TUESDAY, Sept. 9, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- When underage smokers want cigarettes, cyberspace may be more Marlboro country than the corner store.
So says a new study, which found that a group of young adolescents were able to buy cigarettes online in more than 90 percent of tries. They were about equally successful using either money orders or credit cards, collecting a total of 1,650 packs of smokes.
More than 90 percent of the Web sites told their buyers they had to be at least 18 to buy cigarettes, but fewer than 10 percent rejected the sales. Roughly two-thirds of the Web sites were housed on Native American tribal lands. More than one in four were affiliated with retail outlets.
Only a few Internet tobacco vendors asked for a mailed or faxed copy of a photo ID. And only four of the 55 sites, scattered across 12 states, refused to make the sales. Each of the 83 transactions was supervised by adults and authorized by law enforcement officials. North Carolina researchers conducted the study in the spring and early summer of 2001. A report on the findings appears in the Sept. 9 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Kurt Ribisl, a health behavior expert at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health in Chapel Hill and leader of the study, says he was surprised by how easy it was for kids to buy cigarettes online. Ribisl estimates that as many as 450 Web sites now sell cigarettes.
California is the only state that requires packages containing cigarettes to be labeled as such, Ribisl says. In his study, delivery people failed to check the ages of the people they delivered to in 86 percent of shipments. The vast majority of deliveries were simply left at the doorstep.
Although Ribisl admits the onus of policing tobacco sites shouldn't fall on delivery companies, future regulations could require shipments of cigarettes to be clearly marked and signed for by adults.
Tobacco control advocates say the study dramatically highlights the need for more effective regulation of online cigarette sales.
"The study confirms that the vast majority of Internet sellers are perfectly happy to break the law to line their own pockets, and the federal government and the states need to do something about it," says Eric Lindblom, assistant general counsel for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit.
An estimated 2 percent to 3 percent of underage smokers buy cigarettes online. That number is probably rising as Internet commerce becomes more widespread, Lindblom says. However, even single-digit percentages have a much broader impact on youth smoking, he says, because sites typically have a minimum purchase of at least one carton of cigarettes at a time.
Adolescents who buy tobacco in cyberspace "are likely becoming suppliers for their friends and other kids," Lindblom says. "Kids selling to other kids is becoming a major way kids get cigarettes."
Youths smoke less when tobacco costs more. So an obvious first step to stanch the problem would be to make Internet cigarettes more expensive. Collecting excise taxes on online sales is a good place to start, Lindblom suggests.
A mid-1900s law, the Jenkins Act, covers collection of excise taxes on the interstate sales of cigarettes. But Internet vendors are notoriously contemptuous of the law, which is too cumbersome to enforce and carries minimal penalties.
Yet as states become ever more mired in budget woes, they may look to the Jenkins Act as an already-on-the-books way of recouping hundreds of millions of dollars, or more, each year in lost revenue, Lindblom says. Internet sales of tobacco could reach $5 billion in 2005, according to one recent estimate.
Legislation is also making its way through both houses of Congress to address underage purchases of tobacco on the Web. These proposed bills have the unusual status of being supported, at least generally, by the public health community, convenience store operators, and major tobacco companies.
Big tobacco firms endorse regulating Internet sales of their products for several reasons, Lindblom says. They're concerned about counterfeit sales of top brand knock-offs, and they're threatened with loss of market share to a litany of cheap generic labels.
Tobacco use is linked to some 400,000 preventable deaths a year in the United States, health officials say. Each day, 3,000 American children under age 18 become regular smokers.
"Nearly 90 percent of all tobacco users become addicted before they turn 18," John R. Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, said in a statement Tuesday. "At a time when a broad array of tobacco control campaigns aimed at teens, like increased tobacco taxes and laws limiting access to cigarette vending machines, are showing important gains, young people are looking for additional ways to purchase tobacco products, especially at a lower cost. This new study shows one of these venues, the Internet, is proving to be an easy way for teens to buy tobacco products."
More information
For more on the hazards of smoking, check out the Surgeon General's office. For more on efforts to stop youth smoking, try the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids or the American Legacy Foundation.
