Factors Associated With Tobacco Sales to Minors

Abstract

After more than a decade of efforts to reduce youth access to tobacco, tobacco products remain widely available to adolescents through retail sources. In 1999, it was estimated that 3.76 million daily smokers aged 12 to 17 years consume an estimated 924 million packs of cigarettes per year, generating a retail value of $1.86 billion.¹ Surveys consistently show that minors believe they can easily obtain cigarettes,^2-4 and that adolescents can readily purchase tobacco in retail outlets.⁵ Curtailing easy youth access to tobacco is a crucial component in the primary prevention of tobacco use, and restricting retail sales is an important element of reducing youth access. Given that tobacco control resources are limited, it is important to understand the predictors of sales to minors and thus design efficient compliance check programs to identify retailers who sell tobacco to minors. This analysis of 110,062 compliance checks performed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was undertaken to determine what elements of the compliance check process are most likely to result in illegal sales and therefore might be used in formulating best practices for efficient checks.