Who can purchase from Coastal Vanguard LLC.

The relationship between Coastal Vanguard LLC and the buyer is a commercial supply relationship between a research-supplier and a qualified-research buyer. The platform is not a pharmacy, not a clinic, and not a consumer retailer. Every order is placed under a research-use-only label and is conditioned on the buyer’s certification of the items below.

1. Who is a qualified researcher

For the purposes of this policy, a qualified researcher is a natural person who:

• is at least twenty-one (21) years of age;
• is affiliated with a recognized research institution, academic laboratory, contract research organization, analytical laboratory, or a comparable entity engaged in lawful laboratory research; or
• is an authorized representative of one of the above entities, acting on its behalf; or
• is a graduate student or postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of a principal investigator at a recognized institution, with the principal investigator’s authorization to procure research materials on behalf of the lab.

A consumer purchasing for personal use, weight management, longevity, sexual performance, cognitive enhancement, or any other personal outcome is not a qualified researcher and is not eligible to purchase from Coastal Vanguard LLC, regardless of whether the buyer checks the certification box at checkout. The checkout certification is a legal attestation, not a verification of the buyer’s actual qualifications.

2. What the buyer certifies at checkout

Before a paid order is created, the buyer must check three certifications:

1. Research-use certification. The buyer certifies that the products will be used solely for in-vitro research, laboratory research, or analytical-method development, and will not be used in or on humans or animals, will not be used for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes, will not be used in trials involving human subjects, and will not be used in any manner inconsistent with a research-use-only label.
2. Age confirmation. The buyer certifies that they are at least twenty-one (21) years of age.
3. Researcher confirmation. The buyer certifies that they are a qualified researcher (as defined in section 1) or are purchasing on behalf of one, and will accept any institutional verification that may be required before fulfillment.

The certifications are timestamped, logged with the order, and retained in the audit_events stream. A high-risk merchant underwriter can audit the timestamp and IP of every certification event.

3. What Coastal Vanguard LLC does to verify

The checkout certification is a self-attestation. Coastal Vanguard LLC supplements it with the following operational controls:

• Institutional verification on request. For any order, before fulfillment, the operator may ask the buyer to provide institutional documentation (a lab affiliation letter, an institutional purchase order, a .edu or .org email address that matches a research domain, a government-issued ID matching the buyer’s name, or a comparable artifact). The buyer is required to provide it before the order ships.
• Flagged jurisdictions. Orders to jurisdictions where the research-use sale or possession of investigational compounds is restricted (per the operator’s reasonable judgment) are held for additional verification or refused. The current shipping range is the 48 contiguous U.S. states and the District of Columbia; see the Shipping Policy.
• OFAC screening. Every order is screened against the U.S. Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list before fulfillment. Orders for sanctioned destinations or sanctioned persons are refused and refunded.
• Refusal and termination. Coastal Vanguard LLC reserves the right to refuse service, cancel pending orders, terminate the buyer’s account, and report suspected misuse to relevant authorities if the buyer cannot demonstrate qualification, if the order appears to be intended for a non-research use, or if the buyer has misrepresented material facts on the order.

4. What is not a qualified-researcher purchase

The following are not eligible to purchase from Coastal Vanguard LLC, regardless of any self-attestation:

• Personal use by an individual consumer, including for weight management, longevity, sexual performance, cognitive enhancement, athletic performance, cosmetic outcome, or any other personal outcome.
• Administration to oneself or to another human or animal under any circumstance.
• Re-sale or re-distribution to a third party that has not independently qualified and certified.
• Use in a food, beverage, supplement, cosmetic, or consumer product.
• Use in a clinical trial involving human subjects, whether registered or unregistered.
• Use in a manner that violates the laws, regulations, or professional standards of the buyer’s jurisdiction.

These exclusions are also written into the Terms of Service (section 11, Prohibited Uses) and the Research Use Statement.

5. The legal distinction between a self-attestation and a verification

The checkout certification is a self-attestation: the buyer promises the certification is true. The operational controls in section 3 (institutional verification on request, OFAC screening, flagged-jurisdiction review) are the verification layer that backs the self-attestation. The two together are the buyer-qualification model.

A self-attestation-only model would be insufficient for a high-risk merchant account. The underwriter and the acquiring bank expect the operator to have an additional verification layer. Coastal Vanguard LLC’s verification layer is described in section 3 and is operational, not theoretical. The underwriter evidence package includes the documentation of the verification process.

6. What the underwriter should see

The underwriter evidence package includes, in addition to this page: the written internal buyer-qualification SOP, the institutional-verification templates, the audit_events records for certification events, and the policy-version history. These documents are not posted publicly; they are made available to the underwriter and the acquiring bank on request, and to qualified researchers who request institutional verification documentation.

7. Contact

Questions about the buyer-qualification policy: research@coastalvanguard.org.