Is alcohol being sold to minors online?
Imagine getting paid $400,000 to buy alcohol.In a nutshell, that’s what REBECCA WILLIAMS and KURT RIBISI are up to, although it’s not quite as odd as it sounds. The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill researchers received a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant to study the ease of which minors can buy booze online. But Williams and Ribisi won’t be doing it themselves. They’ll use college students under 21 to try and make the purchases by targeting 100 websites that sell beer, wine and liquor. Basically, the researchers want to find out what kind of safeguards these sites are using, if any, to stop kids from purchasing alcohol. Williams says that most people they’ve spoken to can’t believe that alcohol is available online. The duo has previously studied online cigarette sales to minors, which helped to establish stricter guidelines. Williams and Ribisi believe that sites offering alcohol have similarly lax controls.
