Juul Labs was founded and is headquartered in the United States, and JUUL products are available in a number of international markets. In order to pursue our mission of transitioning the world’s billion adult smokers away from combustible cigarettes, eliminating their use, and combating underage usage of our products. To accomplish that mission, we are committed to working with governments, regulators, and other stakeholders in all our markets to create a responsibly regulated and adequately safeguarded vapour category.
We will comply with the requirements set by any country or locality in which we are present. We work hard to ensure that all our products are manufactured to stringent quality standards and to behave as responsible members of the global marketplace. But we believe that, particularly in an emerging field such as vapour products, a set of principles must guide our approach to policy so that we can earn the trust of society and earn our license to operate.
Juul Labs believes robust and appropriate regulatory oversight is required for the category, and that it should be designed to be proportionate to the risk of these products relative to combustible cigarettes. Countries around the world have their own approaches to regulating the category, but we believe there are high-level principles that should be adopted by all countries in some form, regardless of the specific regulatory regime in place. At the highest level, all countries should adopt risk-proportionate frameworks that guard against access and appeal of all nicotine products to underage users, while facilitating adult smoker transition to less harmful products. Here, we set out our high-level principles for the category in order to be transparent about our current thinking on the vapour category and how it should operate.
We strongly believe that no underage person should use nicotine in any form, including our products. Our intent is to make our products available to adult smokers who want to transition away from combustible cigarettes, but this can only be accomplished responsibly if there are restrictions on access by underage persons.
We believe, particularly because vapour continues to be an emerging category, that it is important that manufacturers be able to communicate accurate and truthful information about their products to adult smokers. But marketing that is targeted to underage people is unacceptable, and category-wide restrictions prohibiting it are necessary.
Our foremost obligation to our customers is doing everything we can to ensure the quality of our products. We set strict controls at every point of our manufacturing process to reduce the risk of any unintended consequences to users from our devices or e-liquids. We believe this is an obligation shared by anyone manufacturing a vapour device or e-liquid and believe that the entire industry should be held to basic standards of production.
We believe that tax on e-liquid is appropriate but must be considered on a risk-proportionate basis when compared with combustible cigarettes. Tax policy should be crafted to encourage adult smokers to adopt potentially lower-risk products.
We believe that tax policy should reflect the continuum of risk for nicotine delivery, and should encourage smokers to transition toward potentially less harmful products. Taxation for this category should be levied on the volume of e-liquid, and should be less than, and certainly no more than, taxation levied on combustible cigarettes.
Juul Labs believes, and scientific evidence shows, that flavoured products can play an important role in helping adult smokers transition away from combustible cigarettes. As a company, we seek to provide an alternative to combustible cigarettes for adult smokers. We believe that, at a minimum, ENDS flavours should be allowed to mirror the flavours in which tobacco products are available locally to help those smokers transition; additional ENDS flavours may also be appropriate if steps are taken to limit their access and appeal to underage persons.
Any restrictions on ingredients should be based on sound science, realistic exposure levels, and consideration of their potential to promote adult transition from combustible cigarettes and of the relative risks to combustible cigarettes.
For information regarding Policies in the United States, see here.