Merchant Education Programs – 7/14/05

Q: What type of merchant education program/tools are you offering your retailers to educate them on youth access issues? How successful would you rate it? If you have merchants who continue to sell to youth, do you have a different program with more intensive training?

A:

1. Alabama: We work with our Alcoholic Beverage Control Board Education Division Director to promote her Responsible Vendor training program. We also get the results of their compliance checks and post them on our tobacco web site so anyone can see who is selling and who is not. Our state law, Act 97-423, is very specific regarding those who sell to minors (which in Alabama is anyone under age 19). After the first offense, where training is offered in lieu of a fine, an escalating fine structure culminating in the loss of the permit to sell tobacco products is implemented. The Health Department also serves on the Advisory Board, which monitors implementation of 97-423 in quarterly meetings. The members of this advisory board are set by the law and includes merchant groups such as the Oilmen's Association, the Convenience Store Association, and so on. During our Synar site visit last year, Alabama was described as a model state, with a noncompliance rate of less than 10% and the ABC Board conducting several thousand more compliance checks than were required by Synar. Please contact Diane Beeson for contact information for the ABC Board Responsible Vendor Program.
    
2. Alaska: The State of Alaska has a vendor training kit that was sent out to all licensed vendors, followed by trainings by our enforcement officers in communities around the state. Those trainings take place throughout the winter and spring, preceeding the Synar investigations in the summer.
   
   Training materials are presented inside a 9" x 15" folder labeled "Tobacco Vendor Kit" which includes:
    
   • 8 1/2" x 11" Employee Training Guide (8 page+cover)
      
   • 8 1/4" x 7" Alaska's Tobacco Control Laws 5-tiered staggered text page booklet
      
   • 5" x 5" table tent "Notice to Clerks - Check IDs" card - one side faces clerk and has instructions on checking ID, including current year that birthdate must be on or before; second side advises customer that ID will be checked.
      
   • 2 breakroom posters, one that defines and shows a valid ID and explains the penalties to the clerk for not checking ID, and one that explains how they can refuse a sale.
      
   • An evaluation form to critique the training kit.

   Kit component order cards were also produced to send to each vendor, along with return address mailing labels and addressee mailing labels. Plans included production of an Alaska-specific training video, to be left with vendors to allow them to train their clerks in the absence of a formal class, but that project was never realized. In my estimation, it would be a good idea for a state with limited resources and with communities that are hard to reach.
   
   In the first year of aggressive training, 2003, which is also the year we used younger student investigators, our Synar compliance jumped from 70% to 90%. We have remained in compliance ever since.

3. California: The majority of literature on retailer merchant education does not demonstrate long term sustained results from merchant education. However, the political reality is that most tobacco control programs are forced to provide something.
   
   Click to view an educational training program that the California Tobacco Control Program makes available to retailers to download and use pursuant to a legislative mandate. The program was focused group tested with a statewide retailers association and with a group of retailers who represented smaller stores. Retailers are sent a letter and quiz to assess their clerks' knowledge before and after the training program. Additionally, our Attorney General’s Office, Tobacco Litigation Unit and our Department of Health Services, Food and Drug Branch which conducts our Synar compliance checks provided expert review. Other than these formative evaluation efforts, no evaluation of the training program has been conducted.
   
   In addition to this training presentation program, the Tobacco Education Clearinghouse of California offers a number of merchant education tools:
    
   • License ID Guide (#J611)
      
   • Warning: Selling Tobacco to Kids Could Cost You Poster (#J592)
      
   • Can He Buy Cigarettes poster (#J593)
      
   • Tobacco Stings Are Happening—direct mail post cards (#J656 and #J658) - only available for distribution in California, but could be replicated by others. These were actually evaluated by a project with Stanford University and found to be effective in decreasing illegal tobacco sales to youth. See the sales to minors evaluation report.

   Materials can be ordered from the Tobacco Education Clearinghouse of California at (831) 438-4822 ext 103 or ext. 230. Catalog is also available for download.
   
   Also click to view an ad that the California Tobacco Control Program ran in a number of convenience store trade publications.

4. Colorado: We do 'on request' merchant training addressing youth access issues as well as legal responsibilities, ID checking, and other areas of need as our expertise and resources allow. We provide handouts both within and outside of the training venue. Because we are a law enforcement agency, we focus on obtaining compliance through enforcement penalties, rather than training. Retailers who sell to minors are not revisited for training, but for additional intensive enforcement. We consider our underage tobacco sales rates as measurement of the success of our program (around 10% statewide each year).
    
