Maintenance of Community Change: Enforcing Youth Access to Tobacco Laws

Abstract

Youth access to tobacco remains a significant problem for this nation. Methods have been developed to reduce youth access to commercial outlets and these involve enforcement efforts of monitoring and fining merchant offenders. In the present study, over a three year period of time, readiness to participate in these types of enforcement programs were assessed in 11 communities. Several years after the research study was completed, enforcement activities were re-assessed. Findings indicated that those communities that had made the largest changes in community readiness to enforce youth access laws during the three year intervention were the ones most likely to continue enforcement activities into the follow-up period. There is a need to better understand how youth access to tobacco community-based interventions can be maintained.