Objective. This study documents the extent of tobacco ads in retail stores and evaluates its association with the comprehensiveness\nof local tobacco control policies in the state of Massachusetts, US. Methods. Using a two-stage cluster sampling method, we\nsampled 419 retail stores across 42 municipalities to assess the presence and count of nine mutually exclusive tobacco ad\ncategories. Tobacco ads by store type and municipality were analyzed using summary statistics and contingency tables. Regression\nmodels tested the association between the extent of tobacco ads and local tobacco control policy comprehensiveness. Results.\nOverall, 86.6% (n = 363) of all the retail stores had tobacco ads. On average, there were 6.7 ads per retail store (SD = 6.61) and 2804\nads across all the retail stores (range = 0 : 32). Retail stores had an average of three different categories of tobacco ads (mean = 2.98,\nSD = 1.84). Across all retail stores, the most frequent ad categories were power walls (80.0%) and e-cigarette ads (55.8%). Retail\nstores in municipalities with more comprehensive local tobacco control policies were more likely to have fewer tobacco ads\n(IRR = 0.92,p < 0.01) and a lower number of tobacco ad categories (OR = 0.88,p < 0.05). Conclusion. Municipalities can adopt\nmore comprehensive tobacco control policies to help limit the extent of tobacco retail advertising. This can ultimately reduce\nsmoking in their jurisdiction.
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