[Intl-tobacco] Internet trade seen driving a hole through anti-tobacco laws

[Robert Weissman]

Internet trade seen driving a hole through anti-tobacco laws
by AFP
Source: The Age, 2001-12-10PARIS, Dec 10 

The internet was being used to circumvent America's anti-tobacco
laws, with web sites selling cheap cigarettes online without health
warnings and with little regard for the legal age limit, researchers
said today.

Of 88 online vendors in the United States, more than half were
located on Indian reservations, which had no tobacco taxes,
University of North Carolina researchers said.

Only a quarter of the 88 sites carried the US surgeon general's
health warnings, a fifth did not have minimum age-of-sale warnings,
and one third featured special promotions, advertising that they
sold tax-free or cut-price cigarettes or offered a gift with
purchases.


"A ready source of cheap cigarettes is now a mouse click away," the
researchers said.

Unregulated online sales were emerging as a major threat to attempts
to discourage smoking by imposing high taxes and banning sales to
youngsters, they said.

Their study was published in Tobacco Control, a specialist journal
of the British Medical Association (BMA).

It included figures stating that more than 47 million adults and
four million teenagers smoked cigarettes in the United States,
generating annual sales of more than $US40 billion ($A78 billion)
dollars.

Smokers traditionally buy cigarettes by the pack or the carton from
local shops or supermarkets.

But these outlets are now facing stiff competition from vendors that
sell to credit-card paying customers via the internet.

Excise taxes vary widely from state to state in America, from three
cents on a packet of 20 cigarettes in Kentucky to more than a dollar
in Alaska, Hawaii or New York.

But Indian reservations, which are considered sovereign territory,
often have no excise duty and are at the forefront of the online
sales boom.

Reservations accounted for 49 of the 88 website vendors, with 36 of
them operated by the Seneca Indians in western New York State.

US federal laws require anyone selling cigarettes to a buyer in
another state to report the sales to the tax collector in the state
where the goods are sent, so it can earn money on the transaction.

But many sites clearly indicate they do not report customer names to
state tax agencies, according to a team led by Joanna Cohen of the
University of Toronto's tobacco research unit.

Their study quoted several cases in which children were able to buy
cigarettes online.