Ames and Story County are taking steps to alleviate the problem of high non-compliance rates in tobacco sales by implementing the Responsible Retailer Training Program.

The program has been in effect in Ames for a while to train alcohol sellers how to avoid selling to minors, and now the city is adding tobacco training to its syllabus.

“With the recent compliance checks on tobacco, now is a golden opportunity to start combining the two together,” said Lt. Rick Rewerts of the Story County Sheriff’s Office.

Rewerts said the county is implementing the program in 12 towns — all except Ames and Nevada, which already have similar programs.

The first training session for the county was held in Nevada about two years ago and only covered businesses with alcohol licenses, he said. Now the sessions are training tobacco sellers as well.

Rewerts said the sheriff’s office is sending letters to all alcohol and tobacco license holders in the 12 towns involved, inviting them to sit it on the training programs.

“We really want to push enforcement as well as education here,” he said.

Rewerts said he believes people will take this problem more seriously once they understand the criminal consequences for clerks and the civil consequences for stores selling alcohol or tobacco to minors.

“Having these training programs makes it a lot harder for people to say that they didn’t know anything about the consequences,” he said.

The program teaches managers and clerks what their responsibilities are, and shows them how to spot different types of fake IDs.

Mike Brennan, juvenile detective for the Ames Police Department, said the city has been holding training programs for alcohol license holders for a long time and now will be combining alcohol and tobacco training efforts.

However, Brennan said he thinks there’s a problem in getting retailers to send their employees to these programs, especially in Ames.

“We can’t make them go,” he said.

In the past, programs have been held at some bars or alcohol license-holding establishments in Ames, which has made it easier to get most of their employees there at once.

But it is difficult to get tobacco license holders to go to the programs because there are more than 60 in Ames alone.

“I don’t think that they feel that it is a real priority,” he said.

Brennan said he has found that many license holders who have had problems with employees selling to minors will force them to attend the programs.

“As we continue the compliance checks and people are caught selling to minors, maybe that will get retailers to get there,” he said.