Abstract
BackgroundTobacco retailers are key players in the ongoing tobacco epidemic. Tobacco outlet density is linked to a greater likelihood of youth and adult smoking and greater difficulty quitting. While public policy efforts to address the tobacco problem at the retail level have been limited, some retailers have voluntarily ended tobacco sales. A previous pilot study examined this phenomenon in California, a state with a strong tobacco program focused on denormalizing smoking and the tobacco industry. We sought to learn what motivated retailers in other states to end tobacco sales and how the public and media responded.MethodsWe conducted interviews with owners, managers, or representatives of six grocery stores in New York and Ohio that had voluntarily ended tobacco sales since 2007. We also conducted unobtrusive observations at stores and analyzed media coverage of each retailer’s decision.ResultsGrocery store owners ended tobacco sales for two reasons, alone or in combination: health or ethics-related, including a desire to send a consistent health message to employees and customers, and business-related, including declining tobacco sales or poor fit with the store’s image. The decision to end sales often appeared to resolve troubling contradictions between retailers’ values and selling deadly products. New York retailers attributed declining sales to high state tobacco taxes. All reported largely positive customer reactions and most received media coverage. Forty-one percent of news items were letters to the editor or editorials; most (69%) supported the decision.ConclusionVoluntary decisions by retailers to abandon tobacco sales may lay the groundwork for mandatory policies and further denormalize tobacco. Our study also suggests that high tobacco taxes may have both direct and indirect effects on tobacco use. Highlighting the contradictions between being a responsible business and selling deadly products may support voluntary decisions by retailers to end tobacco sales.
Highlights
Tobacco retailers perpetuate the tobacco problem [1]
Tobacco outlet density increases the likelihood of smoking among minors and adults [2,3,4,5], and living in close proximity to tobacco outlets makes quitting more difficult [6,7]
Particular population groups appear to be more likely to be exposed to tobacco retailers, with research noting a heavy concentration of tobacco retailers near schools, in economically and socially deprived neighborhoods, and in neighborhoods with high proportions of African Americans and Hispanics [2,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]
Summary
Tobacco outlet density increases the likelihood of smoking among minors and adults [2,3,4,5], and living in close proximity to tobacco outlets makes quitting more difficult [6,7]. One explanation for these observed relationships is the presence of tobacco advertising and tobacco displays in tobacco retail outlets, which normalize and promote tobacco use [8,9,10,11,12] and trigger smoking urges among smokers and former smokers [12,13]. We sought to learn what motivated retailers in other states to end tobacco sales and how the public and media responded
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