Enhanced Access Controls

JUUL products – and all tobacco and nicotine products – are for adult consumers only. Keys to restricting underage access to these products are to ensure effective age-verification and address social sourcing.

In the U.S., particularly in light of unacceptable underage use rates and the prevalence of social sourcing, Juul Labs supported and advocated for raising the legal age of purchase for tobacco products, including vapor, to 21. For over two years, the company urged lawmakers at the local, state, and federal levels to enact this policy. In 2018, the company established 21+ as the minimum age of purchase for our own ecommerce platform, even for consumers living in states with a lower age limit. Starting in 2019, an increasing number of states raised the legal age of purchase to 21; and in December 2019 Congress voted to make Tobacco 21 the law of the land.

Enhanced Access Controls Online

Juul Labs utilizes advanced systems and multi-step technologies on our ecommerce platform to ensure consumers are 21 years of age or older and to limit the amount of product that can be purchased.

• Personal information – When a customer first visits our ecommerce site to make a purchase, they’re asked to enter their name, date of birth, address, and the last four digits of their social security number. They’re also asked to enter their mobile number for verification and two-factor authentication.
• Verification – All of this information is then crossed-referenced through multiple third-party public records to verify a new ecommerce customer’s age and identity. Then, the new user is sent a code to their cell phone number to verify their identity that must be confirmed with us to create a profile and make a purchase.
• Additional verification – If we’re unable to verify the age and identity of the new user with this information, or if the new user declines to enter the last four digits of their social security number, we ask the new user to upload a photo of the front and back of their government-issued ID for visual verification through software and trained personnel. We also ask that a new user upload a photo of their face for us to match with the photo on their ID. On top of verifying the photo, our system checks for common shortcomings in fake IDs.
• Other system security measures – After completing account verification, each customer’s name and date of birth are locked and that person is unable to create additional accounts. Additionally, the user’s name and shipping address must match the name and billing address of the credit card used to make the purchase.
• Online quantity purchase limits – We limit users to two JUUL Devices and 15 JUULpod packs per month, with JUUL Devices maxing out at 10 per year.

Enhanced Access Controls at Retail

To combat underage use of JUUL products, we are working with retailers across the U.S. to implement Juul Labs’ Retail Access Control Standards (RACS) program. RACS has been developed as a standards-based program for retailers, software vendors, and other industry stakeholders to adopt within preexisting point-of-sale (POS) system technology or acquire through new POS-system technology. 

RACS is based on a POS solution that automates the transaction from beginning to end, ensuring that the retailer validates the age of the purchaser and restricts the amount of product that can be purchased. 

A RACS-compliant POS system:

• Automatically requires the scanning of a government-ID to verify age and ID validity (i.e., the ID has not expired);
• Automatically limits the amount of product that can be purchased in a transaction to 1 device and 4 JUULpod packs; and
• Automatically integrates the sales transaction to prevent manual override by the retail sales clerk.

If an ID is not scanned to verify age and validity, the system will not allow the transaction to be completed. If the purchaser’s ID reflects an age younger than 21 or is expired, the system will not allow the transaction to be completed. And if the purchase exceeds the product-quantity limits, the system will not allow the transaction to be completed.