BY Samantha Padisak & Luca Armano
Valeria Habib is a 16-year-old high school student that volunteered to be part of a social experiment to see whether alcohol was easily accessible to minors around downtown Montreal. We wanted to see what luck she would have buying alcohol, and it turns out it was uncommonly easy for her to do this.
High schooler Valeria Habib grabs a bottle of wine from a fridge at a depanneur in an attempt to see if she will get carded during our experiment. Photo by Samantha Padisak.
Data was gathered based on if Valeria Habib, a self-appointed mystery shopper, was carded or not at convenience stores. If the employee questioned Habib’s age or suggested she go elsewhere to buy alcohol without asking for a physical ID, this interaction was placed into the carded category.
Habib wore a headband with little clouds embroidered into it, and had a fluffy rabbit stuffed toy keychain attached to her bag, not altering her sense of style for the sake of the social experiment. After visiting five establishments, the teenager said she quickly realized very few corner shops had the will to card her, let alone ask follow up questions to her inquiries about the alcohol she was purchasing.
Carding Data Gathered from 10 Convenience Stores in Montreal’s Downtown Area. Infographic by Samantha Padisak.
Habib did not purchase alcohol at every location. We made sure to ensure the wine’s barcode was scanned and the payment method was asked for. Habib would then thank the cashier and inform them that she was not going to be completing her purchase due to her not liking the wine’s ingredients.
Quebec’s laws surrounding the distribution of products such as alcohol, but also tobacco, e-cigarettes and lottery tickets are part of the province’s adult-only purchases. The law requires a valid form of identification for buyers to access them.
In Quebec, anyone who appears under 25 can be carded for buying alcohol, but the drinking age is 18. Photo by Samantha Padisak.
“You get carded at the SAQ, any supermarket, why are depanneurs the exception?” asks Svetlana Crilova, a mother who lives near a high school and a depanneur, both within less than a hundred meters.
Crilova advocates for minors’ safety as she spent most of her youth teaching elementary and high school level students, and therefore believes in speaking out against the inconsistency of age-verification at convenience stores.
Yves Servais, the director general of the Association des marchands dépanneurs et épiciers du Québec (AMDEQ) says that corner stores are strictly enforcing ID checks for anyone appearing under the age of 25.
AMDEQ created new online training modules that would allow for all convenience store owners and their employees to access legal information without leaving their homes.
“We invested about $20,000 or so, and we made it available for free to all our members because the AMDEQ was getting fed up with receiving alarming calls from retailers,” Servais says.
The AMDEQ is responsible for training employees to check identification according to Servais.
Retailers that fail to comply may face fines, which are applied to the store rather than the association, since training modules are made available and required for employees across Quebec.
Convenience store owners encourage employees to card properly by reminding them to do so at the various steps before completing a transaction. Above the cash register, at the tobacco and lottery ticket sections, as well as any hidden surface from customers, there are various notes printed in bold. Photo by Samantha Padisak.
Sai Krishna has worked at a local depanneur in downtown Montreal for the past three years. He’s been managing the store and training employees when the owners were not present.
Krishna explains that the Quebec government sends out mystery shoppers – young adults who will try to buy alcohol or tobacco to see if they’ll be asked for ID.
“Mystery shoppers usually look for two things: how well the brand they are working for is selling, and if the rules are being followed.” Krishna says. “They often ask questions such as ‘What is the cheapest cigarette?’ as a way to make conversation.”
Stores found to be breaking the law can face fines of between $5,000 and $30,000. However, Krishna points out there is a problem with this system.
“The company lets us know beforehand, they let the owner know before coming to the store,” he says.
We ran a second experiment in the downtown area. The results are documented in the following embedded video.
Convenience store carding experiment: Deps are supposed to ID anyone that looks under the age of 25. We ran an experiment to see if that was the case. Video by Luca Armano.
