Last may, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced a $60.5 million settlement with JUUL Labs for deceptively marketing e-cigarettes.
How will the state use that money? That depends, because they're asking for public input.
"The purpose of these input sessions is to really get into the community and to find out what solutions the community members want to see," says Minnesota Health Department's Parker Smith. "There is no one size fits all. So it's important for us to hear from them, meet them where they're at and then tailor this prevention and cessation work that we're doing to best meet their needs."
The meetings come on the heels of a settlement with JUUL Labs for deceptively marketing e-cigarettes.
A portion of that money will go towards reimbursing legal costs says Smith.
"We've worked with communities in the past to gather input on various strategies and commercial tobacco prevention and control initiatives," he says. "But with this funding that's coming in, it's an opportunity to do some new things, some innovative things."
The next input session will be February 21 at Great River Regional Library in St. Cloud from 2:00-3:30 p.m. If you're unable to ATTEND any future input sessions, visit here.