Juul Vape Pens
While smoking is a highly addictive activity, many people turned to Juul vape pens and similar devices to help them stop smoking or to smoke something that they believed was less harmful than traditional cigarettes. However, many people have now found that these devices may have harmed them.
The experienced Atlanta product liability lawyers at Hasner Law, PC are here to explain your legal rights and options if you are harmed by a dangerous or defective product. Contact us online or call our law firm Hasner Law, PC in Atlanta, Georgia today at 678-888-4878 for a free case review.
How Our Atlanta Product Liability Lawyers Can Help If You Were Injured By a Juul Vape Pen
With over 80 years of combined legal experience, the personal injury team at Hasner Law, PC is ready to help you with your personal injury claim. We’ve recovered millions of dollars for injury victims throughout Atlanta, and we’re prepared to take on your case and help you recover fair compensation.
We can help with your Atlanta Juul vape pen case by:
- Investigating your product liability claim and establishing who is liable for your losses
- Gathering strong evidence to substantiate your case
- Communicating with other parties on your behalf
- Determining all possible courses of financial recovery
- Negotiating to hold all liable parties financially accountable for your injuries
Contact our law office in Atlanta, GA today to learn more about your legal rights and options.
What Is a Juul Vape Pen?
Juul is the most popular brand of electronic cigarettes sold in the United States. It is shaped like a USB flash drive and is a battery-powered device that heats a liquid containing nicotine. It produces an aerosol, and the user inhales it.
What Are the Dangers of Juul Vape Pens?
Electronic cigarettes are a relatively new product on the market. Therefore, there are not the type of longitudinal studies or data that surround the use of other nicotine products.
Nonetheless, there are still many dangers of Juul vape pens that health organizations have acknowledged, including:
Nicotine
The American Lung Association says one Juul pod may contain as much nicotine as one pack of cigarettes. Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that Juul is one of the few e-cigarette manufacturers that use nicotine salts, which allow users to inhale high levels of nicotine more easily.
The CDC also reports that two-thirds of Juul users aged 15 to 24 are unaware that Juul always contains nicotine. It also says that some vape products do not disclose they contain nicotine. Others market themselves as containing 0% nicotine but have been found to contain nicotine.
Nicotine is particularly harmful to the youths, especially for the following reasons:
- Nicotine can harm adolescents’ brains
- Nicotine harms the part of the adolescent’s brain that controls attention, learning, impulse control, and mood
- Nicotine can cause mental health problems in adolescents
Nicotine use early on can also lead to addiction to other controlled substances.
Other Harmful Substances
E-cigarettes also include substances other than nicotine that can harm users, including acrolein, which causes irreversible lung damage. There is no oversight of e-cigarettes by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which means there is no authority overseeing which harmful ingredients are used in these products.
Addiction
E-cigarettes are extremely addictive. Cartridge-based e-cigarettes make the product more addictive. Additionally, the e-liquids often come in fruit flavors, which appeal to youth. 71.6% of middle and high school students who admitted to using e-cigarettes said they used fruit flavors.
While there is no evidence that e-cigarettes actually help reduce the number of people who smoke traditional cigarettes, there is evidence that e-cigarette use may lead to smoking traditional cigarettes.
The National Academy of Medicine reports that e-cigarette use increases the frequency and amount of traditional cigarette smoking in the future. Smoking nicotine can also increase the risk of addiction in the future to other drugs.
Other Dangers
There are other dangers of using e-cigarettes. For example, children and adults who have swallowed, breathed in, or absorbed the e-cig liquid have been poisoned by the toxic chemicals. 50% of calls to poison control centers regarding e-cigarettes are for children five years of age or younger.
How Common Is E-Cigarette Use?
The American Lung Association characterizes e-cigarette use as an “epidemic.” It says that the most common reasons for youths using e-cigarettes is because of use by a friend or family member, availability of certain flavors, and the (wrong) belief that they are less harmful than other forms of tobacco like traditional cigarettes.
Types of Product Defects That Could Apply to Juul Vape Pen Product Liability Claims
The types of defects that could apply to Juul product liability claims include:
- Design defect – A design defect occurs when a product is inherently too dangerous. Even if the design is followed properly, there is still an unreasonable risk of harm. For example, it could be argued that Juul vape pens are inherently dangerous because the shape and construction of e-cigarettes make them more likely to combust when a battery fails than regular cigarettes.
- Manufacturing defect – A manufacturing defect arises when some error during the manufacturing process occurs that affects one or more batches of the product. For example, a manufacturing problem could cause some of the products to be more combustible than others.
- Warning defect – A warning or marketing defect arises when a label lacks sufficient information about its product to keep consumers safe. The Food and Drug Administration found that Juul’s premarket tobacco product applications lacked sufficient information about the ingredients in the company’s products to demonstrate that marketing them would be appropriate for the protection of public health. Additionally, class action claims allege that Juul minimized how addictive its products were and because of this marketing issue, consumers would not have paid as much for them.
The experienced Atlanta product liability attorneys at Hasner Law, PC can investigate your situation and determine which type of defect may have contributed to your injuries.
Schedule a Free Consultation With Our Product Liability Law Firm in Atlanta If You Were Injured By a Juul Vape Pen
If you or your loved one was harmed by a Juul vape pen, the product liability lawyers at Hasner Law PC are here to help. Call our law firm in Atlanta, GA today for a free case consultation.
