The Finnish Grocery Trade Association is a group that includes almost all of the country's shops dealing in daily retail trade items.
At present, the "apparent age" benchmark is 23. Anyone who is judged by sales personnel to be 23 years old or younger must produce an ID before purchasing tobacco or alcohol. The legal age for sales of tobacco and the mid-strength alcoholic beverages sold in groceries is 18.
"We hope that age checks and showing IDs will become a more common practice, something that becomes a matter of course for both sales people and for customers," says the Association's director Ilkka Nieminen.
It is likely that the introduction of checking IDs for anyone who looks under 30 will slow down checkouts, especially in larger supermarkets.
