Are they adequate to prevent minors from buying cigarettes online?
Annice E. Kim, MPH, Kurt M. Ribisl, PhD, and Rebecca S. Hoffman, MHS. Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health, Rosenau Hall CB#7400, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, 919-402-9185, aekim@email.unc.edu Although encouraging progress has been made in reducing youth access to tobacco from retail outlets, the emergence of Internet cigarette vendors (ICVs) has raised new concerns. Today over 8 million teens have Internet access, representing over half of the U.S. teen population. Underage interns at several state Attorney Generals’ offices have successfully purchased cigarettes online, but little is known about the vending practices of ICVs. We are unaware of any scientific studies that have examined youth access to tobacco via the Internet. Using the top five Internet search engines and four keywords, we examined 1808 “hits” to identify 68 domestic ICVs. All sites were downloaded and content analyzed by two independent cod
