Tobacco Product Availability

Co-chairs

Michael Chaiton, University of Toronto,
Roberta Ferrence, Executive Director, OTRU

Presenters

Lise Anglin, Russ Callaghan, Michael Chaiton, Rob Cunningham, Norman Giesbrecht, Emma Haydon, Anne Lavack, Bill Maga, Michael Perley

Brief Description

The policy potential for reducing the availability of tobacco is one of the basic areas of tobacco control that has not been adequately explored. This session will allow us to bring together tobacco control researchers, advocates and policy makers to discuss options for dealing with availability—one of the next frontiers of a comprehensive tobacco control strategy.

The objective is to engage the tobacco control community to use their expertise to move forward with best options. While support for availability issues has often been expressed, the working session provides a structured opportunity to discuss what policies should be pursued and how and when to proceed, based on the input of our experts and of the broad base of tobacco control researchers, practitioners, and decision makers who will participate. The feasibility of various options will be discussed.

This five-hour session will be held in two parts over the course of one day. The first part will consist of presentations that will briefly overview the use of policy to restrict availability in tobacco control and highlight results of availability restrictions in other fields. The second part will discuss barriers to change and next steps. A background paper describing the current state of restrictions in Canada will be pre-circulated.

We will draw on the expertise of the following policy experts: Anne Lavack will address issues related to marketing at point-of-sale within the larger context of industry marketing of tobacco; Lise Anglin will describe the current state of affairs with respect to tobacco availability, based on her work with Joanna Cohen; Norman Giesbrecht, and Emma Haydon will examine models in other fields, specifically those used for alcohol and illicit drugs; Russell Callaghan will discuss issues of alternative access sources. Michael Perley and Bill Maga will address political issues in implementation and next steps. The project will leverage the resources and convenience of the conference to maximize involvement of those present. We estimate that approximately 30 conference participants will attend the session and contribute to the discussion.

This session is also intended to raise awareness in the research and policy communities about policy options, and build partnerships between the tobacco control community and other fields by inviting experts who would not normally attend a tobacco meeting. The session is a key component of a larger project aimed at developing a full report on tobacco availability.

Expected Outcome

The results of the working session will form the basis for the recommendations of the larger project’s report and will ultimately result in an OTRU Special Report that will be disseminated to both the policy and the scientific communities and a journal article that will be submitted for publication.

Potential Impact

We expect that the recommendations from this session will lead to further research on options for limiting availability and evaluation of new restrictions on availability.

return to Concurrent Working Sessions Schedule