Big Question 5 - What is BAT Doing to Address Underage Access to Tobacco and Nicotine Products?

Legislative and Other Initiatives

The first laws establishing a minimum age of legal access to tobacco products began to appear across the U.S. in the 1880s,^[2] and in the UK in 1908.^[3] As decades passed, these age restrictions evolved in parallel with the wider landscape of tobacco-related science, information, and policy – arriving at the contemporary national minimums of 21 (U.S.) and 18 (UK) years old.

Alongside these legislative controls are various non-legislative initiatives that employ educational resources, advertising campaigns, and retailer programmes to discourage tobacco usage – often focusing on underage usage in particular.

We fully support laws and regulations that prohibit the sale of tobacco and nicotine products to anyone under the legal minimum age and the adoption of a minimum legal age of 18 when none exists. We also believe that enforcement and penalties for breaking such laws must be sufficient to discourage anyone from selling to people who are underage.

Responsible Marketing

Responsible marketing is central to our values and crucial to our vision of Building a Smokeless World. At BAT, we follow strict Responsible Marketing Principles (RMP).^[5] The foundation of our Responsible Marketing Principles is that our marketing must be responsible, accurate and targeted to adult consumers.

In coordination with the RMP, our markets also are expected to adhere to our Responsible Marketing Code (RMC),^[6] a set of standards to which we hold ourselves accountable, and which guide our decision-making process. These guidelines include various provisions addressing underage access. We will uphold the same high standards in every market in which we operate, even when they are stricter than applicable local laws.

Among other requirements, any material advertising or promoting our products must:

• Be targeted to adult consumers, which BAT defines as adult tobacco and nicotine users
• Feature only adults
• Only appear in publications or on digital channels for which the audience is predominantly adult
• Not appear in close proximity to areas primarily occupied by the underaged
  
  

The RMC applies to our tobacco and nicotine products and brands and covers all elements of marketing from product design through sales. Our RMP and RMC are also underpinned by detailed guidelines and toolkits to help ensure they are applied consistently.^[5,6] We maintain a robust material review and approval process to ensure that labelling, advertising, marketing, and promotional materials conform to these standards. In addition, employees are trained on the importance of our commitment to effective underage access prevention (UAP).

Technological Solutions

We believe that a number of technologies have strong potential to address underage access and usage, particularly on-device technology and functionality.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has acknowledged these technology-enabled opportunities, stating that device access restrictions would be considered among the ‘mitigation efforts that aim to reduce the risk of underage initiation and tobacco use.’^[4] In the language surrounding these comments, it is clear that the FDA has been contemplating control strategies related to both age and identity.

From a technology-selection standpoint, contemporary consumer electronics already demonstrate various means to confirm identity, i.e. via biometrics. An additional set of challenges appears when considering an approach that would first verify age and then sustain control via identity. As yet, an onboard (i.e. self-contained in the product), economical, and robust technological solution has not been identified. So a product must instead contain provisions to communicate with equipment or processes outside of itself.

Our current vision for ‘Sustained Control’ Underage Access Prevention (UAP) – as applied to an electronic Smokeless Product platform – will create a connected ecosystem across the regulated product (specifically, the device or power unit); the adult consumer’s phone (or tablet, etc.), and their age-verified account.