Transcript: Mayor Adams, Attorney General James Announce $27 Million Coming To New York City To Combat Youth Vaping Epidemic

June 12, 2024

New York Attorney General Letitia James: Good morning, everyone. My name is Letitia James, the Attorney General of the great State of New York. I'm joined here today with Mayor Eric Adams, Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, Borough President Mark Levine, Councilmember Gale Brewer, Mimi Boublik, Cynthia Stremba from Parents Against Vaping E-cigarettes.

We are also joined here by the Principal Stephen Noonan of the Maxine Greene High School of Imaginative Inquiry, who helped arrange today's event, also Principal Kevin Froner of Manhattan Hunter Science, who is also joining us today, Principal Katherine Banucci-Smith of the Kaufman Special Music School, and Principal Bridget Garzaniti of Arts and Technology High School, and Assistant Principal Bruno. Of course, my favorite, Jalyssa Jarvis, who's a student at Arts and Tech. That was the thing, come on. Who will be speaking with all of you this morning.

It's an honor and a privilege to be here on the campus and thank them for graciously hosting us here today. All of the elected officials who are here as well, it is an honor and a privilege before you today. As most of there's nothing more important than the health and safety of our children. Their mental health is really critically important, which is why we passed legislation, as all you know, to limit the harmful effects of social media.

Today, we are focusing on protecting their physical health by addressing the youth vaping crisis. Big tech and big tobacco use the same playbook to get to our children. Addictive social media feeds and nicotine get our children hooked on scrolling and vaping. I'm so glad that none of them have phones in their hands this morning. Thank you.

We've seen firsthand just how harmful this is to our kids' mental and physical health. As Dr. Froner will share, when students at Manhattan Hunter Science High School turned to vaping and got hooked on nicotine, mental health challenges like stress and anxiety only got worse. Kids as young as middle school began vaping and inhaling nicotine because they were lured by catchy marketing and enticing fruity flavors and flashy parties and promises of being cool.

Juul, the largest e-cigarette company, intentionally marketed to children, including on social media, and got them addicted to e-cigarettes and caused irreparable harm to their bodies. That's why we sued Juul for its role in creating this youth vaping epidemic, and for its deceptive and misleading marketing that caused real harm to our children. As a result, we secured a historic $462 million multi-state settlement against Juul, with $112 million going to the great State of New York, and $27.1 million going to New York City. That deserves a round of applause.

These funds will be used for education, for prevention, for research and enforcement programs to prevent kids and young adults from vaping, to help young people quit vaping altogether, and to support local enforcement of vaping laws and regulations. They will be distributed to every county in the State of New York and BOCES. The settlement also includes restrictions on the company's marketing and sales to protect and prevent minors from vaping.

Juul cannot directly or indirectly target youth in their marketing. Juul cannot fund or operate youth education and prevention programs. Juul cannot portray anyone under the age of 35 in any of their promotional material. These funds and restrictions will go a long way in protecting our children and help us address the damage that Juul caused and created. For years, Juul's deliberately hid the health risk of its products behind clouds of smoke, basically to pad their profits and intentionally target our children. Juul falsely led students and consumers to believe that its products were safe and that their cigarettes contained less nicotine, when in fact we all know that they did not.

One pod of Juul contains as much nicotine as a whole pack of cigarettes. Juul targeted young New Yorkers with its ads and through our campaigns, all while downplaying the harmful effects of Juul. In at least one New York City school, a Juul representative falsely told high school freshmen that its products were safer than cigarettes. Juul lit a nationwide public health crisis and put addictive products in the hands of minors who thought they were doing something harmless. The e-cigarette use amongst middle and high school students more than doubled after Juul was first introduced in 2015. Minors and youth adults had the highest e-cigarette usage rates of any age group in the country.

Here in New York, almost one in four high school students reported vaping nicotine in 2020. They were smoking everywhere, even inside schools. This campus is no exception. The smell of vapes has been commonplace in hallways, cafeterias, and stairwells. Soon we'll hear from my good friend Jalyssa, who is an 11th grader at Arts and Tech High School. She's going to talk to you a little bit about the problem. At other schools, the vaping inside of school buildings became so frequent and widespread that schools had to install vaping devices, vaping detection devices inside of school bathrooms and in other rooms.