5. Hawaii: We have a complete merchant education program:
    
   • a manual in brochure format (simple, easy to read) to teach cashiers step by step how to conduct a tobacco sales transaction
      
   • a Powerpoint presentation following the content of the brochure --- that I used to train everyone -- from trainers at large corporate tobacco retailers (eg. gas station, convenience store franchises, drug stores, markets, etc.) to coalition leaders to police officers. This PowerPoint was put on CD and made available to any trainer who wanted it to train their cashiers
      
   • a complete Training packet -- Powerpoint presentation, checklists for merchants to review their store policies and training programs, training games, the brochure, copies of cashier tools we developed, facts sheets about tobacco use and minors, and signs for the cash registers, etc.
     
   • Cashier tools/aids: brochure, buttons, store window decals, a birthday verification device that helps cashiers calculate whether a person is over 18, "we check id" stickers for the cashier stands, and policy tear-off sheets cashiers can give to customers when they get questioned
      
   • posters for merchants to put in lunch rooms

   The program worked like this:
   
   We developed a "Gecko" logo which appealed to cashiers and put it on all the tools and materials. I trained all the trainers to reach corporate, large retailers -- so they could incorporate this into training their cashiers. I made sure all materials were available to them. To reach the mom-and-pop stores, our coalition leaders on each of the neighbor islands went to each of the mom-and-pop stores and went over the brochures with the store owners/ cashiers and gave them the tools/ aids. On Oahu, where we have no coalition leaders --- we worked with the Honolulu Police Dept. to have their police officers to go to the mom & pop stores as a community project.
   
   We also worked with our partners to have the tobacco sting results published in the newspapers every month. The list contains the list of all stores checked during the month and whether they passed or didn't pass the sting.
   
   In addition, we send an annual mailout of new birthday verification devices (which need updating each year and merchants really like) with reminders of all the tools and training aids available to them, with a lunch room poster and a letter from our Director of Health.
   
   Our Synar rates --- are at about 5.1%, I think we are in the top 3 states with the lowest rates. The Synar Review team really liked our merchant education program.

6. Iowa: The Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division currently offers both point of sale materials and trainer facilitated training sessions to assist retailers in eliminating youth access to age restricted products.
   
   Point of sale materials are geared towards helping clerks calculate a customer’s age to determine whether the customer is old enough to legally purchase alcohol or tobacco products. The Division currently offers an Age to Purchase Calendar, an ID Checking brochure and a 5 Step ID Check wallet card. Click here to view samples of these materials.
   
   In addition to point of sale materials, the Division administers a tobacco clerk certification program.
   
   The program consists of 2-hour classes taught by local law enforcement officers, and covers how to properly evaluate the Iowa driver’s license; how to deny an illegal sale; and the laws and regulations governing tobacco sales in Iowa. After a clerk has attended a session, they take a short on-line quiz to ensure that key concepts and facts were retained from the class. The clerk must receive a score of 80% or higher in order to “pass” the quiz. After passing the quiz, the clerk receives a certification valid for a two-year period.
   
   Tobacco retailers who employ certified clerks have available to them an affirmative defense. The affirmative defense holds that if a certified clerk makes an illegal tobacco sale, the retailer can assert the affirmative defense and avoid a civil penalty (click here to view Iowa’s penalties for tobacco sales to minors) – however, the clerk is still subject to a criminal fine and the retailer can only use the affirmative defense once in a four-year period. All registration and account management is administered via the Internet. Click here to view the on-line registration system.
   
   Though the Division does not have an appropriation to fund training for alcohol retailers, the agency has secured grant funding to conduct pilot projects, limited in scope. The Division, through a grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, was able to offer Training for Intervention ProcedureS (TIPS) training to employees at on-premise establishments in Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa. Like the tobacco certification program, TIPS covers how to properly evaluate a driver’s license; how to identify patrons who are or are becoming intoxicated; how to refuse an illegal sale to a youth or intoxicated patron; and the laws and regulations governing alcohol sales in Iowa. In 2002, the Division trained over 650 clerks and will hold sessions in August and September of 2005. Click for more information on the Division’s TIPS pilot project.
   
   All programs are voluntary and are available to all retailers at no charge. Since the programs are voluntary, retailers with several violations for sales to minors may or may not participate at their own discretion. However, from an enforcement perspective, the fines and suspensions are graduated and based on the number of violations a particular location sustains within a certain time period. As a result, merchants who continue to sell age-restricted products to youth will quickly find themselves facing a lengthy suspension or even license revocation.
   
   The programs are successful in that employees are taught how to follow the law. However, whether employees adopt behaviors taught in the classes depends on the level of management buy-in. Stores where managers and owners regularly stress the importance of checking ID and conduct mystery shopper inspections of their own stores to ensure that employees are following store policy will see few violations and reap greater benefit from the classes than those managers who send new hires to training and do nothing else.
   
