Juul backs off

Juul hoped to defend its drug-delivery vaping profits by promoting Prop. C on San Francisco's November ballot. San Francisco voters have been buried under millions of dollars worth (?) of direct mail telling us that this ordinance, which would have undone the city's regulations of vaping product sales, would help protect young people from nicotine. Yeah, sure.

But for the moment at least, the company is ending its support for the phony measure it placed on our ballot.

Juul will end its support for Proposition C, the San Francisco ballot measure that the vaping company has spent millions of dollars promoting through political ads, election mailers and canvassers. ...

Juul’s about-face is believed to be the first time a corporation has invested millions of dollars into a San Francisco ballot measure, only to withdraw its support shortly before voting begins, said Jon Golinger, a San Francisco political consultant who teaches election law at Golden Gate University. In the rare instances when a ballot measure backer has withdrawn their effort before an election, it was because the issue was resolved or the measure became moot, he said.

“That is historic,” Golinger said. “A colossal failure of a ballot measure campaign that will go into the history books as a cautionary tale for corporations attempting to use the ballot box this way in the future.”

San Francisco Chronicle

Score one for the general welfare.