Altria Group announced today that its electronic cigarette subsidiary NJOY, LLC has filed lawsuits against 34 domestic and foreign manufacturers, distributors, and online retailers of illegal disposable electronic cigarette products. If successful, the lawsuit may destroy the seasoning disposable electronic cigarette market.


Altria, along with its largest US competitor, RJ Reynolds under British American Tobacco, used the court to remove unauthorized e-cigarette products (and their competitors) from the US market.


On October 13th, Reynolds filed a lawsuit with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) accusing multiple manufacturers, distributors, and retailers of various popular disposable electronic cigarette devices of unfair import behavior. This is one of several actions taken by Reynolds recently to remove competitors' e-cigarette products from store shelves. Several legal scholars told Vapor Voice that if ITC agrees with Reynolds' view, all non FDA marketing authorized seasoning disposable e-cigarette devices may be intercepted at the border and prevented from entering the US market.


The NJOY lawsuit claims that these disposable products are illegally marketed and sold in California and other states in the United States, violating California's spice ban laws and federal marketing rules.


According to Altria's press release, these products are illegal under federal law and will be subject to sanctions from the US Food and Drug Administration, as well as illegal competition with companies that comply with state and federal laws.


The lawsuit seeks to prohibit the import, marketing, and sale of these illegal products nationwide, and demands significant compensatory and punitive damages. If the lawsuit is successful, it may lead to the removal of all disposable flavored electronic cigarette products from the market without FDA marketing orders.

These companies intentionally violate federal and state laws and are responsible, "said Murray Garnick, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Altria. There are two markets today - one for those who follow the rules, and the other for those who blatantly disregard the rules. We are taking this action because the current situation in the illegal e-cigarette market is intolerable, and we must see more action by the FDA and other agencies

The lawsuit is filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, involving four charges: unfair competition, false advertising, false advertising in violation of the Lanham Act, and violation of the 2009 Prevention of All Cigarette Traffic Act.

The designated defendants in the lawsuit manufacture and distribute illegal disposable electronic cigarette products, including but not limited to Breeze, Elf Bar, EB, EB Create, Esco Bar, Flum, Juice Box, Lava Plus, Loon, Lost Mary and other brands, Mr Fog and Puff Bar (many of which were also named in the Reynolds lawsuit). The domestic defendants include companies operating in Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Texas. All foreign defendants reside in China.

The defendants have not obtained FDA's pre market tobacco product authorization (PMTA) approval. In many cases, the defendant also did not submit a PMTA application. Several of the defendants have received warning letters from the FDA stating that their products are adulterated and mislabeled, and cannot be sold without marketing authorization.

In addition, some of the defendants were also bound by import alerts ordered by the FDA, which authorized US customs and border personnel to seize their products. The press release stated that NJOY may add more manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to this complaint and will consider further litigation activities.

Although the sales ban on flavored tobacco products came into effect in December 2022, according to a recent study commissioned by Altria, flavored e-cigarettes still account for over 97% of the California market share. This study, conducted by independent research firm WSPM Group, collected 15.000 discarded empty cigarette packaging and 4.529 electronic cigarette product packaging from May 1 to June 28 in 10 cities in California.