MonkeyThis.com is up in smoke with a recent cigarette/tobacco license they were issued with the intention of selling cigarettes to its online customers.

The business is an online retail store located in Campustown that delivers products free of charge via Internet orders. The legality of its new venture is being put into question by the Iowa Department of Revenue and the Ames deputy city clerk.

“They do have a permit to sell,” said Deputy City Clerk Karen Thompson. “[However] their permit is specific to their storefront.”

MonkeyThis.com was issued a retail cigarette/tobacco permit which only allows the actual tobacco transaction to take place on the premise to which the permit was issued, Thompson said.

“It requires a license, but we already hold one from the city,” said Austin Karr, co-founder of MonkeyThis.com.

Regardless of the permit the business holds, the Iowa Department of Revenue made it clear that the license issued to MonkeyThis.com only pertains to its Stanton Avenue location.

“[The permit is] only valid for that location,” said Dawn Johnson, examiner for the Iowa Department of Revenue and Finance.

Although MonkeyThis.com seemed confident about its new permit, there seems to have been some misunderstanding in the handling process.

“I didn’t realize it was mobile – if that is what they are intending to do,” Thompson said.

And if that is what it is intending to do, further steps in the process of attaining the appropriate permits need to be taken, Thompson said.

Yet, the deputy city clerk hasn’t seen anything like this in past cases and isn’t sure if there are any appropriate or suitable permits to be issued.

“I’m not sure that there has been a test case of [this situation],” Thompson said.

However, the business’ founders have already started taking measures to make this cigarette delivery business a sure thing.

As of this last weekend, MonkeyThis.com added a cash/check option to its Web site. This gives customers more variety in choosing their method of payment and would allow delivery drivers to verify the age of a tobacco purchaser before the transaction is made.

“[We’re] still working through the process of how we [would] verify age,” Karr said.

But, it would be something similar to how it is done at gas stations, he said.

Yet, checking IDs might not even be considered. Don Stanley, with the attorney general’s office of Iowa, said the permit was issued in error.

“I don’t think they can sell cigarettes in the manner they had anticipated,” Stanley said.

So the birth of a new cigarette delivery business may not be in the realm of possibility, even for a company such as MonkeyThis.com.

“The state of Iowa is very concerned about the delivery of cigarettes,” Karr said. “[But] we’re looking into all of our possibilities.”

However, the concern of delivering tobacco products to people’s homes does not appear to be a marginal one.

If it was to sell cigarettes on people’s doorsteps, that would be illegal – it would be against city code and state law, Johnson said.

However, MonkeyThis.com, along with the city deputy clerk and the Iowa attorney general’s office, is claiming it was nobody’s fault for the error in issuing the tobacco permit – implying it was simple miscommunication.

“From a lack of communication, the people in Ames didn’t realize that there weren’t going to be over-the-counter sales at this business,” Stanley said.

Although the realization of the type of sales didn’t appear evident, the general understanding of MonkeyThis.com as a delivery service was discussed when the permit was initially issued.

“He told me they were going to be doing deliveries,” Thompson said.

“[But] I didn’t think about it otherwise – it was just something that never came up.”

Ames City Attorney Doug Marek was contacted but had no further details to give on the issue.