We know the dangers of nicotine and the serious health effects of prolonged use. Today, we are taking an important step to help our kids stop vaping and to prevent future generations from getting caught up in the same problems. We don't have to divert much needed educational funds for that purpose. We will do everything in our power to protect our kids. At this time, it is my honor and my privilege to introduce our Mayor Eric Adams. Mayor Adams is someone who has long prioritized the mental health and safety of New York City young people from investing in gun violence, prevention to ensuring better access to healthy foods. At this time, I want to welcome him to share more about these funds and what it will mean to our great City of New York. Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. Thanks so much, AG. We've shared the podium on many of these initiatives and what the Attorney General has done by holding those who are responsible for intentionally targeting our young people. What she has brought to the city in billions of dollars on opioid funding that helps us to go out and do prevention and education. Now we look at another area that targets our young people, and that is the area of Juuls and e-cigarettes.

When you think about it, it's unimaginable. Jordan, my son, is in his late 20s, and it was challenging raising Jordan with so many outside interventions. What we're watching now that is happening and is yearning on our young people now is really parenting on steroids. It is unbelievable what these young people are inundated with every day. That is why we must remain as vigilant as we push back on those who are specifically targeting our young people with subliminal advertisement, using social media, using the attractiveness of colors and products.

We're seeing it within cannabis, the gummy bears that are being sold in stores, and we're seeing it now in an institution and an entity like Juul. Juul was clear with their marketing strategy. They knew who they were going after. They were very clear on who they were targeting. Far too often, we saw this in those communities of color where young people were being used on this product. The lab has hooked thousands of students on vaping and e-cigarettes. The long-term health impacts are real. It's not something we're making up. It is extremely real.

That is why this initiative and being able to secure the dollars from the AG's Attorney General's settlement is so important. Because it allows us to be forward thinking on education and driving a real program towards addressing this issue. It must be youth-led. It is impacting our young people, and they're smart enough to come up with the right strategies and the right information to go after how this has just really permeated their youthfulness.

When you look at the fact that 81 percent of first-time users, ages 12 to 17, started with products like the ones Juul Labs sell. Those have never previously smoked before. Never previously smoked before. This is an entryway to smoking. All of us know, all the work we've done around cigarette smoking, that to have another entryway for our young people to embrace a lifetime of e-cigarettes or eventually going to cigarettes is something we cannot go backwards. We refuse to go backwards.

[Inaudible.] Juul decided to put profit over public health. We must put an end to it. We cannot thank the Attorney General, James, enough for focusing on these real quality of life issues. Oftentimes, we ignore them until they are too far gone. She has aggressively identified these quality of life issues. She has gone after these large, huge conglomerates and corporations and stated that we're going to use the power of her office to fight from within and lead on the front. This is going to become a national movement based on what is being done here. $27 million to support underage e-cigarette treatment, recovery, and enforcement is a substantial amount of money.

We are just really proud to add this to our arsenal. As we have successfully done with the money we received from opioid abuse. We've already banned e-cigarettes, flavored cigarettes in the state. Our partners in Albany has allowed us to do so in local authority to shut down the illegal smoke and cannabis shops that sell illegal and counterfeit products. These tools are allowing us to create a safe environment for our young people. I really want to just again thank all who are involved. This is a moment and a calling from the parent organizations who are here and to our young people who are here. We want to place the power in their hands so that they can charter the course for their destiny in a healthy way. Not only to be academically smart, but to be healthy. Not allow these outside interference to impact their health. Again, AG, thank you so much, and I thank all of us who are joined together on this initiative. Thank you.

Attorney General James: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Again, I have to recognize and give a shout out to Mimi Boublik and Cynthia Stremba from Parents Against Vaping E-Cigarettes. They came to my office early and they educated me about the fact that Jewel had taken a page out of Big Tobacco's playbook. I really want to thank them for all that they are doing. Thank you so much. Now we're going to hear from Dr. Kevin Froner, the principal of Manhattan Hunter Science, to share more about this public health crisis and its impact on his students. Principal?

Dr. Kevin Froner, Principal, Manhattan Hunter Science High School: Thank you for that clap. We want to welcome you to the Martin Luther King campus. We are home to six schools and our own high capacity hydroponic farm, which grows 1,000 pounds per month. We feed students, we feed families, and sometimes faculty, they sneak in and we feed them too. We also want to welcome you to a faculty and a campus that leads the city in social emotional learning. We began this work well before the pandemic, watching historic rates of anxiety and depression and suicidal ideation and a range of mental health issues that we had never seen before. I share that because if we're not caring for the whole child, then we're susceptible to organizations, companies like Juul. When I think about all of us in this room, we also struggle, many of us struggle with anxiety and stress. It's hard not to today.

