President Trump announced today that his administration plans to release a new policy on vaping next week regarding the minimum age requirement to purchase vapor products—those that fall under the Electronic Nicotine Delivery System (ENDS) definition, which is described in full here by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The announcement alludes to a nationwide 21+ age requirement and comes in the wake of a steady increase in underage vaping over the past several years, with the most prominent spike in the last two. Efforts to curb underage use include increased minimum age requirements on a state and municipality level, but this would mark the first national push to move the legal age from 18 to 21.

Amid ongoing change in vapor and tobacco regulations, AgeChecker.net strives to provide a corresponding technology to help businesses in these industries maintain compliance. Our age verification software offers customizable and compliant default features that allow ecommerce businesses to streamline age verification and location blocking in real time with new and changing laws.

We offer enhanced localization tools that allow businesses to require minimum ages that vary by state, county, city, or zip code. Our clients can customize these location settings or use one of our Tobacco Presets. While two of our Tobacco Presets automatically require the minimum age for individual areas (one on a state level and the other on a city/county/zip code level), our most relevant to today’s announcement is our 21+ Preset.

This Preset automatically requires a minimum age of 21 for all purchasers, from all locations. Our clients are able to block purchasing from specific localities as well, such as San Francisco, in response to its ban.

Website settings can be adjusted under the Websites tab of your account dashboard. We recommend that our clients choose our 21+ Preset in advance of pending regulations.

We also offer precautionary setting options as regulatory pressure increases, designed to offer flexibility. For example:

• Clients may elect to require an ID for every purchase, rather than use our instant verification method as a first line of defense.
 
• Typically our instant verification method, which uses identity network matching technology to verify the customer based on their name, address, and date of birth, will approve roughly 9 out of 10 customers without an ID. In addition, customers who have submitted an ID once then order again using the same information will not be prompted for an ID. The “require ID for every purchase” setting will trigger an ID prompt for every customer, whether new or returning.
 
• Our popup text is customizable so clients may elect to notify customers of their age policies as they see fit.
 
• We regularly provide customized support, integrations, and new features that allow specific clients’ needs to be met by our software and our personnel. If a client comes to us with a specific request, we work to develop a custom solution.

AgeChecker.net integrates with all major ecommerce platforms and our API is available for custom development. Same-day installation and ongoing support are complimentary by our team.

AgeChecker.net is a third-party age verification service that cross-references customer information collected at checkout against U.S. identity networks and public records databases in search of a match. If unable to verify the purchaser’s age using this matching technology, AgeChecker.net prompts the purchaser to submit a valid, government-issued photo ID that is manually verified to confirm that the purchaser is of legal age in their jurisdiction. If a purchaser does not meet minimum age requirements or does not present valid identification, that purchaser is unable to check out.