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[ FEATURE STORY]
It’s in the cards
Tough enforcement makes retailers take a new look at age verification
By Tracy Cox
When it comes to age verification and the prevention of restricted product sales to underage customers, tobacco retailers are on the front lines. As undercover law enforcement stings and industry pressures increase, retailers have responded with accelerated efforts to protect their businesses from the fines and more serious penalties that can result from selling restricted products to those who aren’t old enough to purchase them. A retailer’s best line of defense remains top-notch hiring and training, as well as providing staff the appropriate age verification technology to best ensure identification of customers at point of sale.
Youth access
Youth access to underage products is a pressing issue that has received much attention from retailers of late. The Supreme Court’s decision in 2000 that the FDA cannot regulate tobacco has left lingering questions as to when age verification is necessary. Tobacco is a product with varying state laws pertaining to both its sale and purchase. Currently, the legal age to purchase tobacco is set at 18 in most states and 19 in Alabama, Alaska and Utah. Pennsylvania prohibits retailers from selling cigarettes and cigarette paper to people under 21, but only enforces sales of these and other tobacco products made to persons under 18. The FDA had recommended age verification if a purchaser appeared to be 27 or younger.
Roger Walker, owner of Marion, Ill.-based KRW Inc., with three CTS locations in Kentucky, says his staff members are trained to take extra precautions at the cash register and identify all customers who appear to be less than 27 years of age. Walker says he ensures that employees understand early on that age verification is a priority. “Our employees sign off on a compliance form that outlines our policy on identifying underage customers, and then they are further trained not to sell to youths,” he says.
Walker also is supported by industry initiatives such as “We Card,” launched by the Coalition for Responsible Tobacco Retailing. We Card supports the commitment to check identification of those customers purchasing tobacco products. Retailers that display We Card materials are 12 times more likely to ask for ID than not, compared with those retailers not displaying the materials, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores.
Walker says he relies heavily on the We Card program and has found that it’s been an extremely effective deterrent to underage sales. “We’ve got several We Card signs posted and people seem to really cooperate with the program and respect it,” he says. “It’s a reminder to both staff members and customers that we don’t sell these products to underage customers.”
 Minors carding minors
A teenage sales force may be faced with situations where friends or peers may attempt to make illegal purchases of products prohibited to minors. Studies like “Sources of Tobacco for Youths in Communities with Strong Enforcement of Youth Access Laws,” by Joseph DiFranza and Mardia Coleman, have indicated that sales clerks under the age of 18 are more likely than clerks 18 or older to sell tobacco to minors.
The United States and Canada face similar predicaments with preventing sales of tobacco to underage customers. A 1996 study “Measurement of Retailer Compliance with Respect to Tobacco Sales-to-Minors Legislation and Restrictions on Tobacco Advertising,” sent research teams of one minor and one adult observer to 5,000 tobacco retailers in 25 cities in all Canadian provinces. The study found that an average of 52 percent of tobacco retailers were willing to sell cigarettes to youth under 18 years of age. Furthermore, the age of the store clerk directly affected retailer compliance. Sixty-three percent of teenage clerks were willing to sell cigarettes to minors.
This research has concluded that young clerks may be more apt to sell tobacco to friends and people they know. Peers may be less willing to take a stand and refuse a sale to an underage consumer; however, retailers say that measures can be taken when hiring staff. When hiring minors, retailers should assess integrity and maturity levels of employees on an individual basis.
Walker says that, at this time, his youngest employee is 18 years of age. In his experience, minor employees selling restricted products to minor consumers is not an issue at the top of the agenda for most tobacco retailers. “I’ve attended many roundtable discussions in the industry, and I see a lot of retailers with sales staff that is typically over 18,” he says.
 Best practices for retailers include staying current with all pending legislation on underage sales. Retailers should also take a closer look at the responsibilities of staff members. In some cases, an appropriate step might be to lessen the responsibility of teenage staff members who control tobacco sales. Additionally, retailers can role-play confrontational situations involving underage consumers attempting to purchase restricted products from employees. This type of specific training might address scenarios where friends request an underage tobacco sale. Retailers also might check the backgrounds of job applicants for previous infractions of sales-to-minors laws.
