Drewe Raimi was in bed scrolling TikTok when she got the notification: Venmo’s cash register rattled, telling her that $3,456.44 had just been deposited into her account. She assumed it was spam, or a friend playing a prank. But the revenue came from Juul Labs Inc, the e-cigarette company that turned vapes into cool kids’ accessories and revived nicotine for millennials and Gen Z youth.
Raimi had filed a class action claim with friends during her final year of college in 2021, joining a lawsuit against Juul and Altria, one of the world’s largest tobacco companies, which owned a stake in Juul until 2023.
“I thought maybe I’d get $5, but to be honest, I completely forgot about it,” says Raimi, who is now 23 and lives in New York. “My group chat in college sent the lawsuit around as a joke, just to see what happened.”
The lawsuit alleged that Juul products such as vapes and flavored nicotine pods were unlawfully marketed to minors, and the public was misled about their addictive properties. Juul and the tobacco company Altria agreed to settlements totaling more than $300 million, and more than 14 million claims were filed by Juul customers before the filing window closed in February. Payments to 842,000 eligible customers, ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars, hit bank accounts this month, according to NBC News.
Related: Research shows that vaping damages the lungs of young people just as much as smoking
On TikTok, users shared videos of their surprise payday. “Whoever told me to join the Juul class action, I love you so much,” one woman wrote in the caption of a video that has been viewed more than 45,000 times; her payout was $7,000. “When you forgot you signed up for the Juul lawsuit two years ago and woke up this morning with the bag in your Venmo,” another woman wrote.
Some wondered whether the payouts were worth years of nicotine use. In one TikTok, a woman shared her payout – a modest $288.03 – with the caption: “When you wake up to the best gift, but you spent years dealing with a crippling nicotine addiction to get it.” Raimi said she used Juul casually in college but doesn’t consider herself addicted to nicotine.
Others described big payouts years after making “jokes” as students. It’s unclear what the “joke” is: that applicants never used Juul products, didn’t consider themselves addicted, or didn’t believe they would receive a thousand-dollar payout.
Not surprisingly, Christine P. Bartholomew, a law professor at the University at Buffalo School of Law, doesn’t think people should brag online about lying in a class action claim. “That could be fraud on the court because they are testifying to the accuracy of the information they showed in a claim,” she said. “They could face criminal charges.”
Class action lawsuits filed against companies can seem frivolous, with plaintiffs often earning only a few dollars. Earlier this year, Caribbean Cruises reportedly sent some customers $10 after overzealous robocalling, and Right Guard gave some people about $3 to resolve claims that their spray deodorant contained the known carcinogen benzene.
But Bartholomew says payouts like Juul’s still benefit the public. “Class actions sometimes get a bad rap, with people saying, ‘Gee, the stamp I used to get the settlement is probably worth more than the amount I’m getting,’” she said.[The Juul suit] reminds us that the story is not always true.”
In 1998, the four largest U.S. tobacco companies reached a legal settlement with the attorneys general of 46 states. But the $206 billion that the companies agreed to pay over 25 years to offset medical costs for smoking-related diseases went directly to the states, not to individual smokers.
The vaping settlement holds Juul accountable for the way it promoted products to underage customers, said Dr. Robert K Jackler, a professor at Stanford Medicine and lead researcher at Stanford Research on the impact of tobacco advertising. “This was a carefully designed, targeted campaign to recruit young people to recommend Juul to their fellow Americans, and it was remarkably successful,” he said. “Juul recruited primarily American teenagers to become enthusiastic evangelists for the brand.”
(Altria denied the allegations in the lawsuit, while Juul admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement.)
Juul, a startup founded in 2005 by two Stanford students and former smokers, promised to help adults who smoked cigarettes kick the habit. Originally marketed as a healthier way to consume nicotine, as a vape, the sleek design and flavored capsules ultimately appealed to children, thanks in no small part to the influencers brought in to market Juul.
In 2018, a coalition of senators, including Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, wrote an open letter to Juul accusing the brand of “putting a whole new generation of children at risk for nicotine addiction and other health consequences.”
According to Jackler, there has been “a tidal wave of thousands of lawsuits” against the company in recent years, led by states and individual plaintiffs, most of which have now been resolved. The class action lawsuit “sends a clear message to the company that it cannot profit from its misdeeds without consequences,” Jackler said.
Will a surprise Juul payout change young people’s views on nicotine use? “I tried vaping, but I didn’t like it,” Raimi said. “I’ve never smoked a cigarette.”
Still, Raimi believes that minors who have developed nicotine addiction through Juuling deserve “some kind of compensation.”
“When you’re underage and have no idea what the thing being sold to you actually does, it’s hard to make a long-term decision that could affect your future,” she said.
For now, Raimi doesn’t know what to do with her random payday. Her parents told her to invest the money. Friends have told her to buy something fun and frivolous. Random people on TikTok told her to pay them some money. “It’s free money,” Raimi said. “I’ll probably end up spending it on rent.”
