You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 31, Issue 1
  • Identifying best practices in adoption, implementation and enforcement of flavoured tobacco product restrictions and bans: lessons from experts

Article Text

Article menu
Original research
Identifying best practices in adoption, implementation and enforcement of flavoured tobacco product restrictions and bans: lessons from experts
  1. Katherine Peck1,
  2. Rebekah Rodericks1,
  3. Lola Irvin2,
  4. Lila Johnson2,
  5. Jill Tamashiro2,
  6. Lance Ching2,
  7. Tetine Sentell1,
  8. Catherine Pirkle1
  1. 1 Office of Public Health Studies, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i, USA
  2. 2 Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Division, Hawai'i State Department of Health, Honolulu, Hawai'i, USA
  1. Correspondence to Rebekah Rodericks, Office of Public Health Studies, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA; rebekah7{at}hawaii.edu

Abstract

Objective To identify recommended components for adopting, implementing and enforcing bans or restrictions targeting flavoured tobacco products.

Methods Between April and June 2019, semistructured interviews were conducted with 17 high-level experts across the USA and Canada with expertise in flavoured tobacco product policies. Participants included health department staff, researchers, legal professionals and local government officials. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed for key themes.

Results Major findings were organised into four categories: programme planning and legislative preparations; education and community outreach; implementation and enforcement; and policy impact. Critical pre-implementation elements included using comprehensive policy language, identifying enforcement agents, examining potential economic costs, deploying media campaigns and engaging community partners and retailers. Recommended implementation processes included a 6-month preparation timeline, focus on retailer education and clearly outlined enforcement procedures, particularly for concept flavours.

Conclusions Flavoured tobacco policies have successfully limited sales, withstood legal challenges and become more comprehensive over time, providing useful lessons to inform ongoing and future legislative and programmatic efforts. Identifying and sharing best practices can improve passage, implementation, efficacy and evaluation of flavoured tobacco policies.

  • public policy
  • non-cigarette tobacco products
  • prevention

Data availability statement

Data are available upon reasonable request. Deidentified data may be provided for public health-related requests that include reasonable justification.

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2020-055884

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Data availability statement

    Data are available upon reasonable request. Deidentified data may be provided for public health-related requests that include reasonable justification.

    View Full Text

    Supplementary materials

    • Supplementary Data

      This web only file has been produced by the BMJ Publishing Group from an electronic file supplied by the author(s) and has not been edited for content.

    Footnotes

    • Contributors KP and RR were responsible for designing the study, conducting interviews, overseeing the qualitative analysis and drafting the article. TS and CP advised on conceptualising and designing the study, developing a plan for qualitative analysis, and assisted with editing the article. LJ, JT, LC and LI assisted with conceptualising the study, interpreting the data and editing the article. All authors contributed substantially to article preparation, reviewing and approving the final product.

    • Funding This project was funded by the Hawai'i State Department of Health’s Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Division, through a contract with the University of Hawai'i’s Office of Public Health Studies, Healthy Hawai'i Initiative Evaluation Team.

    • Competing interests None declared.

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