2. What is the Coalition’s mission?

The Coalition’s mission is to provide retailers with training and educational tools to help them in their efforts to prevent underage tobacco sales. For this purpose, the Coalition developed the We Card program, a top-notch tobacco underage sales prevention training and educational program.

3. What does the We Card program offer?

The We Card program provides retailers with the tools to affect two main areas:

• Training: We Card provides retailers with a variety of ways to train their employees, including classroom training, retail chain training, on-line training, CD-ROM training and in-store training tools.
• Education: We Card provides retailers with various tools such as guidebooks, tip sheets, and training videos to help employees learn how to refuse underage tobacco sales. It also provides point of sale materials such as age verification calendars, decals, and other signage that can help to educate both retail employees and their customers about tobacco laws and asking for ID.
  

The training and educational tools focus on helping retailers teach managers and clerks about asking for ID, how to spot fake IDs, techniques on how to avoiding confrontations with customers, how to properly use age verification tools, and many more key tips on preventing the underage sale of tobacco. Retailer testing elements are also a part of many We Card items.

4. Why is merchant education important?

Merchant education is important because retailers are on the frontlines in the effort to reduce youth access to tobacco products. Clerks need the proper training and support tools to prepare them to carry out their job responsibly and effectively.

Further, many experts agree that merchant education and training is a key part of ensuring that minors don’t have access to tobacco products.

5. Is your program a success?

The We Card program has provided retailers with over one million in-store educational kits and has trained over 200,000 retailers nationwide. No other single tobacco sales and education program has been as widely accepted by the retail community. Feedback from retailers, government officials, and customers, as well as testing results from training, all tell us the program is valued highly and has earned a reputation for quality.

In addition, results from retail compliance checks conducted by state government agencies and reported to the federal government show that retail compliance rates have improved substantially nationwide over the past few years. Retailers should be commended for their efforts, whatever training and education program they are using.

Meanwhile, retailers have an ongoing need for training and education to meet the challenges ahead, and the We Card program continues to deliver quality training and education to retailers nationwide. To learn more about our successes, click here.