted approval to continue selling its product, with the ban being challenged.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, who led the investigation alongside Texas and Oregon, said on Tuesday that the The company misled consumers about the nicotine content and the product’s addictive potential.

“JUL’s cynically calculated advertising campaigns have created a new generation of nicotine addicts,” Tong said in one press release. “They relentlessly marketed vaping products to underage users, manipulated their chemical makeup to make them palatable to inexperienced users, employed an inadequate age verification process, and misled consumers about the nicotine content and addictiveness of their products.”

The settlement

In addition to the financial compensation, the The settlement requires the e-cigarette maker to follow a set of rules that significantly restrict the company’s marketing and sales practices.

“Through this settlement, we secured hundreds of millions of dollars to reduce nicotine use and forced JUUL to accept a series of tough injunctions…