Our tools may be, Netflix and a bottle of wine. I'm going off script. For students, though, it's four hours of TikTok. It's, eight hours of social media. It's YouTube. It's also vaping, right? Kids need tools. If we're not providing them in school, then I'm really not sure where they're getting them. I just want to, one, applaud the mayor. This year, we rolled out school-wide, right? We have nearly a million students in this school. We have nearly a million students in the school system, the largest school system in the nation. We rolled out, system-wide, mindful breathing. Now, it may not seem like a lot. I don't know how much you all cover this, but if you think about it, we have an entire school system with nearly a million kids breathing every day. I just want to applaud the mayor for doing something I found to be incredibly courageous.

Then from there, the mayor tackled school lunch. All right, we still have work to do. We're moving in a direction where we look at the whole child. Are they eating well? Are they sleeping well? if, the kids can attest to this. If you're on your phone until midnight, 1 in the morning, we have most of our kids sleeping four to six hours a night. What's the cycle? Four to six hours of sleep. They wake up the next day. They come to school. We provide most of the quality food in their lives here on this campus. Then they leave. Then they're susceptible to those companies who would place profit over the human spirit.

It's really sad when you think about it, because it's like, what's the game? The game is, everyone in this room, a principal, teacher, many of you have kids. It's like we're here to support them. We're here to help them grow. We're here to protect them. I just want to applaud, finally, the Attorney General. I've been so inspired by this. Reading what it took to get to this place and everything that you did to get us to this place and hold them accountable. I think that's like probably the biggest, one of the biggest issues we have right now, I think we could agree, is the lack of accountability for organizations, for corporations to take advantage of kids. You ended that today.

I feel like today is a message to the… definitely to Juul, but like, to anyone else, they better think twice before messing with our kids. Yes, thanks for giving me some time. this is for us here, speak on behalf of the principals. This is the most important thing. If we're really going to tackle it, we've got to empower our kids. I know this is work that you're doing with the chancellor of Schools. We've got to empower our kids to be socially, emotionally sound. If they don't have tools to deal with anxiety and to deal with stress, then they're going out in the world and then other people solve it for them. I just, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you both very much.

Attorney General James: I wish I had a cool principal like that when I was in high school. The mayor has a very busy schedule, but the mayor wanted to hear from student Jalyssa Jarvis. She's a rising senior at Arts and Technology High School, and she's going to share a few words about her experience. Jalyssa.

Jalyssa Jarvis: I'm nervous. Okay. Good morning. My name is Jalissa Jarvis. I'm a student athlete at High School of Arts and Technology and the captain of the flag football team. To excel in my sport, I've committed to maintaining my health, which includes avoiding vaping. Unfortunately, I've noticed that vaping has become a significant issue among my classmates. It's a distraction and an addiction, leading many students to leave their classrooms to vape in the bathroom or staircase. This not only disrupts their learning, but also affects their health and concentration, making it harder for them to perform well academically and for some athletically.

I want to thank Attorney General James for taking on Juul and securing these funds for our city to help support anti-vaping programs. Any school will benefit from an anti-vape awareness program to address this serious issue. These programs will help bring awareness to the dangers of vaping and offer support to students who need help to quit. Implementing these programs will be a significant step toward improving the health and academic performance of students. Thank you.

Attorney General James: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Now we'll hear from our Borough President of the Great Borough of Manhattan, Borough President Mark Levine. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine: Wow. Jalyssa Jarvis. You are extremely impressive. I don't know when you're running for office. You have my vote. Just don't run against me, please. This is one more morning where I'm reminded that we have the best Attorney General in America. Thank you, Attorney General Tish James, who is not new or a latecomer on this issue. She has been fighting on this for years, at least five years, if not more.

It's actually hard to remember back in those days before the pandemic seems like another lifetime. But, in 2019, we had a full-blown public health crisis with the epidemic of children using Juul and other vaping products. There were 2,000 hospitalizations nationwide. There was a young boy who died in the Bronx. There was a rate of one in four high schoolers using vaping products in New York City. When we did a hearing, I was chairing the City Council Health Committee at the time, we had kids as young as 10 come out and testify about the prevalence of vaping amongst their classmates, 10-year-olds. If I remember correctly, even in middle school, we had one in 10 kids in New York City who were vaping.

