Ravenwood - 07/07/05 07:00 AM
Cigarettes are still technically legal, but if you try to buy them online your credit card company will refuse to pay for them. And if you try to have the shipped common carriers are refusing to deliver them. Apparently DHL doesn't have an "adult signature required" option.
One of the world's largest package-delivery companies will stop delivering cigarettes to individual consumers nationwide under an agreement with Attorney General Eliot Spitzer of New York.It's hard to imagine a world where service providers refuse business because they were intimidated by the government and those who don't like the products you buy. Today it's cigarettes, tomorrow it's alcohol, guns, and porn.Spitzer said yesterday that DHL is the first major shipping company to agree to the ban, and negotiations continue with other companies and the U.S. Postal Service.
Category: Pleasure Police
Comments (3) top link me
Alcohol shipping is already heavilly restricted in many states. Although SCOTUS recently ruled that states cannot bar direct shipment of wine from out of state wineries, that only applies if they also allowed in state wineries to ship directly to customers. Some states (e.g. Maryland) have made direct shipping of alcohol a felony. New York was one of the states the SCOTUS smacked down in that shipping case (Michigan was the other) so I would not be surprised to see Spitzer go after alcohol soon in the same manner as tobacco.
Posted by: Andrew Upson at July 7, 2005 2:48 PMIt's not surprising. DHL's gone through two major acquisitions/mergers in the last 3 years and is having trouble getting its computer systems in sync...only makes sense its services would be lagging a bit, too.
hln
Posted by: hln at July 7, 2005 10:30 PMI used to work for DHL (until one of the acquisitions/mergers that hln mentioned with Airborne, upon which they fired all of us because they worked for cheaper... but I digress)
Anyway, they do have an "adult signirature only" option. FYI
Posted by: Sphagnum at July 8, 2005 12:37 AM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
