Difficulties restricting alcohol sales to minors in the Internet Age

We live in the Internet Age, but not all governments seem to have joined us. For example, some of them have laws that are impractical to implement for online sales, which is the basis of modern commerce. One of these laws seems to be the common restriction on the sale of alcohol to minors. This is easier to implement in some countries than in others, as far as digital shopping is concerned.

This topic seems to have received little discussion from the wine media.

Before the internet, restricting sales to minors was relatively straightforward:

The customer walks into an actual bricks-and-mortar sales location, selects their goods, and walks up to the payment point. The seller visually assesses the age of the buyer, and if there is some doubt about it, asks for some form of officially acceptable identification that shows the buyer's date of birth (such as a driver's license).

The seller may be legally covered in this scenario. If the buyer is misrepresenting their age in some way, then they are taking the legal responsibility, not the seller. The seller is likely to have met the practical requirements of the law.

It is different, however, with online sales, because the seller is never face to face with the buyer:

Typically, the buyer registers with the seller's internet site, and electronically reports their date of birth. The goods are then dispatched by courier. The courier delivers these goods face-to-face to a recipient, and it is now the courier’s job to assess whether the recipient is legally entitled to receive the goods. It is thus likely that the courier is now the one taking practical responsibility for implementing the sales restriction.

Who is legally responsible here, and for which parts? * And how can they carry out their role responsibly? Before we further increase digital shopping options, as is often advocated, we need to clarify the legal requirements.

There seem to be two basic governmental implementations, at the moment.

Alternative 1

First, let's consider Sweden (where I live), as quite typical of the situation in the European Union. Swedes have individual Personal Numbers, and they each carry a card to verify this (it serves as their driver's license, and most other cards you can think of). They see no problems with this arrangement, because Swedes actually trust their government to behave responsibly — 1984, with its Big Brother, would never have been conceived by a Swede.

So, restricting online sales for minors is easy in Sweden. When I register with a site offering restricted sales, I use my Personal Number. The first 6 digits are my birth date, which is publicly known, while the final 4 digits are private. The registered information associated with the Number that I provide can be compared to whatever other information I provide, such as my delivery address, phone number, etc.

So much for the sale, where there is independent verification of the purchaser's age. For delivery, the courier electronically scans my ID card, to formally record me as the recipient. For non-restricted sales, on the other hand, the courier simply gets my signature, in the usual manner.

So, there is an electronic trail recording the online transaction from beginning to end, based on a unique identification number. The Internet Age is easy to implement in this situation.

Alternative 2

This is not true in countries where there is no Personal Number and no ID card. Many people do not trust their government, and perhaps they are right not to do so, in these cases. This seems to be particularly true in the USA; but the Australians also long ago refused their government’s proposal for an Australia Card (even though the combination of a driver’s license and a Tax File Number pretty much tags all adults, anyway).

In this scenario, there appears to be no practical way to restrict sales to minors; and it is often unclear who is taking responsibility for trying to do so. (For a discussion of the pros and cons of digital ID, see: One country’s uber-convenient, incredibly invasive digital ID system; also Estonia: the inside story of building a digital nation.)

For Alternative 2, a typical scenario at the online point of sale is simply to ask the purchaser to self-report their date of birth using an online form. This information is essentially uncheckable (but beware of “guest checkout” procedures that bypass even this basic requirement!). Furthermore, trying to correlate this information with other data sources, such as a delivery address and phone number, would probably be seen as an invasion of privacy. The only people who could do it these days would be FaceBook; and while they might be willing to supply this information to the online seller, the fee charged would likely remove all profit motive from the seller’s business.

The delivery scenario is no better. Is some poorly paid courier driver really supposed to verify something about the recipient? They could ask for a driver’s license, if the recipient has one handy, because a signature could easily be illegible. If the courier fails to verify, are they then legally responsible, as the person who physically provided the alcohol to a minor? In some jurisdictions, apparently so.

There may be no checkable trail here; and any attempt at compliance with the law would simply meet the letter of the law but not its intent. Even a minor could confidently undertake to circumvent this system!

Conclusions

So, it seems to me that countries with a Personal Number / ID-card combination have a simple route for implementing restrictions for online sales — an electronically checkable means of working out whether a person is a legally acceptable recipient of any specified goods. On the other hand, countries without this sort of system currently have no straightforward digital mechanism for verifying anything worthwhile.

Therefore, some governments have not yet fully thought through the implications of the Internet Age. Laws that were devised for face-to-face sales may not be practical for online sales, without some extra mechanisms to make their enforcement implementable.

There is also presumably a need within the wine industry for some sort of Code of Conduct governing online alcohol sales and deliveries, as this would give retailers and couriers confidence that their procedures are compliant (see Retail Drinks issues online liquor sales warning). In each jurisdiction, what exactly are the actions needed for a seller and deliverer to be seen by a court to have “acted in good faith”? **

This post arose from discussions with Bob Henry.

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* For those of you specifically interested in the USA, the current situation may be complicated, as always, because the country is actually a collection of states, each with its own laws. The Criminal Defense Lawyer web site suggests (Supplying alcohol to minors):

States approach this situation very differently. In some states, the law requires the seller to take specific steps, such as inspecting a buyer’s identification and even requiring the buyer to fill out a declaration of age. As long as the seller takes this step and still sells alcohol to a minor, sellers can avoid a conviction by showing they took all the required steps. In other states, selling to a minor is a strict liability offense. This means that if a seller sold alcohol to a minor, it doesn't matter what steps the seller took, as any sale to a minor is prohibited. Still other states allow a mistake about the buyer’s age to factor into a court’s decision when it determines what sentence is appropriate.

In any case, it is the person who makes the face-to-face sale that is likely to be charged with an offense, not the employer.

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** Retail Drinks Australia does have a new Code of Conduct for the online sale and delivery of alcohol. However, the descriptions that I have read (eg. Australian wineries back Retail Drinks code of conduct) do not even mention sale of alcohol to minors!