This was a very serious crisis that was brought about because Juul deliberately and directly and blatantly marketed kids in their outreach, their advertising on social media and elsewhere. This was a deliberate act. There was a group of parents who stood up to fight back, parents against vaping, e-cigarettes. You do not want to mess with these parents. My buddy Meredith Berkman is not here and Dorian, but these parents inspired me and many others to rise up. Then our Attorney General did what she does so well. She led. That national settlement that was secured with many other states, she didn't mention it was New York that led that. It was her office that made this happen, extracting millions of dollars and also changes in their practices.

Now we're reaping some of the benefits of that. I wish I could say we don't need this money to educate young people. What we've seen in the last couple of years is that vaping has come creeping back, where because we spoke very eloquently about the anxieties of this moment, the dislocation of the pandemic. Also, the fact, as Gale knows well, the proliferation of illegal smoke shops, which are also selling vaping devices and products and flavored e-cigarettes, which we banned in New York City in the City Council 2019. We banned them. They're being sold in these smoke shops. They're not always checking for ID. It's become it's probably easier today for a young person to get access to vaping products than it was even five years ago.

This remains a crisis. We need this education money so that the message gets out very clearly that no, vaping is not good for you. Nicotine is a viciously addictive chemical. There are serious negative health impacts of using these products. Not enough young people understand that. This money, this $27 million, which the Attorney General has secured, will help us get that message out. Thank you, Attorney General. Steve, we've been joined by my friend, State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal. Thank you again for leading and delivering for New York City. Thanks so much, everybody.

Attorney General James: Now we'll hear from Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal.

State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal: I'm slightly out of breath, Attorney General. I ran here. I had to pick up my husband from glaucoma surgery. That's what happens when you're over 50. State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal represents the West Side of Manhattan. Proud to represent this historic campus, which was also, by the way, a venue for our efforts to get New York City to have the power to lower its own speed limits to 20 miles per hour. I wanted to thank the mayor, who I know has left, and the borough president, and my colleagues, Councilmember Brewer and Rosenthal, for their efforts in that regard.

We've done a lot in Albany on flavored e-cigs. We banned them. Assemblywoman Rosenthal and I helped lead that effort. I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud to see PAVE and the advocacy around that effort was truly, as my grandmother would say, top drawer, given the fact that we had so many young people, some of us, some of them are here today, in the Capitol of Albany. Holding the manufacturers responsible is really what it's all about.

I want to thank the Attorney General 27 million times for this amazing initiative. She has been a leader nationwide in protecting children and young people. A good example of that is the bill that would stop addictive social media feeds from directly influencing our young people. Thank you for that, Attorney General. This is another example of that. In Albany, we need to do three more things. We need to close the loophole on flavored e-cigarettes that are sold, oftentimes, in shops that aren't under the law. Secondly, we need to make certain to ban all flavored cigarettes, including menthol. We still haven't done that in New York. Third, we need to crack down on ZYNs, which rhymes with sins, are those packets of nicotine that you can easily access. We know that young people are becoming addicted to nicotine through the flavors of ZYNs. This is an amazing step forward. Again, thank you, Attorney General. Thank you on behalf of my 13 and 6-year-old daughters. Thanks so much. Thank you.

Attorney General James: Now the woman who has inspected more smoke shops than the City Marshal, my former colleague in the City Council. Ladies and gentlemen, Councilmember Gale Brewer.

City Councilmember Gale Brewer: I want to thank the Attorney General for both her efforts now and in the City Council. You should know in the City Council, she was just as vigilant when somebody needed the mailbox painted. She got paint and went and painted it. This is a person who definitely does the right thing. I want to thank Principal Foner, and I want to thank Jalyssa and all of my colleagues.

My experience has been, just as you here know, because I represent the school, I represent Brandeis. These are two big buildings with a lot of high schools in them. We have 90, maybe now more like 85, smoke shops on the Upper West Side. That's way too many. When I have been out with the sheriff, you not only find illegal tobacco and illegal cannabis, but you find all of these vaping devices, and they're all illegal.

Not only is this hitting the company that has made these illegal devices available, but it's also, I think, going to help us with the smoke shops. When the Sheriff goes in, he takes everything that is illegal. What's interesting, and this is another wrinkle to this whole challenge, some of the ingredients of the vaping have to be tested in the state of Ohio because we do not have a lab here in New York. It costs money to send, it costs money to test, and it takes money to then be able to review the results.