Preventive measures
Retailers should set the age-verification ground rules early on after hiring employees. New hires should be provided youth tobacco access compliance information in writing, and they should be required to sign an acknowledgment that they have read and understand it. Employees who violate the law relating to youth access to tobacco products should be notified that this violation is grounds for disciplinary action up to and including discharge. Most retailers will agree that training staff on age verification measures is the most important initial step. Employees should be thoroughly trained in the technology that addresses identifying and carding customers at the POS.
Jim Stone, chief operating officer, of Cougar Mountain Software, Boise, Idaho, says the company’s Specialty Shop has been a successful add-on to Cougar’s POS products. Specialty Shop works so that a retailer can choose a pop-up message notifying the cashier that verification is necessary. Or, the retailer can choose a display on the sales entry screen that notes the birth date by which the customer should have been born in order to be of legal age to purchase the items. “With the pop-up screen, the transaction cannot be completed until the required information is supplied,” Stone says. “The software does the calculation for the cashier, so that when the birth date is entered, a message stating that the customer does not meet age requirements is returned, and the transaction cannot be completed.”
Stone says it is also possible to bar certain employees from selling underage products. The system’s security can lock out certain employees from the sales function, so that an employee who is a minor in a function other than cashier could be barred from making sales.
Dave Thomas, president and CEO of ezMiner, Madison, Ala., says that ezMiner’s POS technology integrates age verification and customer loyalty functions.
“When you sell a tobacco or alcohol item, our register will prompt the cashier to verify the age of the consumer,” he says. “Then, you can either scan the magnetic stripe on the driver’s license or use the same scanner that you use to scan products and scan the 2-D bar code on the license.”
The ezMiner product verifies age and also prompts the cashier to ask consumers if they would like to become a loyalty customer. In cases where a customer agrees to loyalty program membership, the customer’s name, address, city, state and zip code are captured and stored as a part of the transaction.
“Retailers can then track new loyalty customer transactions for all items they purchase,” Thomas says.
Responsible retailers today are more conscious than ever of the legal pressures when selling underage products, Thomas says. And merging age verification and loyalty often simplifies a step in the transaction that can sometimes be an awkward moment for the store clerk. “The laws make it imperative that cashiers ‘card’ each consumer,” Thomas says. “Adding loyalty to the transaction actually makes it easier to ask for and obtain the driver’s license as needed.”
Memphis, Tenn.-based eRevolution’s eSmart solution provides easy to use, “plug and play,” end-to-end store management. eSmart combines scanners, touch-screen monitors, computers and proprietary front- and back-office software to handle all aspects of store management. “We sell peace of mind, as well as quality of life, to retail owners and managers,” says Jacob Moskowitz, founder and CEO of eRevolution.
Technology such as eRevolution’s eSmart saves time, cuts costs and reduces losses due to theft and human error. “We also automate your compliance with the law,” Moskowitz says. This technology simplifies merchants’ compliance with the age-verification laws by automating and monitoring the process. This technology works so all products that require age-verification—whether cigarettes, tobacco or alcohol—are flagged on the cashier’s screen.
Age verification enables store owners and managers to monitor each sale of age-restricted products, and technology such as eSmart allows managers to provide more detailed information. These reports identify cashiers who repeatedly override the age verification process or who have too few driver license swipes per shift. In some cases, if cashiers do not ask for identification from each consumer, then that information can be stored and reported both at the store and corporate office level.
“Repeated statistical deviation identifies cashiers who are violating age sale restrictions,” Moskowitz says. “These tools reduce the chance of heavy fines and store closures because of age-sale violations, an increasing concern throughout the country.”
Gary Whitlock of Tobacco Super Stores, a chain with 82 locations throughout Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, says age verification technology is the key to prevention of the sale of cigarettes to minors. “The mere fact that we have the capability to monitor each cigarette sale keeps our cashiers from selling to minors,” he says. “Everyone in our company knows that selling to minors is grounds for firing. Any problems we have had in the past have disappeared.”
Rod Helland, ARS Solutions, Sauk Rapids, Minn., agrees that age verification is a POS technology that serves as an essential means to preventing underage sales, however, it is a function that is at the mercy of the store clerk. “We only provide the tools, so the owner or operator has the ability to prevent the sales to minors,” he says. “Simply put, it is an optional feature.”
In the end, although age verification software is an important preventive measure, it cannot make up for poor business practices. “Intelligent hiring, clear guidelines, training and supervision are the most effective ways to ensure employees carry out the correct age verification procedures,” Stone summarizes. TR |
