Philip Morris can track volume sold through stores and influence how its smokes are sold there via its Retail Leaders merchandising program. Yet the tobacco giant doesn't have that same power over Web vendors.
The company threw some stones in September by filing federal lawsuits alleging that eight defendants' Web sites violated company trademarks and illegally sold Marlboros manufactured for export.
The problem demands more comprehensive strategies, so Philip Morris is urging wholesalers and retailers to alert it about Web sites with suspicious offers and improper age verification. To hedge its bets, the New York-based tobacco giant is also taking a governmental route. Lobbyists armed with estimates about how much tax revenue states are losing via Internet sales ($1.4 billion by 2004, per the Government Accounting Office) are pushing for state legislation requiring Web sellers to be certified and to give state taxing authorities the names and addresses of companies and individuals receiving cigarettes.
At the federal level, Philip Morris is lobbying for enforcement of the Jenkins Act--a 1949 law requiring cigarette dealers to report out-of-state purchases to the buyers' state tax authorities--to be shifted from the Justice Department, which has its hands full with homeland security, to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms |
