Greetings,
Our lab’s research on noncompliance among e-commerce vaping retailers was recently published in JAMA on November 11, 2024. The results suggest that it is incredibly easy to buy flavored vaping products online even in areas where they are restricted. They also suggest that, for the most part, online retailers disregard both federal and state laws pertaining to shipping requirements and age verification. This is especially an issue for efforts to limit youth vaping.
This study was motivated by the 2020 Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes to Children Act which bans the shipment of vaping products via USPS and requires ID age verification upon delivery and also SB-793—California’s statewide restriction on the sale of flavored tobacco.
We conducted the study last October, 2023 by attempting to purchase 156 flavored vaping products across 78 e-commerce websites. Purchases were made in pairs with one buyer in San Diego, where e-commerce vaping sales are restricted by a local ordinance, and the other buyer in different jurisdiction in San Diego County, California, where there was no local ordinance.
A total of 105 flavored vaping products were completed when none should have been to be compliant with SB-793. There was no difference in the rate of deliveries between buyers in areas with a local restriction or not. Among those delivered, only 1 buyer had their ID scanned as required by law. Most did not have any interaction with the delivery personnel. Moreover, 80.8% of the products were shipped via USPS, despite the federal ban on using this service. An additional 8.8% were shipped via couriers that have corporate policies restricting tobacco shipments, including UPS, FedEX, and DHL.
One solution we believe is to start routinely conducting compliance checks to monitor and enforce compliance among online retailers.
We have detailed information on the websites we purchased from and also images of the products and shipping labels, etc. If you would like to access this data, please reach out to us at info@tobaccoecommercelab.com and tell us what you need and how you intend to use it.
Further coverage available at:
We will reach out again next week with an update.