Juul spent big to court Black leaders to promote its e-cigarettes, new documents show

Documents released this week shed new light on an aggressive strategy from vape maker Juul to court Black leaders, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, to publicly support its e-cigarettes.

Beginning in 2018, Juul executives, including the company’s CEO, discussed six- and seven-figure partnerships with civil rights organizations, one of which would have seen it send as much as $7 million to Sharpton’s group, according to internal emails and documents that were released this week as part of a legal settlement with the state of North Carolina.

It’s not clear how much the company ultimately spent on the partnerships.

Juul also paid an association of Black newspapers for an article promoting the company’s products to their readers, and it sponsored a retreat for a group of Black lawmakers at a luxury resort, the documents reveal.

The documents provide the clearest evidence to date that Juul executives courted Black organizations to bolster the company’s beleaguered public image, and to make inroads with Black legislators. Journalists have previously reported on Juul hiring Black leaders as consultants and funding a historically Black medical school, but the extent of its efforts and the size of the potential funding was not previously known. The documents also show that Juul targeted Hispanic leaders, albeit to a lesser extent.

Black anti-tobacco leaders said Juul’s strategy reminded them of tobacco companies’ efforts to market cigarettes to Black communities, and to mobilize them against policy efforts, such as a ban on menthol cigarettes.

Juul “followed Big Tobacco’s playbook in specifically targeting and marketing to the Black community and seeking to buy influence within the Black community,” said Yolonda Richardson, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “Juul’s real interest remains in maximizing profits and promoting a new form of nicotine addiction, as the company’s own documents indicate.” (The Campaign, like STAT, receives funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies.)

Phillip Gardiner, the co-chair of the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, said his jaw dropped when STAT shared the documents.

“Frankly I’m appalled,” he told STAT. “Juul is using ‘Big Tobacco’s’ playbook … Juul just picked up where they left off.”

In a statement, a Juul spokesperson said: “The initiatives described in these documents relate to efforts considered or undertaken more than four years ago. Since that time, the company has undertaken a comprehensive effort to reset our relationship with our stakeholders and re-earn trust.”

STAT asked whether Juul is still partnering with civil rights organizations, the spokesperson said, “We are proud to engage on an ongoing basis with an array of stakeholder groups and provide support for their important work. These efforts are an integral part of advancing our mission to transition adult smokers from combustible cigarettes and combating underage use.”

Building an “echo chamber of support”

By mid 2018, Juul was facing a massive public relations crisis. Youth vaping rates were spiking, and the New York Times and the New Yorker were documenting kids’ growing addiction to the sleek device and its powerful supply of nicotine. The Massachusetts attorney general had already launched an investigation into the company. Then-FDA Commissioner Scott Gotlieb publicly declared vaping an epidemic, and slapped dozens of Juul retailers with warnings for selling the company’s products to kids.

Juul executives knew the company had to convince regulators, and the public, that it was serious about its stated mission of getting adults off of cigarettes and keeping the product out of kids’ hands. “We need to counteract the negative echo chamber that is out there and really start building a third party social network that understands the mission of Juul,” Jim Esquea, the company’s then-senior director of federal affairs, wrote in an internal email dated Aug. 29, 2018.

Internal documents reveal that by 2019, the company was discussing a plan to build a coalition of allies that, as one internal document stated, would create its own “echo chamber of support for the company’s policy priorities and mission across the entire political spectrum.”

Black organizations were a central part of that ally list.

That plan, which was entitled, “Community Engagement Strategy Deep Dive,” lists several Black organizations, including the NAACP and the National Minority Quality Forum, as “critical partners” for building that echo chamber.

It’s a familiar strategy, according to Keith Wailoo, a history professor at Princeton University who has studied tobacco companies’ interactions with Black communities.

“These relationships have … been really central to how the industry has both built markets, and more importantly, defended markets,” Wailoo said, adding that tobacco companies would “mobilize the Black community “to use what they would like people to believe to be the voice of authentic people from the community, but in fact are paid spokespersons, to help defend what is in fact an incredibly lucrative product.”

The most significant partnership Juul pursued under the leadership of then-CEO Kevin Burns appears to be with Sharpton’s organization, the National Action Network. One 2018 proposal that appears to have originated with the National Action Network, as it bears the NAN logo, details a planned $7 million project focused on “informing and engaging community members about supporting the increase of the purchasing age for tobacco products to 21 and about the harmful effects of smoking.” It’s unclear how much the ultimate partnership actually cost Juul; another project proposal describing what appears to be the same project pegged the cost at $5 million.

It’s clear Juul wanted a partnership with Sharpton’s organization. An internal email dated Oct. 11, 2018 states that the company “met with National Action Network in NYC to finalize a health/wellness program.” And the company’s then-head of public affairs described the project as a priority for Burns, the CEO.

“Kevin wants a briefing on NAN to pull trigger on plan. He wants to talk to [Sharpton] Friday or next week and tell him the plan is a go and resources are being deployed,” Daniel Cruise wrote in an email to several Juul executives.

In September 2018, Juul executives also advocated for providing a $100,000 donation to NAM in support of an award dinner. “We’d like to be able to commit as soon as possible,” a Juul executive wrote in an email to the company’s lawyers at the firm Covington & Burling. It’s unclear if the donation was ever made by the company.

The National Action Network did not respond to requests for comment.

