13-year-old orders alcohol from delivery service

Nowadays teenagers (fortunately) have to show their ID when they want to buy alcohol & tobacco in a supermarket or (evening) shop. And if all goes well, young people under the age of 18 will not be given alcohol & tobacco. But when minors order alcohol & tobacco through a delivery service, it's a different story. That's a piece of cake!

In this video you see how 13-year-old Rosa orders alcohol & tobacco online from 3 different delivery services. Spoiler alert: this works more often than not. If we think we finally have the sale of alcohol & tobacco to teenagers under control in the supermarkets, there are the online delivery services where the flash delivery drivers hardly ask for the ID of a minor when delivering alcohol & tobacco.

Is there anything that can be done about that? A municipality may not act independently against this, because it concerns 'distance selling'. Municipalities can, however, report the above, so that the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) can carry out risk-oriented supervision. In addition, the NVWA indicates that this is also the (social) responsibility of the seller and the flash delivery person to comply with the rules and laws.

Conclusion: there is still work to be done here…