Electronic cigarettes: minors buy them on the internet

Forbidden to minors in several countries, including France or the United States, the sale of electronic cigarettes to teenagers is nevertheless a reality. According to an American study carried out in North Carolina and published this Tuesday in JAMA Pediatrics, adolescents obtain e-cigarettes very easily from the Internet. The lack of verification of the age of buyers by websites is blamed by the authors.
To find out, Rebecca Williams and her colleagues at the University of North Carolina asked eleven non-smoking teens between the ages of 14 and 17 to try to buy it from ninety-eight popular online shopping sites. .

Lack of verification
Participants successfully ordered vapers from 75 sites. Among the 23 sites that refused the purchase, only five mentioned the age criterion to justify their refusal. This means that over 90% of sites have not verified the age of buyers.

In addition, the researchers asked the teenagers to be present and to collect the package at their doors. About 95% of delivery people left the package at the doorstep with no way to verify the age or identity of the recipient. In the event that the teenager received the package in person, no export company bothered to verify. Even more serious, the 3 main companies – USPS, UPS, FedEx – handling the shipment of the packages claim that they do not ship electronic cigarettes.

For the authors of the study, these results highlight a “legal vacuum in which no effort is made to prevent sale to minors. Even with regulations in North Carolina requiring age verification, the majority of salespeople fail to do so, underscoring the need for more in-depth law enforcement. ”