BANNING tobacco sales near schools and playgrounds across Scotland would cut the number of premises able to sell these products by more than 70%, according to a new study.
Researchers from the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh teamed up to examine ways of reducing the provision of cigarettes and similar products in Scotland.
They created virtual maps of the country’s 9030 registered tobacco retailers and examined how 12 different policies would affect their numbers.
These included restricting the type of shops allowed to sell tobacco, limiting areas where it can be sold or capping retailer numbers.
Stopping tobacco sales within 300 metres of child spaces – including schools, playgrounds and playing fields – would lead to a 70.7% cut in the number of licensed outlets selling tobacco, researchers found. They said this could aid efforts to prevent young people taking up smoking.
The researchers also examined how each approach would affect existing inequalities in tobacco availability, as previous studies have shown this is disproportionately higher in more deprived areas of Scotland than wealthier areas.
Banning sales near child spaces could reduce these inequalities, they said, as could stopping sales in small local shops or restricting sales to supermarkets.
A simulation of limiting sales to supermarkets led to the largest reduction in licensed outlets at 94.6%, followed by confining tobacco sales to off-licences at 94.1% or chemists at 86.6%.
But restricting sales to either off-licences or pharmacies could increase inequalities in availability, the researchers found.
Banning sales from pubs, restaurants and private clubs led to the smallest reduction in outlet numbers at 23.9%, with the second smallest capping numbers at a national average at 32.3% University of Edinburgh professor Niamh Shortt, principal investigator on the project, said: “We need to identify ways to reduce smoking rates, particularly in young people, the most recent data shows us that smoking rates in young people have levelled off and are no longer falling.”
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