California Study: The Scale Of Electronic Cigarette Laws Has Led To Insufficient Regulation Of Online Sales
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California study: The scale of electronic cigarette laws has led to insufficient regulation of online sales
A study by the University of California found that online e-cigarette retailers generally fail to comply with relevant laws to prevent sales to minors, including age verification and taste restrictions, and there are regulatory loopholes in online sales.
According to a report by Mirage News on November 12, 2024 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers at the University of California, San Diego found that online e-cigarette retailers have failed to comply with relevant laws preventing the sale of e-cigarette products to minors, including age verification, delivery methods, and taste restrictions.
This research was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on November 11, 2024. This research invited 16 participants to purchase flavored electronic cigarette products through the Internet in San Diego County and send them to their homes, and then analyzed the results of these purchase attempts. Out of 156 attempted transactions, 73% were successfully processed and 67% were successfully delivered.
As of March 21, 2024, eight states and 392 cities or counties in the United States have issued sales restrictions on flavored tobacco products, some of which do not include e-commerce. For example, California Senate Bill 793 (SB-793) of 2022 prohibits the sale of flavored tobacco products, but the restrictions on e-commerce are not clear enough.
Due to the ambiguity of California laws, researchers aim to test differences in the enforcement of local tobacco e-commerce regulations. Eight buyers are from San Diego, where a regulation restricts the sale of flavored tobacco products, including online sales. The other eight buyers are from other communities in San Diego County that do not have the same restrictions. The results show that there is no significant difference in delivery between buyers in these two regions.
Online purchase of electronic cigarettes not only violates seasoning restrictions, but also violates the Prevention of Online Sale of Electronic Cigarettes to Children Act, a federal law that prohibits the use of the United States Postal Service (USPS) to ship electronic cigarette products and requires age verification and scanned identification upon delivery.
Dr. Eric Leas, assistant professor at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Sciences, said,
Offline stores already have a long-term monitoring system to enforce the law, but we have not yet developed a system specifically for online retailers. The research results highlight the necessity of strengthening supervision and law enforcement for online tobacco retailers
The online sales of electronic cigarettes are the fastest-growing sector in the tobacco industry. We need to evaluate tobacco retail policies to ensure they cover e-commerce and monitor the market to improve implementation
The study also found that:
Only 1% of buyers have their identification scanned upon delivery;
81% of goods are delivered through USPS;
9% of the goods are delivered through courier companies with transportation restrictions. Specifically, it includes: 4.0% through UPS, 3.0% through FedEx, and 3.0% through DHL;
78% of buyers reported no interaction with delivery personnel;
15% of buyers talk to delivery personnel but do not check their ID cards;
6% of buyers' ID cards were checked but not scanned;
In a study published in the Journal of Tobacco Control in 2023, Lis reported that since the implementation of SB-793, online cigarette purchase queries have been 194% higher than expected, and electronic cigarette product queries have been 162% higher.
To strengthen state tobacco regulation programs, including flavored tobacco products sold online, California legislators recently passed the SB-1230 bill and cited Lis' Tobacco Control research findings. This law will come into effect on January 1, 2025.
