Buy discount cigarette online

Online cigarette sellers would be forced to obtain hard proof that none of their customers were younger than 18 under legislation introduced today in the House of Representatives.

Proposed by Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., the Tobacco Free Internet for Kids Act would, among other things, ban online sales of tobacco products to minors, force online cigarette sellers to post health warnings and enable state attorneys general to prosecute offending Web site operators.

"The Internet is very much the wild, wild west of interstate commerce right now," Meehan spokesman Bridger McGaw said today. "This bill actually seeks to back up and support all the protections and all the hard work the states have done to crack down" on tobacco sales to minors."

The legislation - a milder version of which failed to come up for a vote in the last Congress - would require that online cigarette sellers obtain a copy of a government-issued identification document (passport, drivers license, etc.) before selling tobacco to any customer.

Meehan's legislation coincides with the release, earlier today, of a pair of studies that found the rise in online tobacco sales could stymie youth smoking prevention efforts nationwide.

As of January 2000, there were roughly 80 U.S. Web sites selling discount cigarettes - most of them with little or no age controls - a study performed at the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health found.

Assistant Professor Kurt Ribisl, who authored the study, told Newsbytes that there are now probably closer to 200 discount tobacco Web sites.

A second UNC study polled high school smokers and found that 2.2 percent of them had attempted to buy cigarettes online.

While Ribisl, who also helped author the second study, conceded that the number of teens using the Internet to buy cigarettes was relatively small, he said that online tobacco sales to minors could grow unless lawmakers get involved.

"It's not a large number at this point, which is why it's really important to get legislation in place," Ribisl said today. "Over time it could potentially become a bigger problem."

McGaw agreed, saying that online tobacco sales threatened to "undermine all of the work and money and years of legislation" that states have invested in preventing teen tobacco use.

Currently there is no federal law banning Internet tobacco sales to minors and no federal law requiring Internet tobacco sellers to post health warnings or age restrictions.

The lack of federal laws regulating online tobacco sales shows in the sites that sell cigarettes, Ribisl said.

Only about 28 percent of the sites Ribisl reviewed posted U.S. Surgeon General tobacco warnings, and almost all of the sites relied on self-verification screens to check the ages of their patrons.

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com .

16:47 CST

(20011210/WIRES ONLINE, LEGAL, BUSINESS/)