E-cigarette company Juul Labs Inc. went to great lengths to “convey its messaging directly to teenage children” — spending more than $200,000 and marketing to young people by recruiting online influencers, according to a new Congressional report.

The House Oversight and Reform committee presented the findings Thursday as part of its investigation into youth e-cigarette use, Bloomberg reported. They pored over thousands of pages of documents in an effort to determine whether Juul had knowingly marketed to underage users, according to the report.

Their research revealed that various programs at schools, summer camps and police-run community camps — which took place as recently as last year — used Juul representatives or sponsorships. The sessions were given generic names like “holistic health education.”

The panel also found that the San Francisco-based company paid $134,000 to set up a five-week summer camp in Baltimore that served 80 children, some as young as third graders, the outlet reported. In addition, the company paid $89,000 to the Richmond Police Activities League to support a youth program — and shelled out at least $10,000 to other schools for access to students, according to the report.

In turn, Juul reportedly received survey results and other information from the youth enrolled.

Additionally, a 17-year-old boy testified that company representatives came to his high school in the Big Apple and told students in a closed-door session — with no teachers in the room — that using their product was “totally safe,” according to the report.

Click Here: Sports Water Bottles

And another witness shared that the company approached health officials from Native American groups with the offer of Juul “starter kits” and an investment worth $600,000 if they’d get adult smokers on board, according to the report.

see also

Juul CEO apologizes to parents about teen vaping epidemic

Speaking to CNBC on a factory tour for a new…

In internal Juul emails obtained by the committee, employees mentioned that their programs were similar — one even used the wording “eerily similar” — to those employed by cigarette makers in the past, the outlet reported.

Advocates and Juul company executives — including co-founder James Monsees and Chief Administrative Officer Ashley Gould — were called upon to testify, the outlet reported.

Monsees insisted that his company never intentionally marketed to children — and has even worked to reduce youth usage by pulling some of its flavors from retail stores last month.

“Empathetically, I want to express that this isn’t my favorite thing, to be here today, but I don’t mind,” he said, according to the report. “I don’t mind because this is extremely important, and I very much understand the skepticism.”

He emphasized that he “could not be more concerned” about underage teens using Juul.

Gould added that the “short-lived” youth education program concluded in September “after its purpose — to educate youth on the dangers of nicotine addiction — was clearly misconstrued.”

“We have never marketed to kids,” she added. “All of these educational efforts were intended to keep youth from using the product.”