Juul soon called on Sharpton to validate the company’s efforts to stem youth vaping. An internal Juul document labeled “Public & Government affairs FDA rollout plan” outlines a strategy to rally supporters of the company “and to neutralize opponents who believe we are targeting young people.” That plan lists Sharpton as a key influencer who the company would brief on the plan. Sharpton has only spoken sparingly about Juul in public. In 2019, when he was asked about his coordination with the company, Sharpton said he was unsure about the product’s potential health effects.

The documents released Wednesday also show that Juul budgeted in 2019 for donations to civil rights organizations ranging from $15,000 up to $350,000. The groups on its list included the National Minority Quality Forum and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

The spreadsheet, which ranked groups based on their perceived willingness to work with the company, described the Leadership Conference, a coalition of more than 200 civil rights organizations founded during the Civil Rights movement as “unlikely to engage but need to support.” However, it’s unclear how many of the budgeted donations were actually made.

Gary Puckrein, the CEO of the National Minority Quality Forum, for example, told STAT that the group worked with Juul to create an index “that mapped combustible tobacco use in the United States by geography.”

Several Juul documents note that the NMQF was central to the group’s outreach to the Black community because it is “is a critical organization that helps drive the health policy of the [Congressional Black Caucus] … and the National Medical Association.

The leadership council told STAT it “has no history of receiving funds from Juul.”

The other organizations did not respond to STAT’s requests for comment.

Targeting Black state and federal lawmakers

The onslaught of public attention toward Juul in 2018 prompted the company to dramatically increase its spending on lobbying lawmakers. Newly released internal documents reveal how much of that effort was focused on Black lawmakers in particular.

When Juul launched its political action committee in 2018, the Congressional Black Caucus topped the companies’ “top five initial targets” for campaign donations, according to one internal document.

One of the first donations the PAC made after its launch was a $5,000 check, the maximum allowable under the law, to the Congressional Black Caucus PAC, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Juul donated to organizations closely connected to the Black caucus, too. Another email dated March 14, 2019 confirmed a $25,000 donation to the federal Congressional Black Caucus Institute, a related social welfare organization with a stated mission to “educate today’s voters and train tomorrow’s leaders.” In another email dated Aug. 12, 2018, a Juul vice president outlined to the company’s CEO his success in meeting with Black lawmakers at that organization’s Annual Policy Conference. The email also reveals that Juul was courting support from the NAACP.

“I hosted a dinner for the President and CEO of the NAACP Derrick Johnson, three members of the NAACP Board, including Chairman Leon Russell, and the NAACP General Counsel Bradford Berry. They are extremely interested in engaging with Juul,” the official wrote.

Juul spared no expense wooing state lawmakers too, the emails reveal.

In Oct. 2018 Juul sponsored a retreat for leaders of the California state legislature’s Black caucus at a Pebble Beach, Calif resort. The agenda for the weekend was described by one Juul employee in an email as “Golf or spa treatments each day and swanky accommodations at the Inn at Spanish Bay.” Rooms at the Inn at Spanish Bay cost roughly $1,000 per night.

Juul’s funding went to the caucus, rather than individual lawmakers, who are often barred from accepting gifts like these. The documents don’t show exactly how much money the company spent on the trip.

Juul leadership almost immediately began leveraging that relationship with California lawmakers to fight efforts to ban flavored vapes in the state. Just four days after the retreat, Juul’s then-CEO Kevin Burns wrote to the company’s vice president of state government affairs and several other Juul executives urging them to get the California Black caucus mobilized in an effort to defeat a flavored tobacco ban being considered by the city of Sacramento. “We need to get the Black Caucus to get vocal and [sic] menthol and mint bans – overly punitive to them,” Burns wrote.

In September 2018 Juul executives also debated donating $105,000 to the California Black Caucus. In one email the company’s then-chief of public affairs said the donation “sounds reasonable,” though it’s unclear if the company ever formally donated to the group.

Using Black newspapers to promote their product

Juul executives also paid Black newspapers to promote e-cigarettes as a better alternative for Black smokers, without clear evidence that the product could actually help people quit — and without clear disclosure that it had paid for the journalism, the documents reveal.

The company partnered with the trade association for Black newspapers, the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Internal emails reveal that the partnership included a journalist writing at least one article profiling the company, which the association appears to have distributed to its member publications as a news article through its newswire service, rather than as an advertisement. In an email to the company’s CEO, the association’s national marketing director described the article as “editorial support,” which was being provided in addition to a print advertising campaign.

Major newspapers do not accept payment in exchange for favorable coverage, and the Federal Trade Commission keeps a close eye on so-called “native advertising” — when advertisements closely resemble news stories.

“We have already started the editorial support by interviewing you [and] producing the article that you and your team are reviewing,” the marketing director wrote. “When approved it will be posted on the NNPA and NAHP sites for use by all of our member publications.”

The Juul emails published Wednesday also indicate Juul executives viewed revisions to the article, though it is unclear if the edits were made by the article’s author, who is identified in the document as a “newswire contributor,” or if Juul executives rewrote parts of the article themselves. Most newspapers’ ethics policies bar advertisers from editing content.

The article is available on the websites of the Los Angeles Sentinel and the New Orleans Data News Weekly, two Black-owned newspapers. Neither article mentions Juul’s sponsorship. The article also does not mention that public health officials are bitterly divided on whether vaping helps people quit smoking, or that no vape has been approved in the United States as a smoking cessation aid.

STAT’s coverage of the commercial determinants of health is supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Our financial supporters are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.