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Audit of tobacco retail outlets in Hangzhou, China
  1. Ting Gong1,
  2. Jun Lv1,
  3. Qingmin Liu2,
  4. Yanjun Ren2,
  5. Liming Li1,
  6. Ichiro Kawachi3,
  7. on behalf of the Community Interventions for Health (CIH) Collaboration
  1. 1Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China
  2. 2Division for Chronic and Non-Communicable, Hangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Hangzhou, China
  3. 3Department of Society, Human Development and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  1. Correspondence to Liming Li, one of the Hangzhou Qian River Scholars, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University Health Science Center, 38 Xueyuan Road, Beijing 100191, China; lmlee{at}vip.163.com

Abstract

Objective To determine the prevalence of tobacco advertisements and warning messages at points of sale as well as to examine the density of tobacco retail outlets in neighbourhoods and around schools in Hangzhou, China.

Method Tobacco retail outlets (n=1639) in all food and tobacco specialty stores were observed objectively by trained students. Tobacco advertisements and warning messages were assessed with an audit, and stores' addresses were recorded with Global Positioning System coordinates. The distances (1) between all pairs of tobacco retail outlets (2) between each tobacco retail outlet and 15 middle schools were calculated to assess the density of tobacco retail outlets in neighbourhoods and around schools.

Results Among the 1639 tobacco retail outlets, <1% had ‘no sales to minors’ signs, 1.5% had tobacco warning messages, 28% had signs indicating tobacco sale and 12.4% had tobacco advertisements. For 48.7% of tobacco retail outlets, the nearest distances to other tobacco retail outlets were <50 m. For 80% of schools, there was at least one tobacco retail outlets within a 100 m radius.

Conclusion Tobacco advertisement in retail outlets is prevalent and the density of tobacco retail outlets is high in Hangzhou, China. Signs indicating ‘no sales to minors’ and tobacco warning signs are almost non-existent. These findings point to an urgent need for the enforcement of regulations on display of ‘no sales to minors’ and a new density standard for tobacco retail outlets based on protecting the public's health.

  • Tobacco retail outlet
  • advertisement
  • policy
  • density
  • environment
  • public policy
  • advertising and promotion

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Footnotes

  • Funding Community Interventions for Health is supported by a registered UK charity, the Oxford Health Alliance (OxHA) and facilitated by MATRIX Public Health Solutions Inc. For a full list of donors supporting OxHA, please go to http://www.oxha.org/. TG is also partly sponsored by China Scholarship Council.

  • Competing interests None.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.