Efforts by Maine Attorney General Paul Stern to tightly regulate shipments of cigarettes into the state may be struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Associated Press reported on Nov. 28.

Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical of Maine's efforts to regulate how tobacco may be delivered into the state. Federal law bars states from regulating prices, routes or services of shipping companies and Maine's law "certainly relates to the service" of the shipping companies, said Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Anti-smoking groups say that children as young as 11 have been successful more than 90 percent of the time when attempting to buy cigarettes over the Internet. There are 772 Internet cigarette vendors selling more than 400 million packs of cigarettes a year.

Many of these cigarette vendors are not paying state taxes, amounting to $1.4 billion in lost revenue annually to states, a recent study revealed. About 40 other states have also tried to severely restrict or ban the direct delivery of tobacco to consumers in their respective states, and United Parcel Service, FedEx, and DHL have agreed to stop shipping cigarettes.

Still, Supreme Court Justices appear concerned that a patchwork of different state laws would unduly burden businesses. "What if every state enacted a slightly different law relating to this and a slightly different law relating to every other product that they might want to restrict for health or safety reasons?" asked Justice Samuel Alito.

Maine's law has been invalidated by two lower federal courts.