Objectives: In our cross-sectional study, we aimed to determine age verification and sales of little cigars and cigarillos (LCCs) online to underage teens.
Methods: We selected 100 popular Internet Little Cigar and Cigarillo Vendors (ILVs) for order attempts. From August to December 2015, we supervised 14 teens 14-17 years old making order attempts for LCCs.
Results: Of the 91 valid orders attempted, we received 89. For the valid orders attempted, 9.9% of ILVs used no age verification strategies at all, 84.6% used less effective forms of age verification, and 50.5% used more effective ones. Only one order was blocked during the order attempt and only one attempt was made to verify age at delivery. Most (79.8%) deliveries were left at the door and only 2 order attempts were rejected because of age verification strategies, resulting in a successful or valid buy rate of 97.8%.
Conclusions: Our study demonstrated that ILVs selling LCCs were not making adequate efforts to verify the age of their customers, at the point-of-sale or point-of-delivery, facilitating easy access by minors. Few ILVs utilized age verification strategies that prevented online sales of LCCs to underage teens.
Keywords: adolescent/youth; age verification; cigar/cigarillo; point-of-delivery; point-of-sale; tobacco regulation.