Mon Dec 3, 2012 7:43pm EST
(Reuters) – Teens might be reduction expected to buy cigarettes during preference stores if they aren’t sole in plain steer behind a counter, according to a U.S. investigate conducted regulating a practical existence game.
“We know a sell sourroundings is a really critical place for tobacco companies to publicize and marketplace their products,” pronounced lead author Annice Kim, from a eccentric investigate hospital RTI International in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
“They’re prominently displayed during a indicate of sale, and it exposes all customers, including kids.”
Kim’s group wanted to exam a effects of covering adult such cigarette displays on teen selling and opinion, though a researchers couldn’t control a real-world examination since as of yet, no states have criminialized a displays – nonetheless some states are deliberation it to quell teen smoking.
So they designed a practical existence diversion and sent some-more than 1,200 youth, between age 13 and 17, into a unnatural online preference store.
Researchers asked them to name 4 equipment in a store: a break from a aisles, a splash from a coolers and dual products of their choice from a checkout counter.
In some scenarios, a cupboard behind a opposite prominently displayed cigarettes, while other teenagers saw a cupboard sealed and a arrangement lonesome up. Any teenagers that attempted to ask a assistant for cigarettes were denied since of age – though what a researchers were meddlesome in was how many attempted to ask.
Depending on other changes they done to a practical preference store, a researchers found that 16 to 24 percent of teenagers attempted to buy tobacco products when a arrangement was open, compared to 9 to 11 percent when it was closed.
In a post-virtual selling survey, either cigarettes were plainly displayed wasn’t clearly tied to teens’ perceptions of how easy it would be to buy tobacco products if a identical store indeed existed in their neighborhood, a researchers reported in Pediatrics.
However, 32 percent of girl pronounced they were wakeful cigarettes were accessible for sale when a arrangement box was sealed in their practical store, compared to 85 percent of those who had a open version.
“Policies that need retailers to store tobacco products out of view… could have a certain open health impact,” Kim told Reuters Health, adding that a investigate should be deliberate along with other evaluations of arrangement restrictions.
But tobacco control researcher Michael Siegel, from a Boston University School of Public Health, pronounced that while he thinks there is “strong justification” for stealing displays from youth, he’s not certain how most a investigate adds to a debate.
“It positively shows that tobacco displays get people to consider about cigarettes, that is what they’re there for,” pronounced Siegel, who did not take partial in a study.
“It can’t be extrapolated into genuine life, since in genuine life kids would go to a store when they wish to buy cigarettes,” he added, observant that he was puzzled there were many times when youths unresolved out during a preference store only motionless to have a cigarette since they were there and there was zero to do.
Rather, banning a displays will assistance forestall girl from being unprotected to selling by tobacco companies and shabby in their opinion towards smoking, he said. SOURCE: bit.ly/CxXOG
(Reporting from New York by Genevra Pittman; modifying by Elaine Lies)
More on: Health Medicine Network