"A lot of people are just doing the training now. [image-nocss] What little feedback we have is that it's very straightforward and easy to understand and to navigate, and that the information is extremely useful," NYACS President James Calvin told CSP Daily News.
Calvin said the program, which is run entirely online and was three years in the making, was launched because retailers found it difficult to schedule employees for the live classroom training. "Each person who gets behind the counter, you want to get them trained in order to protect yourself," he said. "But you can't do that if NYACS is only holding a classroom session once every quarter or once every six months and that classroom session is 30 miles awayand you have to pay those employees to travel to and from."
The course covers the health toll of tobacco, New York laws and policies, restricted tobacco products, penalties for prohibited sales, acceptable forms of identification, how to properly examine identification and spot fakes, how to confidently refuse sales, recently enacted U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) tobacco regulations and other tobacco topics.
Calvin described the training as very interactive. "It's not just a bunch of text, it is a store manager who is asking you questions, giving you information and requiring you to provide feedback. And there's interactive activities where you need to try to determine how old a certain customer is whose picture is in front of you, and if this person is under 24 years of age. And if you guess wrong, it explains why you might have guessed wrong... It's not dry and boring and tedious."
According to NYACS, 2,400 New York stores have been fined in the past 12 months for selling tobacco to minorswith nearly 100 having their tobacco and lottery licenses suspended for six months. (In New York state, penalties for underage tobacco sales have been made more consequential by suspending both licenses.)
The point-based system for retail tobacco enforcement works like this: The first time a store fails an undercover tobacco sting, the operator is fined $300 to $1,000, and assigned two points on its tobacco enforcement record. If a second time occurs within three years, the penalty is $500 to $1,500 and another two points. The store would then exceed the three-point threshold that results in forfeiting tobacco and lottery licenses for six months.
But if the employee who made the underage sale was previously trained and certified by a Health Department-approved providerlike the new online programthe store is only assigned one point for each of the violations. (The certification, and its license protections, cannot be issued retroactively.)
The cost of the training is $40 per person, with a $20 discount for NYACS and FIANYS members.
Calvin added: "It's very useful and very practical, and we think it will be very effective in training employees how to prevent underage sales and in protecting the licenses of retail operators."
To access the training portal, visit www.responsibleretailersofny.com.
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