So on so many levels, fighting this illegal vaping is important. I have to say, we will take this funding, the $27 million, because schools need help, as you heard from the principal. My experience is, I've even had a principal crying, not from this campus, but another one, because when you have a young woman vaping in your classroom, it's really challenging. What in the world do I do? Where do I begin? How do I get her support? Then, of course, when you're in the bathrooms and the hallways and you smell it, and you're in a school, it hits your gut. The $27 million will help, I'm sure, the young people will be involved, principals like Noonan and Foner and others. It's this lawsuit that has been successful, has so many ramifications for our city. Of course, let's get rid of those goddamn smoke shops. Thank you.

Attorney General James: Any on-topic questions? I wanted to touch on the charge of not going to school or to the economy,

Question: [Inaudible] testing, but this is not probably right. Okay. It needs to be tested to determine what's right.

Councilmember Brewer: It has to do with the device that makes the vaping possible. You'd have to talk to the sheriff to get the specifics, but he's quite upset because it does cost the city money. We need a local testing lab.

Question: Yes, you're talking about, also, the chemicals and psychotics.Yes, a bunch of you guys talked about like, the health impact, right? Can somebody, it's never been clear to me, I've heard it from someone, but, what are the health impacts of vaping compared to smoking, right? [Inaudible.]

Attorney General James: Yes. First, let me just say that of the $27 million, $12 million will go directly to the City of New York. Perhaps some of those funds can be used for testing. $15 million will go directly to the New York City School District here in the City of New York. It's also important to know that we have seen as a result of surveys that have been done by the Department of Health, that what we've seen is more children suffering from depression, anxiety, and other related mental health causes.

So it's really important, again, that these funds be used for prevention and that these funds be used, obviously, to educate individuals about the harmful effects of vaping. Any other questions? Yes. Hi, how are you?

Question: [Inaudible.]

Attorney General James:Yes. I can't give you an exact number, but I can say based upon what my colleagues indicated that, unfortunately, a number of these e-cigarettes are now being sold in these illegal cannabis shops. That's why it's so critically important that New York City and my office have greater enforcement ability to close down these shops. We are working, obviously, with the sheriffs. We are working, obviously, in all 62 counties across the State of New York. I have beefed up my enforcement staff within the Office of the Attorney General to close down these shops.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Attorney General James: We are prepared. I think that the fact that the FDA issued that guidance a few days ago just strengthens our hands with respect to these restrictions that are included in the settlement. In addition to that today there is a hearing. I think it's the House, I believe it's the House that's holding the hearing today with regards to the FDA regulations in allowing e-cigarettes to go forward. We will, again, enhance and strengthen and increase our enforcement measures working with other law enforcement agencies all across the state of New York. We are committed to, again, educating young children about the dangers of vaping and also closing down these illegal smoke shops. Working very closely with, of course, the enforcer, Gale Brewer. Hi, how are you?

Question: [Inaudible.]

Attorney General James: Yes, that's an interesting question. I would focus a lot on education. Again, it's a split between the City of New York, which I would imagine would go to the Department of Health, and then funds directly to the Department of Education to focus on education and prevention. I can't speak for the mayor of the City of New York, but I am hopeful that he will put some of those funds towards enforcement in the City of New York.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Attorney General James:Yes, we've seen, also with social media. That is why, we passed and work with the state legislature. Again, I want to thank the assemblymember in her absence, as well as senator who is here today, who passed the legislation just a few days ago in the middle of the night, a legislation which would ban these dangerous algorithms, these addictive algorithms, and specifically ban these algorithms during midnight hours, between the hours of 8 and 6 a.m. when children sleep.

What principals have been telling me, as parents as well, is that children come to school sleepy because they cannot sleep because they are on those, because they're on their phones, and because these feeds come to them at all hours of the night. It's really critically important that individuals understand that with the introduction of algorithms, we have seen more children engage in self-harm.

Individuals who have engaged in self-mutilation. Individuals who have engaged, unfortunately, in depression. Individuals who are more suffering from anxiety. The combination of e-cigarettes and social media causes health impacts to our children, mental health impacts to our children. This Attorney General recognizes and understands the number one issue that I need to focus on is protecting young people here in the State of New York.

Joining with my colleagues all over the nation, we have done just that. I look forward to, again, focusing on social media, working with the governor of the State of New York, and all of the Attorney Generals. As the Attorney General of the state of New York, New York has led, and we will continue to lead. We led on opioids. We led on social media. We led on Juul. We will continue to lead, particularly when it comes to my young leaders. Come on up, young leaders. I'm going to present you all with a check.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.