Credit Cards and Internet Smokes
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:37 PM

The happy coupling of credit cards and internet cigarette purchases has come to an abrupt end in the US. In an effort to collect taxes on cigarette sales, state attorneys general pressured credit card companies to remove their services from internet tobacco sellers. You can still buy cigarettes over the web in the US, but you have to find another means of payment. Hey I know, maybe we could use a commodity money, like in prisons or POW camps: we could pay for internet tobacco with cigarettes!

Vice Squad has been anticipating some such move. Credit card companies occasionally have been pressured away from internet porn sites, too, and internet gambling sites are problematic for card companies, in part because of state laws precluding the enforcement of gambling contracts.

Labels: internet, taxes, tobacco