Restricting Access

We have taken a series of escalating steps to curb underage access to JUUL products. As a primary step, we strongly advocated for increased age restrictions for tobacco products, including vapor, such as the 2019 federal Tobacco 21 legislation. In addition to advocating, Juul Labs has taken a number of additional steps to restrict access at retail stores, online, and through illegal third-party sellers.

Recent data suggests that meaningful progress is being made to combat underage use of vapor products. Federal data demonstrates that appropriate restrictions to access and marketing of vapor products work and can lead to meaningful reductions in underage use in a regulated marketplace.

Age Verification

JUUL products – and all tobacco and nicotine products – are for adult consumers only. Ensuring effective age verification and addressing social sourcing are key to restricting underage access to these products.

In the U.S., Juul Labs supported and advocated for raising the legal age of purchase for tobacco products, including vapor, to 21 from 18 years old. In 2017, the company established 21 as the minimum age of purchase for our own e-commerce platform, even for consumers living in states with a lower legal age. 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.

Age Verification Online

Juul Labs utilizes advanced systems and multi-step technologies on our e-commerce 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 commerce customer’s age and identity. Then, a code is sent to the new customer’s cell phone number to verify their identity, which 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 customer with this information, or if the new customer declines to enter the last four digits of their social security number, we ask them 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 customer 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 customer’s name and shipping address must match the name and billing address of the credit card used to make the purchase.
• Bulk purchase limits – We limit customers to two JUUL Devices and 60 JUULpods per month, with a maximum of 10 JUUL Devices per year.

Retail Access Control Standards

To combat underage use of all tobacco and nicotine products, Juul Labs strongly supports industry-wide age verification standards for all in person and online sales. 

Juul Labs also supports the adoption of technology tools integrated into point-of-sale systems that automate age verification controls, including mandatory ID scanning at retail. We provide retailers with support to implement these controls.

Mystery Shop

We conduct compliance checks through our Mystery Shop program to assess retailer compliance with both federal age-verification requirements and our own internal policy restrictions on product quantity purchase limits. We take appropriate actions against retailers that fail compliance checks under this program, including escalating penalties up to revoking a retailer’s authority to sell JUUL products.

Additional information related to Juul Labs’ Mystery Shop program may be shared with federal and state regulators and enforcement agencies in accordance with applicable regulations or as part of past settlement agreements. We continue to engage with these and other stakeholders, including retail, wholesale, and distributor partners as we work to restrict underage access to JUUL products.