Like other age-restricted products such as alcohol and tobacco, laws are being forced tremendously on cannabis retailers and failure to comply can be very costly for a business and its employees.
Fines of up to $1,000 or more for selling cannabis to a minor are typically handed to both the business and the employee who processed the transaction. It can be difficult for a small business and for the average employee earning minimum wage to come up with that kind of money. Add any legal fees that might be incurred depending on the number of violations and the mistake of selling to a minor can become a nightmare. Cannabis retailers can benefit greatly from an age-verification system like the Minor Decliner.
The Minor Decliner has proven to be effective for retailers selling age-restricted products like alcohol, tobacco and for institutions such as bars and casinos.
The idea came when the daughter of creator and president of Minor Decliner, Ron Tobb, was hired as an underage investigator for the purchase of tobacco at the age of sixteen. Tobb was shocked when she told him that nearly 25 percent of businesses were selling to her. Many of these incidents were a result of the employee struggling to calculate how old a person was based on the birthday on their identification. They would often give up and sell her the product.
More troubling for her was seeing the people crying while receiving fines for the illegal transactions that had transpired.
“A lot of these people are making minimum wage,” said Tobb. “It’s not easy for someone to come up with the money to pay for a fine for what is frankly a very avoidable mistake. We thought there had to be an easier way to deal with this. ”
On average, businesses face a one in five chance of selling to a minor. The risk and headaches only increase the more times an incident occurs at a location.
“I talked to a bar owner who had two violations and he had to sell his business,” said Tobb. “The goal of the Minor Decliner is basically to avoid it ever getting to this point and to act as insurance for a business against ever making the mistake of selling to a minor.”The Minor Decliner is an easy-to-use product that can be modified easily based on the products being sold. They offer specialized screens designed for the cannabis industry including:
- Cannabis graphics
- Different ages for both medical and recreational cannabis
- Advanced compliance logs – flexible for every state’s record and information retention laws
- Anti-pass back and same day visit management tracking
The one-time, $699 fee can save a business thousands in legal fees and headaches with virtually no margin for error. When a piece of ID is scanned, it tells the user the age on the ID in less than a second, making for a quick and risk-free transaction. The anti-pass back feature is useful for letting an employee or business owner know if a piece of identification has been used more than once in a specified amount of time and there is also a feature to ban certain people who have used their underage ID.
Understanding that fake identification is often used, Minor Decliner also offers an identification guide with education on how best to detect a fake ID.
It may be a while before medical or recreational cannabis use is fully accepted, so in order to maintain a good reputation, retailers should take all the precautions they can to ensure they are protecting their business and their workers.
For more information about the Minor Decliner and for product testimonials, visit www.minordecliner.com or call 888-310-4001.
credit:420intel.com