Association Joins the Retailer Age Verification Alliance
We’ve joined together with the Food Industry Alliance of New York State, the New York Association of Convenience Stores, and the Gaming Commission to launch the Retailer Age Verification Alliance to provide education regarding lottery age verification and help develop best practices to deny youth access to lottery products in order to prevent problem gambling. We also need your input so we can develop best practices for age verification.
While there’s a lot of attention in your business to preventing underage sales of alcohol, we want to remind you that the sale of lottery products are also age-restricted. The law prohibits anyone under twenty-one years of age from purchasing Quick Draw tickets in an on-premises licensed establishment, but for all other lottery products the law prohibits sales to those under eighteen years of age. Making an illegal sale of a lottery ticket to an underage person can be quite costly – not only does it put your lottery and liquor licenses in jeopardy, but it’s also a criminal offense.
Our alliance has developed a short, anonymous survey (enclosed) that we are asking our members who are lottery agents to complete. Your responses will inform future discussions to explore the challenges of age verification of lottery products. We’re also looking for volunteers to participate in focus groups the Alliance plans to conduct later this year. Call the State Association office at 518-436-8121 or email us at esrta@verizon.net to volunteer. Please return your survey by October 11th so we can include your input into our discussions.