Measuring changes in non-cigarette tobacco product availability following California’s statewide flavored tobacco sales restriction - a synthetic control method using retail scanner data

Abstract

Introduction California's statewide law restricting most flavored tobacco product sales could reduce youth tobacco use if policy-restricted flavored tobacco products were to be fully removed from the marketplace.Methods We used NielsenIQ retail scanner data to analyze changes in non-cigarette product availability among tracked brick-and-mortar California retailers from pre- to post-intervention (ie, the law's effective date, 12/21/2022). We assessed availability changes in electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), cigars, smokeless tobacco (SLT), and nicotine pouches by flavor category: explicit (eg, cherry), concept (eg, fusion), or unflavored (eg, labeled as "tobacco" or no flavor label). We employed a synthetic control method to create trends for a synthetic California that did not experience the law and compared these to actual California trends. We compared the ratio of the root mean squared prediction error (RMSPE) in the pre and post-periods between the main and placebo models. A larger value for the main compared to placebo models suggests an effect.Results Availability of ENDS, cigars, SLT, and nicotine pouches with explicit flavor names decreased more in California than in synthetic California from pre- to post-intervention; the post/pre RMSPE ratio was highest in California compared to each placebo model; the ratio for unflavored and concept flavor name categories in California was not consistently different from synthetic California.Conclusions Availability decreased among non-cigarette tobacco products with explicit flavor names, but hundreds of policy-restricted products remained available for sale during the first six months of California's law, suggesting stronger enforcement and compliance opportunities.