Dive Brief:
- 7-Eleven will pay $1.2 million to resolve charges that it violated a Washington, D.C., restriction on where vapes and e-cigarettes can be sold, the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia announced on Tuesday.
- A D.C. law enacted in October 2022 prohibits such devices from being sold within a quarter mile of middle and high schools in the city. The Office of the Attorney General said that 16 7-Eleven stores near schools received or sold more than 7,500 electronic smoking devices after the law was passed.
- In addition to paying the fine, 7-Eleven has removed vapes and e-cigarettes from those stores and agreed to improve training and ensure compliance with the law.
Dive Insight:
While nicotine use has been generally on the decline, especially among cigarette smokers, vapes have become a widely used alternative for teens and children — and they’ve come under regulatory pressure as a result. E-cigarettes are the most widely used nicotine products among students in grades six through 12, according to FDA data.
While 7-Eleven says it notified affected stores of the impending law change in August 2022, these 16 stores — six franchisee-owned and 10 company-owned locations — continued selling electronic smoking devices.
In addition to the monetary penalty, 7-Eleven has removed all vapes from the stores in question and agreed to refrain from advertising those devices at those stores. It will also require annual compliance training for staff at company-owned stores in D.C. school zones and offer it to franchised locations, send an annual notice to all stores reminding them of the ban and monitor franchise stores for noncompliant sales.
Franchisees who are caught violating the law four times in the next two years may lose their franchise agreement, according to the settlement.
Vapes were also at the heart of a legal struggle for 7-Eleven last year. The company terminated franchise agreements with two franchisees in California over accusations of fraudulent e-cigarette transactions. The franchisees initially refused to vacate the stores, but 7-eleven ultimately prevailed in the suit.
