Tobacco Industry Monitoring in California

Tobacco marketing influences tobacco use initiation, maintenance of use, and undermines comprehensive tobacco control programs. Policies to ban the impact of tobacco marketing are more effective if they are comprehensive, as partial bans shift marketing to non-banned forms of media. A comprehensive approach to reducing tobacco marketing includes documentation through monitoring, media and policy interventions, and aggressive enforcement of existing laws. The California Tobacco Control Program integrated tobacco industry monitoring with the implementation of mass media campaigns, policy enactment, and enforcement. This paper summarizes the results of tobacco industry monitoring of events and retail outlets, and findings about exposure to and beliefs about tobacco industry marketing among youth and adults conducted during the period 2000 through 2008. There was no overall change in the average number of cigarette materials per store, and an increase in the percentage of stores with advertisements promoting price discounts for cigarettes. Stores with cigarette advertisements near candy displays declined from 12.5% (95% CI: 9.8%,15.2%) to 1% (95% CI: 0.2%, 1.9%) of stores, and advertisements at or below the eye-level of children declined from 78.6% (95% CI: 75.2%, 82.0%) to 31% (95% CI: 27.1%, 34.9%) of stores. Overall, the number of public events with tobacco sponsorship declined from 77.3% to 48.1%. This trend was consistent with a significant decline in exposure to see tobacco advertisements at events or attending a tobacco sponsored event reported by high school students and adults. California's experience has implications for the implementation of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.