INTERVENTIONS WITH RETAILERS TO REDUCE CIGARETTE SALES TO MINORS - A RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL

We aimed to determine the relative effectiveness of an education inter vention and a threat-of-enforcement intervention in reducing sales of cigarettes to under-age youth by randomly allocating 300 retailers in a nonmetropolitan region of New South Wales to: a control group with n o intervention; a minimal-intervention group, which. received an educa tional letter; and a maximal-intervention group, which received a thre at of enforcement followed by a visit from a public health officer. Re tailers were checked for compliance at pretest and post-test, six mont hs apart, by twelve 18-year-olds who were judged by independent raters to look younger. The retailers were surveyed by telephone at both tim es for knowledge, attitudes and self-reported sales practices. Neither intervention achieved significant improvements for the two key behavi oural outcomes: requiring proof of age and display of a warning sign. Neither was there an intervention effect on knowledge about the law Th e greatest improvement in the proportion of retailers who believed tha t the legal age should be 18 or over was in the minimal-intervention g roup, and both intervention groups were less likely than the control g roup at pest-test to think that it was acceptable to sell to a person who was nearly 18. There was poor overall compliance with the revised legislation at pre-test. The finding of a pretest-to-post-test improve ment but no differential intervention effect highlights the methodolog ical difficulties of such research. The interventions may, however, ha ve been partly successful in modifying the attitudes of retailers.