   Please do not hesitate to contact me at 515.281.7461 or e-mail Gehl@IowaABD.com with questions concerning the Division’s educational programs.
    
7. Maine: We partner with our Attorney General's office to deliver a Responsible Retailing outreach and education program called NO BUTS! The program provides to retailers and there staff a public health perspective for not selling to minors and offers incentives to participating retailers in the form of credits toward fines in the event that they are cited for selling to a minor.
   
   Regarding efficacy, that is hard to say. We have a very high retailer compliance rate, so determining the effect of this particular program would be very difficult. As far as participation, we have had better participation by the larger chains than by the smaller Mom and Pop type of establishments - we are going to encourage our community programs to recruit smaller retailers and possibly use some of our youth to talk to the local retailers. We currently have just over 600 stores participating. Click for a description of the program.
    
8. Massachusetts: Massachusetts developed a Tobacco Retailer Resource Kit in 2000. It was a collaborative project between MTCP and the Attorney General's Office. We have never formally evaluated the kit but are beginning the planning process to revise it. Some of our local boards of health do face to face and group retailer training which is primarily attended by retailers who have been fined for selling tobacco to minors. Contact Eileen.M.Sullivan if there are further questions.
    
9. Michigan: In Michigan, we educate/communicate with retailers on two fronts. Through the MI Department of Community Health’s Tobacco Section, we developed a retailer education kit that is provided to retailers upon request. The Section also sends a letter (from the Director of MDCH) to tobacco retailers at the beginning of each year that highlights the following: the need to comply with the Youth Tobacco Act (YTA) (The YTA makes it illegal to sell, give, or furnish tobacco to anyone younger than 18; the law also prohibits harboring a minor the for the purpose of using tobacco. State law requires that they post a YTA sticker at each point-of-sale in their retail establishment; that we provide training to managers and clerks about how to comply with the Youth Tobacco Act. In this mailing, we also provide an updated copy of the alcohol/tobacco sales-date sticker for posting (The alcohol/tobacco sales-date sticker indicates the valid birth-year for anyone purchasing tobacco or alcohol. This sticker is not a mandated by State law for posting at the retail establishment.)
   
   We haven’t conducted any evaluation of the effectiveness of the annual mailing or trainings so I can’t rate its effectiveness. A major problem for our program, in regard to any attempt to educate or communicate with retailers, is the fact that Michigan doesn’t license or register its tobacco retailers so it’s impossible to have a reliable and accurate list of retailers at any given time. However, the Office of Drug Control Policy has made great strides in the past couple of years to increase the reliability of its retailer list but it’s likely that there remain many retailers who are not identified and subsequently are not included in mailings and personal visits for one-on-one education (through the Synar Program).
   
   The MI Department of Community Health’s Office of Drug Control Policy also educates retailers as part of their efforts to maintain the negotiated Synar rate.
    
10. North Carolina: North Carolina recently launched a new retailer program on April 26, 2005 called “Red Flag”. The NC Division of Alcohol Law Enforcement, the Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services and the NC Health and Wellness Trust Fund partnered together to announce the Red Flag Campaign with endorsements from the state’s two largest retailer associations.
    
    The Red Flag campaign is designed to educate the retail community on North Carolina’s color coded driver’s license system (red, yellow, green) in order to increase compliance with the state’s youth access to tobacco products law. In 2000, the NC Division of Motor Vehicles released a new driver’s license and identification card design. Although the system has been in place for several years, a recent telephone survey found that fewer than 4% of tobacco merchants could correctly identify the color scheme. This new license/card design can assist store managers and clerks to stop the purchase of alcohol and tobacco products by providing a first visual clue that the customer is underage. It strongly promotes checking the ID of a customer before making a sale. A red border on the license means the license holder is under the age of 18; yellow means the license holder is 18-21; and green indicates that the license holder is over 21 years old. The campaign slogan is “If You See Red, The Tobacco Sale Is Dead”.
    
    Collateral materials that were developed for the Red Flag program include the following:
     
    • Red Flag informational brochure
       
    • Red Flag poster
      
    • Red Flag branded cash register stickers
       
    • Red Flag buttons (not mailed, but available upon request)

    The materials were mailed directly to all retail outlets in the targeted districts who sell tobacco products. An accompanying letter from the Director of Alcohol Law Enforcement (ALE) encouraged store managers to:

    • Use the Red Flag materials when training store clerks
       
    • Place the materials in visible locations behind the counter in clear view for store clerks.
       
