Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed HB8 last week, which restricts convenience stores to selling just the 34 tobacco and menthol-flavored e-cigarette products approved by the FDA. Alabama.com stated that all other flavors—including thousands currently pending FDA review—will be banned from sale except in age-restricted vape shops.

HB8 also:

• Bans vape sales in vending machines.

• Increases penalties for selling to minors under 21.

• Requires vape products sold in Alabama to be U.S.-manufactured.

• Authorizes retailers to obtain licenses to sell alternative nicotine products.

The law takes effect on June 1.

According to Alabama.com, “Convenience stores throughout the state will have to remove flavored vape products under the new law. A representative with the industry, in recent days, argued that the proposal will devastate small businesses, noting that alternative nicotine products account for about 30% of convenience store sales.”

State Sen. David Sessions, R-Mobile, who sponsored the measure in the Senate, said, “I hate it for [c-stores]. … A few bad actors can cause problems. But when you have folks out there selling to underage people without checking IDs, then that’s a problem.”

If ID-verification is the issue, there is a solution for c-stores that does not restrict the products they can sell. TruAge is an innovative, universally accepted age-verification system that makes it easier to more accurately verify an adult customer’s age when purchasing legal, age-restricted products.

“TruAge is a great solution that instills trust in regulators that c-stores are the most trusted channel for age-verification,” Grant Bleecher, head of business development and growth, TruAge. If you’re interested in learning how TruAge can help your business, reach out to Bleecher at gbleecher@mytruage.org.

TruAge and its core technology was incorporated into the latest W3C Verified Credentials, Verifiable Credentials 2.0, which were introduced last week. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international council created in 1994 to create and publish web standards to ensure the growth and development of the web.

The new W3C Verified Credentials, which were ratified in late April by its governing body, are a comprehensive update to web standards and affirm that TruAge technology is the centralized standard for digital personhood, making TruAge the accepted standard for all applications that involve age verification.