To try to prevent young people from becoming addicted to tobacco, Congress took two steps in 2020 to prevent minors from posing as adults to purchase vaping products online: It banned e-cigarette sites from deliver via US Postal Service and required any delivery. service they used to verify the identity of the recipient.

The state of California added its own twist that year by banning most flavored tobacco products. This ban did not explicitly cover online sales, but the city of San Diego is among several local governments that have passed laws to close any potential loopholes.

Researchers from UC San Diego, Cal State San Marcos and Stanford decided to test if these protections worked. If the results in San Diego are any indication, they’re basically not working.

The team lined up eight pairs of adults to attempt to purchase nicotine-flavored vaping products from 78 online retailers in October 2023. Each team placed two identical orders with each retailer, with one buyer ordering from the city ​​of San Diego and the other in a different city in San Diego County without explicit restrictions on online delivery of flavored vapes. In each order, they requested delivery by Post if it was offered.

Ideally, the researchers would have completely eliminated: none of the 156 orders delivered, given the state’s ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes, and certainly none delivered by the Postal Service. Failing that, at least shoppers in the city of San Diego should have been left empty-handed, given the city’s explicit ban on the online sale of flavored vapes.

And even if those measures failed, at the very least, each buyer’s identity should have been verified upon delivery to ensure they were not underage.

The results of the study, which were published online Monday by the Journal of the American Medical Assn., showed that more than two-thirds of buyers were able to obtain flavored vapes, including nearly 70% of buyers in the city of San Diego – again, where such sales are explicitly prohibited , the study says.

Of the successful deliveries, 80% were handled by the postal service, which should not have delivered any of them, according to the study. Another 9% came from services such as UPS and FedEx that have policies prohibiting delivery of tobacco products.

Finally, 93% of deliveries were made without verifying the buyer’s age. In the vast majority of cases, the products were dropped off without any interaction between the buyer and the delivery person, according to the study. And in only one case did the delivery person scan the buyer’s ID, as required by federal law.

“These results demonstrated widespread non-compliance with age verification, shipping, and flavored tobacco restrictions among online tobacco retailers,” the study authors wrote.

The authors also acknowledged looking at sales in a single county. But this county has some of the strictest tobacco control measures in the country.

Eric Leas, assistant professor at UCSD and director of Tobacco E-Commerce Labsaid in a statement that online sales of e-cigarettes are the largest and fastest growing sector of the tobacco industry.

“There are long-standing monitoring systems that help enforce laws in physical stores, but we do not have a system in place for online retailers,” Leas said, adding: “The results of this study highlight the need for greater monitoring. monitoring and enforcement of online tobacco retailers.

Representatives for Vapor Technology Assn., an e-cigarette industry trade group, and Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Assn., which supports vaping, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday. Both groups opposed the ban on flavored e-cigarettes and argued that vaping is a safer way to consume tobacco than cigarettes.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “no tobacco product, including e-cigarettes, is safe, especially for children, adolescents, and young adults.”

The latest survey from the CDC and Food and Drug Administration found that while vaping remains the most popular form of smoking among minors, the number of middle and high school students reporting currently vaping fell suddenly from 2023 to 2024.