September marks We Card Awareness Month, and the program's 31st annual campaign is directing retailers to treat this month as a structured compliance checkpoint — not a symbolic gesture — as FDA enforcement of age-restricted product sales continues to intensify.
For convenience stores, tobacco outlets, and any foodservice or hospitality retailer selling tobacco, vapor, or nicotine pouch products, the message is pointed: compliance requires ongoing action, not a single annual training. Governors' proclamations and letters of support from a growing list of states are backing the campaign, giving it visibility beyond the trade community and into the broader regulatory conversation.
Five Priorities for September
We Card has outlined five concrete steps retailers should execute this month. The first two are foundational: train newly hired employees and run refresher courses for veteran staff, covering FDA requirements alongside applicable state and local laws, and update in-store signage and reference materials so compliance expectations stay front-of-mind on the floor.
The third priority moves into measurement. We Card recommends mystery shopping assessments — including its own ID Check-Up program, which uses age-eligible mystery shoppers and online reporting tools — to verify that employees are consistently carding customers or scanning IDs according to store policy. Knowing a policy exists is not the same as knowing whether staff are following it.
Step four asks operators to compare current procedures against We Card's Guide to Best Practices, a free resource accessible after completing a brief survey. Reviewing policies against a recognized benchmark can surface gaps that routine day-to-day operations tend to obscure.
Social Sourcing: The Off-Shelf Risk
The fifth priority addresses a challenge that no point-of-sale system can fully solve: social sourcing. Research cited by We Card shows that underage individuals often obtain tobacco, vaping, and nicotine pouch products not through direct retail purchases but through gifting, proxy purchasing, sharing, or borrowing from of-age adults. The program encourages retailers to deploy in-store awareness materials that explicitly discourage adults from purchasing or providing these products to minors.
"September's We Card Awareness Month is the time to ramp up and renew retailer compliance efforts on federal law and FDA requirements as well as state and local requirements for responsibly retailing age-restricted products," said David Spross, Executive Director of the National Association of Tobacco Outlets and a We Card board member.
Doug Anderson, president of The We Card Program, Inc., framed the month as a reflection of year-round effort: "Awareness Month is a chance to highlight the year-round work retailers do to card customers, train employees, and help prevent underage access to tobacco, vaping and nicotine pouch products."
For operators managing restaurant and hospitality compliance alongside other regulatory demands, the We Card framework offers a transferable model: document procedures, train consistently, measure performance, and revisit as rules evolve. Retailers tracking broader beverage and age-restricted product trends will find the FDA enforcement emphasis increasingly relevant as nicotine product categories expand and scrutiny sharpens across all retail channels. Training tools and compliance resources are available at wecard.org.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
