It's not a question of the government being strict, it's rather that Ebay would rather lose your business than spend some money to solve their problem.  I've lost 2 sales in the past 2 weeks because Ebay thinks my items had blades (they didn't) but didn't tell me that.  If, instead of stopping a customer from bidding they had told me they required age verification I could have indicated that in my product listing or argued my case with them.