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California state assemblymember Roger Dickinson announced Monday his plans to push a bill that would outlaw the sale of electronic cigarettes online. Doing so, he argues, would keep them out of the hands of teens — and we’re sure the projected $24 million in increased tax revenue Dickinson says California will get is just an unfortunate consequence of protecting kids.

At a press conference, Dickinson focused mostly on the supposed ability of the bill to protect kids from electronic cigarettes. “Internet sales of tobacco products, we know, pose a serious threat to the health and safety of children,” said Dickinson. “Because there’s literally no verification of age when products of tobacco are purchased through the Internet.”

But do we really know internet sales of tobacco products poses any more of a threat than their open sale through brick and mortar shops anyway? And does Dickinson know that electronic cigarettes aren’t actually tobacco products — lacking actual tobacco and almost all (99%) of the harm of cigarettes?

This is an argument that was made countless times since the internet became a viable avenue of commerce. In 2010, the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act (PACT Act) made online and mail order sales of tobacco cigarettes nearly impossible — particularly because they require stringent age verification at both purchase and delivery. It’s not a ban per se, but it makes it nearly impossible to do legally. Arguments for the act at the time basically focused on two things — tax dodgers and minors.

Internet and mail order operations were able to avoid state-level taxes. That tended to be the biggest supportable issue with them. That they found their way to the hands of minors was a little more difficult an argument to make. A study in 2000 found that 1.4% of high school smokers purchased their last pack online. Another survey in 2003 found online purchase of cigarettes by minors to be around 2.6%.

This seemed hardly like the source of the smoking epidemic among teens — and I would guess those teens that made purchases online got their start with cigs that came from brick and mortar shops.

Other than those figures, the best proponents of the ban could do was tell kids to buy cigarettes online and then call fie on the industry when it worked. Sites selling cigarettes did have an 18 and over wall. If someone makes a fraudulent purchase with a credit card, the law doesn’t normally blame the seller — unless it’s tobacco appearently.

Now the same arguments are being made about electronic cigarettes. Is there some possible scenario in which minors can buy electronic cigarettes despite living in one of the places where it’s illegal? Yes. But the same can be said of alcohol, porn, and drugs. Will this circumvent state level taxes? Yes. But this can be said of all internet commerce.

The reason the PACT act flew with the fiscally minded is because many states do impose a distinctly higher tax rate on tobacco products. So these states were losing taxes on external tobacco sales. As long as electronic cigarette sales are not taxed that way (though some state have already put e-cig taxes in place), this is a difficult argument to make as it strikes at the use of internet commerce in general — rather than just electronic cigarettes.

The reality on the youth tobacco front is that the majority of minors got their cigarettes from stores, friends, and family. A 2011 National Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance survey found that 54.5% purchased their cigarettes directly from a store, from vending machines or by giving money to others to make their purchase. Almost a third borrowed their cigarettes from others, and 4.4% claimed they stole their cigarettes. So at a minimum, 90% of cigarettes in the hands of minors are obtained from stores and other smokers. The actual percentage of total youth smoking instances probably nears 100% originating from shops and legal smokers.

A 2012 nationwide Monitoring the Future survey found that 50.7% of eighth graders and 72.9% of tenth graders said it’s easy to get their hands on cigarettes. So after all this effort, teens that really want to smoke will get their hands on cigarettes. Say what you will about the ease of internet sales, for a teen, using cash, friends, and family is easier and less traceable and comes with a bit of street cred. And it’s still likely that any initiation would happen far from an internet purchase.

So now electronic cigarette sales online are the target because taxes and kids. Of course some companies — those with brick and mortar distribution — will likely support this. It won’t really hurt them, it will likely kill vast swaths of the competitive market, and they can publicly pat themselves on the back for claiming they took a bullet for the sake of the children.

Meanwhile, the anti-smoking groups won’t let up because they can’t stand the idea of electronic cigarettes existing without a tobacco control win against them. They are, to this world, a yappy chihuahua that has yet to successfully establish dominance. Even chihuahuas can have bite.