The Slippery Rock Area School District has become the sixth district in the county to join a federal lawsuit alleging vaping and tobacco companies are marketing their product to school-age children.

District solicitor Thomas King filed the suit Thursday in federal court in Pittsburgh. The suit has been transferred to federal court in Northern California, joining suits King filed in June on behalf of the Butler Area, South Butler County, Karns City Area, Mars Area and Moniteau school districts.

The Frantz Law Group of San Diego is consolidating those suits with suits from more than 100 other districts against Juul Labs and Altria Group, and its subsidiaries — Philip Morris USA and Nu Mark LLC.

The suits contain the same allegations, but each district includes the impact that the “youth vaping epidemic” has had on its schools.

Slippery Rock's complaint alleges that employees have witnessed countless ways in which the use of the defendants' products by its students has negatively affected curriculum, development and class time.

Product use by students has increased time spent addressing discipline and supervision issues, and increased counselor time spent with addicted students and concerned peers, according to the suit. The district's armed security guards have had to spend increased time responding to student JUUL use, and employees have been forced to spend more time physically supervising students to ensure that they are not using JUUL products.

Students are telling counselors that they are concerned about their peers using JUUL and are afraid because the students do not know what they are putting in their bodies, according to the suit.

“To fully address the harms caused to the school district by defendants' conduct will require a comprehensive approach, one that includes addiction counselors in schools; prevention education that includes information about the health consequences of JUUL use on adolescents' bodies and minds; the development of refusal and other skills within the students; and addiction treatment options,” King argues in the suit.

The suit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Neither the district nor Juul could be reached for comment.

After the other suits were filed in June, a Juul spokesman said the company stopped selling flavored products other than tobacco and menthol in November and has halted TV, print and digital product advertising.

He also said Juul plans to work with attorneys general, legislators, regulators, public health officials and other stakeholders to combat underage use.