Secondary Source Validity for Enumerating Tobacco Retailers in Non-licensing States

Audience: About a dozen states do not have tobacco retailer licensing, making it difficult to identify stores for compliance checks and compute tobacco retailer density.  Secondary data sources like commercial business databases can be used to identify tobacco retailers, although no published studies to our knowledge describe this process. Those interested in determining tobacco retailer populations in non-licensing states will find this poster of interest.

Key Points:
A systematic field census identifying all tobacco retailers in three North Carolina counties was conducted in 2011 by driving all commercial roads to create a master list of 661 retailers, which was then compared with secondary data sources. ReferenceUSA was used to generate a list of potential tobacco retailers (e.g. gas stations, supermarkets; n=748) and combined with a list of stores visited for tobacco compliance checks from 2007-2010 by the North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement Division (ALE) (n=297).  ReferenceUSA identified 541 tobacco retailers, ALE identified 224 retailers and 68 new tobacco retailers were added in the field. Compared to the master list, ReferenceUSA identified 82% of all tobacco retailers compared to 34% for ALE.

Educational Experience: Using a commercial database has much higher sensitivity to identify the true tobacco retailer population than does a state compliance list. Combining the two lists improves sensitivity to 90%.

Benefits:

Given the rapidly changing tobacco retail environment, estimating tobacco retailer density is challenging in states without licensing. In North Carolina, and perhaps other states, a commercial database is a useful way to identify tobacco retailers for retailer density computations and enforcement operations.