    ALE also assists store managers in the training of their employees through their “Be A Responsible Seller/Server” (BARS) free training program. ALE routinely offers the BARS program to retailers to provide education on the state’s alcohol and tobacco laws (i.e. penalties and requirements). ALE agents make a special effort to recruit retail outlets that were cited during enforcement operations to attend a BARS program.
    
    For several years prior to Red Flag the state has been using two other pieces that were developed to educate retailers about youth access laws and penalties. They are the “Check That Photo Id” brochure and signage to be placed at the point of sale stating “NC Law Strictly Prohibits the Purchase of Tobacco Products to Persons Under the Age of 18 Proof of Age Required” N.C.G.S 14-313. These materials have been widely distributed by ALE agents and local groups conducting merchant education activities. The signs are required by state law to be posted or the store owner could be fined. The signs are provided at no cost and are used by most retail outlets around the state. These materials, especially the signs are still being used in addition to the Red Flag materials.
    
    Red Flag is currently being evaluated (over the next year) by researchers at the University of NC at Chapel Hill to determine its effectiveness with retailers. It seems to be very promising based on early feedback from retailers who assisted in developing and testing the collateral materials. The program is designed according to what retailers stated would be beneficial to them in curbing tobacco sales to minors. They specifically wanted materials that could help them in training their employees. This innovative approach to age verification is superior to cumbersome existing systems that rely on retailer computation of customer ages based on their birth date. Additional information (via the internet) on the Red Flag Program is currently under construction and will be available soon.
    
    For additional information you may contact:
     
    • Margaret Brake, Director of Youth Tobacco Initiatives
      Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services, NC DHHS
      919.715.8296
      Margaret.Brake@ncmail.net
       
    • Carol Morris, Tobacco Coordinator
      NC Alcohol Law Enforcement
      919.715.1415
      cmorris@ncale.org
       
11. Rhode Island: Responsibility of Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals:
    
    "The merchant education tool we use is the Merchant Education Guide. It contains the law, best practices for educating employees & stats on tobacco. This has been distributed via mail the last few years. However, this year in an effort to save money it is posted as a PDF file on the website. A letter is sent annually at the beginning of each year from the director which explains the penalties for selling to minors. It also informs the vendor know where to access the Merchant Guide, Required Signage & the Synar Report."
    
    For more information, go to http://www.mhrh.ri.gov, click on Behavioral Healthcare Programs and then look for the PDF files provided.
     
12. Texas: The Texas Comptroller's Office has a packet sent to every tobacco retailer when they are issues a permit to sell tobacco products. The packet contains the required signs and information detailing the retailer's responsibility to prevent sales to minors. Additionally, the Comptroller's contracts with local law enforcement agencies to do enforcement and provides training to law enforcement. This training includes teaching them how to do an inspection of a retailer and help the retailer comply with the law, as well as when to cite retailers for non-compliance. Complaints of retailers selling to minors result in an inspection by staff from the Comptroller's office and, if indicated, the issuing of a citation.
     
13. West Virginia: WV Division of Tobacco Prevention (DTP) does not offer retailer education in our state. However, this is done through our ABCA, who gets $200K annually of MSA funding to do a "retailer education program". Although DTP has put forth recommendations to change ABCA's use of the (free, industry-backed) We Card Program as their retailer education, this has fallen on deaf administrative ears. Until this year DTP has funded some adjunct inspections and an alternative program. WV did not meet Federal Synar compliance inspections a few years back and paid a large penalty due to this. Our on-going inspections program done by ABCA does show significant increases in illegal sales to minors in the past few years.
     
14. Wisconsin: We use the WI Wins program to address youth access issues. Wisconsin Wins is a science-based, sensible strategy with a strong track record. Trained youth visit stores under adult supervision to perform tobacco compliance checks. If the clerk refuses the sale, or blocks access to a vending machine, this is a recognition visit. The supervising adult approaches the clerk or store manager to present recognition for doing the right thing. The recognition usually involves some tangible reward for the clerk, such as a gift certificate. What gets recognized and rewarded, gets repeated. If the clerk does sell, or does not block access to vending machines, the youth terminates the purchase attempt. This is a reminder visit. The clerk is either given a reminder about state law and the need for more clerk training is emphasized or issued a citation. The program is not aimed only at youth; it includes them and the community, too. Everyone is given a role in sharing the responsibility of protecting the health and safety of our youth. The program works to reinforce and recreate positive behaviors as a means of reducing negative behaviors, such as illegal tobacco sales to minors, or youth tobacco use. WIWINS puts a positive spin on tobacco control. The program includes a media campaign directed at the adults and young adults who sell tobacco products. This program has been very successful. Our non-compliance rate has dropped from around 30% to 8.6%.

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