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Source::
2017 State of Tobacco Retailing, Balvor LLC, Convenience Store News, Tobacco Business Magazine
97
%
90
%
80
%
70
%
60
%
50
%
40
%
30
%
20
%
10
%
0
%
95
%
90
%
80
%
70
%
60
%
50
%
40
%
30
%
20
%
10
%
0
%
90
%
80
%
70
%
60
%
50
%
40
%
30
%
20
%
10
%
0
%
88
%
80
%
70
%
60
%
50
%
40
%
30
%
20
%
10
%
0
%
73
%
70
%
60
%
50
%
40
%
30
%
20
%
10
%
0
%
37
%
30
%
20
%
10
%
0
%
OPERATIONS
Acing
FDA
AgeVerification
Rules
The FDA now requires retailers to card anyone under age 27—
which can make selling online problematic.
BY JENNIFER GELFAND
S
Since the FDA’s deeming regulations went into
effect on August 8, 2016, anyone selling tobacco
products must verify that the purchaser is over
18 years old. In a face-to-face transaction, that
sounds simple enough—just instruct your em-
ployees to verify your customer’s age by asking
for a government-issued photo I.D. (As the chart
at right shows, most brick-and-mortar shops do
that fairly well.) Online, however, it becomes
much more difficult.
That’s an issue that may well reshape the com-
petitive landscape in vapor retail, where Intenret
retailers account for a significant percentage of
overall sales. As Jacopo D’Alessandris, CEO of
Darien, Connecticut-based E-Alternative Solu-
tions, notes in our cover story on page 66, age
verification is far more complicated and expen-
sive to do over the Internet.
Those who primarily sell online initially tried
to solve this issue by outsourcing to one of the
many age-verification services that claimed to be
able to streamline the process for both seller and
customer. In theory, rather than having signed
documents attesting to a buyer’s age as well as
a filed copy of their government-issued I.D., the
third-party verification service would use soft-
ware to cross-check a buyer’s age against a data-
base of personal information.
Unfortunately, in many cases the claims of
third-party companies to be able to perform that
check proved unfounded. As one shop noted in a
website post directed at its customers, “The tech-
nology doesn’t quite seem to be there to fully sup-
port proper age-verification techniques.” That
notice went on to detail the issues that the com-
pany had experienced with a top-ranked age-ver-
ification supplier, and to note that “the next-larg-
est age-verification provider available only has a
60 percent match rate for age verification data.”
Further complicating matters, some states
have adopted their own more restrictive age-ver-
ification standards. For example, in California,
online retailers are required to call customers
after 5 p.m. to verify the order before shipping.
IN-STORE AGE VERIFICATION
AGE-
VERIFICATION
PRACTICES
COVERED
PRODUCTS
DEFINITION
SALE
REFUSAL
GUIDANCE
POLICY
REVIEW
VERIFICATION
WRITTEN
POLICY
EMPLOYEE
ASSESMENT
[ 30 ]
TOBACCO BUSINESS
[
MAY
/
JUNE
|
17 ]
(PREVALENCE OF KEY COMPONENTS)