Abstract
BackgroundIn the US, denormalizing tobacco use is key to tobacco control; less attention has been paid to denormalizing tobacco sales. However, some localities have placed limits on the number and type of retailers who may sell tobacco, and some retailers have abandoned tobacco sales voluntarily. Understanding community norms surrounding tobacco sales may help accelerate tobacco denormalization.MethodsWe conducted 15 focus groups with customers of California, New York, and Ohio retailers who had voluntarily discontinued tobacco sales to examine normative assumptions about where cigarettes should or should not be sold, voluntary decisions to discontinue tobacco sales, and government limits on such sales.ResultsGroups in all three states generally agreed that grocery stores that sold healthy products should not sell tobacco; California groups saw pharmacies similarly, while this was a minority opinion in the other two states. Convenience stores were regarded as a natural place to sell tobacco. In each state, it was regarded as normal and commendable for some stores to want to stop selling tobacco, although few participants could imagine convenience stores doing so. Views on government's role in setting limits on tobacco sales varied, with California and New York participants generally expressing support for restrictions, and Ohio participants expressing opposition. However, even those who expressed opposition did not approve of tobacco sales in all possible venues. Banning tobacco sales entirely was not yet normative.ConclusionLimiting the ubiquitous availability of tobacco sales is key to ending the tobacco epidemic. Some limits on tobacco sales appear to be normative from the perspective of community members; it may be possible to shift norms further by problematizing the ubiquitous presence of cigarettes and drawing connections to other products already subject to restrictions.
Highlights
Denormalizing tobacco use through social norm change that ‘‘pushes tobacco use out of the charmed circle of normal, desirable practice’’ [1], p. 225 has been a key component of tobacco control, motivating smokers to quit [2] and protecting nonsmokers from second-hand smoke [3]
Several went further, arguing that convenience stores ‘‘should’’ sell cigarettes: York, and Ohio grocery stores and pharmacies that had voluntarily discontinued tobacco sales in the seven years prior to data collection. We identified these businesses through media accounts, information obtained from tobacco control organizations and departments of public health, and telephone inquiries to grocery stores and pharmacies; details have been previously published [7,9]
We identify speakers as male (M) or female (F), a current tobacco user (CTU), former tobacco user (FTU), or never tobacco user (NTU), and identify their particular focus group by number (e.g., FG1)
Summary
Denormalizing tobacco use through social norm change that ‘‘pushes tobacco use out of the charmed circle of normal, desirable practice’’ [1], p. 225 has been a key component of tobacco control, motivating smokers to quit [2] and protecting nonsmokers from second-hand smoke [3]. Some localities have limited the number and type of retailers that sell tobacco [5,6], and some retailers have voluntarily stopped selling tobacco altogether [7,8,9], including most recently CVS, the national pharmacy chain [10]. These developments may foreshadow the beginning of the denormalization of retail tobacco sales. Understanding community norms surrounding tobacco sales may help accelerate tobacco denormalization
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