The Scottish Retail Consortium has attacked the Scottish Executive's proposals to pilot a test-purchasing regime designed to catch retailers who sell age restricted products illegally. The trials will take place later this year in four areas in Scotland where children under the age of 16 will test purchase cigarettes. Consortium director Patrick Browne is urging the executive to take a different approach. "Illegal sales of tobacco have already fallen to the lowest figure ever recorded," he said. "The best way for the Scottish Executive to tackle under-age sales would be to speed up the introduction of a national voluntary proof-of-age card for young people so that retailers would not have to guess whether customers were under age." He said the existing card, the Young Scot card, is not being rolled out quickly enough. In addition, it fails to indicate to retailers if a customer is old enough to buy cigarettes because it applies only to those between the ages of 18 and 25, he added. {{NEWS }}