Challenge 21 / 25

Licensing Authorities recommends the use of Challenge 25 policies for all age restricted sales.
Challenge 25 is a store policy based on two simple principles:

• All staff serving customers should be trained to ‘think 25’. This means if a customer is seeking to buy an age restricted product (of any kind), the staff member should ask themselves the question – ‘does the person in front of me look like they might be under the age of 25 years?’ If the answer is yes, then they should ask the person for a valid proof of age. If the identification confirms they are over the legal age of purchase for that product, then it can be sold to them.
• The store policy is clearly communicated to customers, usually through the use of visible in-store signage

Proxy sales: It is offence for an adult to purchase alcohol, tobacco or nicotine inhaling products on behalf of someone under age. This is commonly called a ‘proxy sale’. You should consider adopting a common approach to identifying and preventing proxy sales across all age restricted products. It can be very difficult to know if an adult intends to buy an age restricted product for or on behalf of someone who is underage. Therefore, you are only expected to act when an obvious proxy sale is taking place.