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Congress Ignores Online
Tobacco Sales to Minors

July 1, 2002
While Congress, parents, the courts and various interest groups fulminate about children's access to pornography and other Internet content, little attention is paid to the most deadly product widely available on the Web -- cigarettes.

"As usual, Congress spends its time playing to the stands while failing utterly to display any leadership on pressing public health concerns," said ConsumerAffairs.com founder and CEO James R. Hood. "Only Congress has the power to protect children from online tobacco pushers, but it chooses to spend its time trying to put blinders on library patrons instead."

A recent survey of 88 tobacco sites found that only 8 percent required proof of legal age, with most sites asking only that customers click a button to "certify" that they were 18 or older.

Besides flaunting state laws prohibiting tobacco sales to minors, most Web tobacconists also fail to display the Surgeon General's warnings required in advertising and point of purchase and fail to charge state excise taxes, in effect contributing to the "normalization" of tobacco and undoing years of efforts to limit tobacco sales to young people.

Though they remain largely mum on the topic, the growth of Internet tobacco sales hardly comes as news to the tobacco companies, which have been building up their databases for years, storing the names, addresses and email addresses of fully one-third of their regular customers, according to an industry consultant.

The information comes from many sources, including "frequent smoker" premium campaigns -- in which customers get credit towards free prizes for each carton of cigarettes they buy. More insidiously, online sweepstakes and promotions are used to coax email addresses out of consumers who then receive an e-mailed invitation to buy cigarettes online. Offline promotions, sweepstakes and flyers at sporting events are also used to drive consumers to Web sites where their email addresses are captured and stored.

Who are the online tobacco pushers? Most are small, one-person operations. They buy their product from candy and tobacco wholesalers then resell them on the Web, usually with a minimum order of 5 cartons. Cigarettes are relatively small and light so shipping is simple and inexpensive. There are no regulations requiring shippers to identify the contents of tobacco shipments. Of the major delivery services, only UPS will attempt to verify the age of a package recipient.

States are largely unable to effectively block shipments of tobacco from Web merchants. New York State tried to ban Internet cigarette sales but Brown and Williamson successfully challenged the mesure in federal court, contending New York's actions violated the Constitution's commerce clause, which prohibits states from interfering with interstate commerce.

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