The We Card Program, Inc. is a national non-profit organization serving the nation's retailers of tobacco and other age-restricted products. Individual retail establishments as well as large retail chains utilize We Card's educational and training services to comply with federal and state laws while working to prevent underage tobacco and age-restricted product sales. National and state retail trade associations, government officials, community groups and others also support We Card's ongoing efforts to educate and train retailers.
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FAQ
1. What is The We Card Program, Inc.?
2. What is We Card’s mission?
We Card's mission is to provide retailers with training and educational tools to help them in their efforts to prevent underage sales of age-restricted products, such as tobacco, e-cigarettes, vaping products and alcohol products.
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 award-winning online training and in-store training tools. We Card online training offers three training courses (Employee, Refresher & Manager) with gaming, role-playing and customer-cashier scenarios, carding practice and calculating age all from a behind-the-counter perspective. The Employee Training Course includes state-specific law summaries, FDA content on the federal law and FDA regulations’ requirements of retailers along with an end-of-training test and a Certificate for those who complete and pass the test.
We Card courses are available for licensing to retailers. If your store or chain wants to deploy We Card courses internally – on your Learning Management System (LMS) or company-owned workstations – contact We Card for licensing information at support@wecard.org.
- Education: We Card provides retailers with various tools such as guidebooks and tip sheets to help employees learn how to refuse underage tobacco, e-cigarettes, vaping products, and alcohol 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 cashiers 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, e-cigarettes, vaping products and alcohol products. Cashiers 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 age-restricted products.
5. Is your program a success?
The We Card program has provided retailers with over 1.2 million in-store educational kits and has trained over 674,000 retail employees nationwide. No other single age-restricted product 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 since 1997. 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.
