Mapping Cigarette HotSpots: Reducing Youth Tobacco-Sales with Statistics and GISMapping

Mapping Cigarette HotSpots: Reducing Youth Tobacco Sales with Statistics and GIS Mapping. Audience: Youth Tobacco Prevention, Tobacco Enforcement, Survey researchers Key Points: Use GIS mapping and statistical methods to focus efforts to reduce tobacco sales to youth. Educational Experience: Better understand geographical and statistical correlations with low retail violation rates of tobacco sales to minors. Benefits: Reduce tobacco sales to youth in America. In 1992, Congress implemented the Synar Act, which required States, as a condition of receipt of their Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant, to enact and enforce laws prohibiting the sale or distribution of tobacco products to individuals under the age of 18. Regulations were issued to provide guidance to the States in 1996; the national baseline estimate of stores selling tobacco to youth (retailer violation rate, RVR) was 40.1% (weighted by State population). The survey was repeated annually since. By 2010, the national weighted RVR had dropped to 9.3%. The aim of this work is to identify key indicators that may have influenced this substantial drop in the national RVR, including components of the regulation (i.e. enforcement , inspection protocol) and environmental factors related to retail sales (i.e., increase sales tax, policy changes). We also examine the impact that GIS mapping may have in a State’s planning process and how a State can combine statistics with GIS mapping to better focus their efforts to reduce high retail violation rates in high violation rate areas and to reduce costs of the survey without compromising statistical rigor.