On Wednesday, New York, California and several other states announced a $462 million settlement with Juul Labs, settling lawsuits alleging the company aggressively promoted its e-cigarettes to youth and fueled the vaping crisis.

The agreement ends many of the company’s legal problems, reaching settlements with 47 states and territories and 5,000 individuals and local governments. Juul is at the center of a trial in Minnesota, an unusual case in which no settlement was reached.

But the company’s efforts to broker lawsuit deals have cost it nearly $3 billion to date, a huge amount for a company that is still seeking official regulatory approval to continue selling its products.

The latest settlement settled claims from New York, California, Colorado, D.C., Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Mexico. This follows other lawsuits that have held Juul liable for failing to warn younger users that the high levels of nicotine in their e-cigarettes would be addictive.

California alleged in its lawsuit that for several months Juul did not disclose in its advertisements that its devices contained nicotine. It details the company’s early marketing efforts, which included giving away free e-cigarette samples in 2015 at fashion events including Night Wonderland in San Bernardino and All Night Movie Party in Los Angeles. The New York lawsuit notes that the company used social media hashtags such as #LightsCameraVapor.

Attorneys general in those states conducted an investigation which they say found that Juul executives were aware that their initial marketing was luring teen users into buying its sleek vaping pens, but did little to address the problem as vaping rates among teens skyrocketed. increased.

In New York and the Hamptons, the company held glamor parties and “falsely convinced consumers that its vapes were safer than cigarettes and contained less nicotine,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said at a news conference on Wednesday.

“Jule’s lies led to a nationwide public health crisis and resulted in addictive products falling into the hands of minors who thought they were doing something harmless,” Ms James said, noting that the state would receive from the deal nearly $113 million.

California will receive the largest portion of the settlement, valued at nearly $176 million. During a press conference on Wednesday, state attorney general Rob Bonta said Juul used Big Tobacco tactics to reignite the youth nicotine epidemic after years of reducing cigarette smoking among young Americans.

“I am proud to be here today to address the e-cigarette and vape industry: if you target youth, we will not stand by and let e-cigarette companies stake their profits on health and well-being. be our children,” Mr. Bonta said.

Juul spokesman Austin Finan said the company did not acknowledge any violations in the agreement. Citing federal data, he said that underage use of his products had dropped by about 95 percent. According to Mr. Finan, the settlement represents a near “complete solution to the company’s historical legal problems and provides confidence in our future.”

“The terms of the agreement, as well as the preliminary calculations, provide financial resources to further combat the use of minors and development programs and reflect our current business practices,” Mr. Finan said.

Sales of mango-flavoured and creme brulee products skyrocketed in 2019, and the company earned an enviable and extremely high valuation of around $38 billion. But that bubble began to deflate when federal data showed that 27.5% of high school students reported using e-cigarettes, with more than half naming Juul as their favorite brand. As public pressure on Juul escalated, the company began to position itself not so much as a trendsetter, but as a company helping adults to abandon traditional cigarettes.

The teen vaping crisis appears to have subsided from its 2019 peak, but public health experts remain concerned about 2.5 million teens reporting e-cigarette use, far higher than adults .

Overall, about 4.5% of adults use e-cigarettes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The annual survey, usually conducted in middle and high school, found that in 2022, about 9 percent of students reported using e-cigarettes in the last 30 days. In that survey, about 14 percent of high school students reported vaping, about half the rate in a survey conducted at the height of the crisis in 2019.

While the recent decline has been seen as a victory, some opponents of e-cigarette use have been concerned about data showing frequency of use; almost helped high school students who reported vaping said they did it 20 to 30 days a month.

Under significant public and regulatory pressure, Juul agreed to withdraw many of its flavored products from the market, greatly diminishing its dominant sales prowess and paving the way for competitors.

A host of other e-cigarette companies have filled the space left by Juul, offering vapes in rainbow colors and flavors like lime cookies, apple juice, and strawberry ice cream. The surge presented the FDA with an enforcement dilemma that allowed fewer than two dozen vaping products. At a recent congress hearingDr. Robert Califf, the agency’s commissioner, said he would be consulting with the Justice Department to consider options for removing illegal products, including flavored vapes, from the market.

This new agreement with some of the nation’s largest states completes several of Juul’s moves to resolve thousands of lawsuits from individuals and other plaintiffs over the past few years.

The company settled $7.9 million in West Virginia claims this month alone.

In December, the company agreed to pay $1.7 billion in lawsuits filed by more than 5,000 people, school districts and local governments. In September, the company settled $438.5 million in lawsuits filed by more than 30 states.

In a lawsuit in Minnesota that began a few weeks ago, Keith Ellison, the state’s attorney general, launched a case accusing the company of getting teenagers hooked on e-cigarettes “so they can make money.”

“They lured, deceived and addicted a whole new generation of kids after Minnesotans cut youth smoking rates to the lowest levels in a generation,” Mr. Ellison said.

As with other settlements, the latter requires Juul to refrain from marketing to youth. The agreement also requires Juul to stop offering free or “nominal price” products to consumers, and not to use “product placement” in virtual reality as it was considered for programming on the Oculus system.

Meanwhile, Juul’s business continues to struggle to find its footing. In 2018, the company dominated the vaping market with nearly $1 billion in revenue. These days, Juul trails Vuse, which is owned by British American Tobacco, in market share. Juul did not disclose its earnings, but BAT said its steam category in the United States, which includes the popular product Vuse Alto, generated about $1 billion in revenue last year, up more than 60 percent from a year earlier.

Tobacco giant Altria has tied its smoke-free future to Juul. In 2018, he paid almost $13 billion for a 35 percent stake in a vape company, only to see Jool become the target of a rise in teenage nicotine addiction, as well as a defendant in countless investigations and thousands of lawsuits. Altria valued that stake at $250 million late last year and swapped that stake for Juul’s stake earlier this year. intellectual property using tobacco heating devices that heat plant leaves in a vape-like device.

Rumors swirled for several months last year that Juul would be forced to file for bankruptcy. But at the end of November Wall Street Magazine reported that two of its directors and early investors provided cash injections and that it will lay off about a third of its employees, about 400 people.

Meanwhile, Juul is still waiting for the Food and Drug Administration to decide whether to allow the company’s products to be sold on the permanent market. The agency has the right to require e-cigarette companies to apply for clearance; In recent reviews, the agency has rejected millions of products, allowing about two dozen vaping devices and materials. (Juul products are now on store shelves because the FDA is not enforcing its premarket clearance requirement.)

The FDA initially denied the company’s request to continue selling its products in June, saying Juul provided “insufficient and inconsistent” data. But later, the agency decided to conduct additional reviews of scientific questions in the application.