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Abstract
Objective A prospective evaluation of the effect of 2012 point-of-sale (PoS) display ban in supermarkets in England on perceived exposure to PoS displays, and on changes in susceptibility and smoking uptake among young people.
Design Cohort study.
Settings Seven schools in Nottinghamshire, England.
Participants 1035 11–16-year-old school children.
Primary and secondary outcome measures Changes in reported exposure to PoS displays before and after prohibition, and the association between exposure to and awareness of PoS displays and change in susceptibility to smoking and smoking status between 2011 and 2012 (before the ban) and 2012 and 2013 (after the ban).
Results The proportion of children noticing tobacco PoS displays in supermarkets most or every time they visited a shop changed little between 2011 and 2012 (59.6% (95% CI 56.6% to 62.6%) and 58.8% (95% CI 55.8% to 61.8%), respectively); but decreased by about 13 percentage points to 45.7% (95% CI 42.7% to 48.7%) in 2013, after the ban. However, after adjusting for confounders, implementation of the first stage of the PoS ban in 2012 did not result in significant changes in the relation between susceptibility to smoking and smoking status and exposure to and awareness of PoS displays.
Conclusions Prohibition of PoS in large supermarkets resulted in a decline in the proportion of young people noticing PoS displays in large shops, but little or no change in smoking uptake or susceptibility. It remains to be seen whether extension of the PoS ban to all shops in 2015 has a more marked effect.
- smoking
- point-of-sale displays
- susceptibility to smoking
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Footnotes
Contributors IB was involved in designing the study, collecting and analysing the data and drafting the manuscript. AM contributed substantially to the design of the work and revised and approved the manuscript. JB contributed substantially to designing the study, was involved in analysis of the data, contributed to drafting the manuscript and approved the manuscript.
Funding This work was supported by the Medical Research Council [grant number MR/K023195/1]; this study is funded by the Department of Health, Cancer Research UK and the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies (http://www.ukctas.net). Funding from the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council and the National Institute of Health Research, under the auspices of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, is gratefully acknowledged.
Competing interests None declared.
Ethics approval University of Nottingham School of Education Research Ethics Committee.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement Data available as part of this project will be managed (by UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies and shared according to the UKCTAS data management guidelines (available from: http://www.ukctas.ac.uk/ukctas/documents/datamanagement-guidelines.pdf). Anonymised data used for this study will be available from the main author on request. No additional data are available.