Youth access to cigarettes online: Advertised and actual sales practices of Internet cigarette vendors

As access to cigarettes through retail stores becomes more restricted, teens may seek to buy cigarettes online from one of the growing number of e-commerce sites that have begun competing with cigarette retailers in recent years. A previous study of 88 Internet cigarette vendors (ICVs) found that most do not employ rigorous age verification methods. A follow-up purchase survey indicated that most vendors used age verification methods which were inadequate to prevent sales to minors. In 2002, California was among the first states to pass a law (CA Business & Professions Code § 22963) regulating the sales practices of ICVs to prevent sales to minors. The studies described here track the advertised and actual sales practices of ICVs to prevent sales to minors.; In Study 1, advertised sales practices were assessed through three waves of data collection. A rigorous searching strategy involving multiple keywords and search engines identified samples of 88,195, and 338 ICVs in 2000, 2002, and 2003 respectively. Vendor websites were analyzed with regards to presence and prominence of age warnings, age verification methods at the points of purchase and delivery, and use of parental control filters. In Study 2, cigarette purchases were made from 101 ICVs to assess compliance with the six provisions of § 22963.; Study 1 found that the majority of ICVs featured age warnings on their home page (75.4%), but most were not located or formatted in a prominent manner. Selfage verification (44.4%) was far more common than more rigorous forms of age verification like age verification at delivery (10.1%), and very few vendors (3.6%) were registered with parental control filters. Study 2 found that none of the 101 vendors fully complied with all six provisions of California's law. A subset complied with two of the provisions, but none of the vendors complied with the remaining four.; Poor use of conspicuous age warnings, weak age verification procedures by ICVs, and the lack of vendor compliance with California's § 22963 indicate a strong need for strictly enforced state and federal policies to ensure that ICVs take adequate precautions to prevent sales to minors.