Clark County Performs Well on Wisconsin WINS Checks
Monday, January 21st, 2019 -- 1:28 PM
-The Clark County Health Department has recently completed the Wisconsin WINS Checks once again.I spoke with Rebecca Rosandick, Health Educator/Public Health Specialist, with the Clark County Health Department and she provided a refresher on what the WINS Program is.
“The Wisconsin WINS Program is a state level initiative and it’s designed to, ultimately, decrease youth access to tobacco. So, to prevent these sales form even happening and prevent tobacco from even getting into the hands of our Clark County Youth. So, this program aims to educate retailers on tobacco sales laws and also ensure that employees know how to properly check ID’s. So, I have sent out information on ID’s because ID’s do change over the years, so it’s getting the education out to retailers so they know what to look for and where to look for the birthdates.”
“So, since this campaign launch, in ‘02 I believe for this WINS Program, tobacco compliance checks have been conducted annually at the county level. And then during each compliance check, I work with two youth and they are under 18, or at least the one who attempts to make a purchase is under 18, and they just try and buy a pack of cigarettes or some other type of tobacco.”
The purpose of this program is not meant to entrap retailers, but to offer education and prevent the sale of these products.
“So, there are rules to the program. So, first I’ll start out with the state statute. So, State Statute 13466 prohibits the sale of tobacco products to anyone under the age of 18. Now, a product could be cigarettes, that vape juice, that e-juice, cigars, rolling paper, chewing tobacco, loose tobacco, etc. So, it’s to prevent the sale of these products.”
“So, how it works is I recruit two youth, I’ve worked with the health teachers in the past, and then they get parental consent. So, their parents do know what’s going on, which is probably a good thing! And then they come and we have just a half an hour of training up front. They are not allowed to coerce retailers or clerks. So, they can’t try and swing a sale. They have to be straightforward and honest. In general, they don’t carry IDs. The reason for this is because there’s no point in having their identity revealed, potentially. And I don’t want their ID to be, potentially, taken away or confiscated.”
“So, they don’t carry IDs. They just go and say and I want to purchase so-and-so. We hope that the retailers say, ‘nope, can’t do the sale’ and in most cases, that is true. The volunteers are expected to answer questions honestly. So, if a retailer were to ask when their birthday is, the volunteer has to be honest. They cannot lie and say that they are older then they are.”
“We do work with law enforcement. That is important to note. So, that’s local police departments as well as the Clark County Sheriff’s Department. About two days before these checks are conducted, I do let the sheriff’s or local police departments know and they are aware. And how they follow through after these checks is up to them. So, for example, if a retailer does sell, which it does happen, and we’ll get to that in a little bit, if the retailer has been generally pretty good in the past, if we haven’t hadn’t had any issues with them selling to minors, we recommend just a simple warning and I try to get that across to law enforcement.”
“And as it was mentioned, the point of this program is not to get people in trouble. It’s just to educate and, ultimately, prevent these sales to our youth.”
Clark County did very well in the most recent checks.
“So, I’m happy to report that, again, Clark County has done well. Historically, Clark County has done really well. And if we look at the surrounding counties, such as Eau Claire, Chippewa, Jackson, Taylor, Marathon and Wood, we actually have much better compliance rates than most of them. So, in 2017, we only had a sales rate of 3.2%, so that was only one sale in the entire county, whereas Eau Claire was at 6.5% for sales, Chippewa was 4.8%, which is also pretty low, Jackson was 40% actually, Marathon was 8.3%, and Wood was 10.7%. And, again, Clark was 3.2% in 2017. Looking at 2018, we did, unfortunately, have two sales this last year, which puts us at 5.7% for a sales rate.”
“So, this last year in 2018, there were a total of 35 planned checks. And these were all across the county from Abbotsford to Withee and everywhere in between. So, of those investigations, of those stops, 31 were successfully completed. By that I mean, the establishment was open and they in fact were still selling tobacco. We did stop at one place this year, which was a tavern in town, and they informed us they don’t sell tobacco anymore. So, that doesn’t count as a successfully completed check.”
“So, of the successful completions, we only had two sales. So, on the flip side, 29 of the retailers that we stopped at refused to sell tobacco to minors, which is excellent. And I would like to take a moment to recognize those retailers. So, starting in Abbotsford we would like to say thank you for not selling to minors to the Abbotsford Travel Stop as well as the Holiday. Chili, Chili Corners Club refused to sell. In Curtiss, Abbyland Truck Stop refused to sell. Dorchester was the CNEX Heartland Cooperative, so they will not sell to minors. In Granton, the Hilltop Tavern and the RNC Roadhouse did not sell. In Greenwood, we had Family Dollar, Kwik Trip and the CNEX that did not sell. In Loyal, there was the Kwik Trip and the BP. In Merillan, the Deerview Lodge refused to sell. In Neillsville here, we had the Drescher BP, Kwik Trip, Hansen’s IGA, Dollar General and Family Dollar. In Owen, we had Creek Side Convenience, OW Sports and Liquor Store, Scott and Lori’s Family Food and Dollar General. Thorp was the Family Dollar, the Express Mart, BP and the Thorp Super Value. In Willard, there was Ernie’s Rock Dam who did not sell and in Withee, the Withee Mobile Mart did not sell.”
Rebecca talked about what the department will do with this information moving forward.
“Moving forward, one thing that’s going to be different is next year, I think, we’re going to see if the minors can purchase the e-juice or a vape product. We have seen a significant increase, as I’m sure you’re aware, of adolescent usage of those product across the county, and across Wisconsin and across the nation. So, this year, we only attempted to purchase cigarettes. I think that is an area for improvement. I think there is education to be done regarding what exactly is e-juice or these vape products. So, that is one thing we’ll be changing in the future is attempting to purchase those.”
“But with these results, we just want to keep doing the positive promotion, saying thank you for not selling. For retailers that do sell, we want to recommend that they visit, it’s called Wisconsin Tobacco Check.org or witobaccocheck.org. On this website, they can receive free training for their employees that educates them on Wisconsin tobacco law and how not to sell to minors. After their employees learn about these things, they take a little quiz and they can actually can get a certificate saying they completed a course.”
“So that is what we hope to continue doing and, like I said, Clark County does a really amazing job as a whole in not having those illegal tobacco sales.”
Rebecca ended our interview by offering more words of encouragement for the job well done by Clark County retailers in regards to keeping tobacco out of the hands of minors.
“I think it truly is a wonderful program. We know that there still is youth access to tobacco. We can’t control everything. But, from the retailer perspective and out of the things that we can control, I do think that Clark County retailers are doing a very good job in training their employees and educating their employees in not having these sales to our youth.”
If you have any further questions on the program, you can contact the Clark County Health Department.
Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.