SynthesisPloS one2016
"May I Buy a Pack of Marlboros, Please?" A Systematic Review of Evidence to Improve the Validity and Impact of Youth Undercover Buy Inspections.
Synthesis in PloS one, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- E-Cigarette Sales to School-Uniformed Adolescents in China: A Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA network open · 2025Trial
- Mystery shopping of tobacco, nicotine and alcohol products in 20 European countries: a cross-sectional study in the JAPreventNCD project.European journal of public health · 2026Article
- "You're Not a Cop, Right?" How Tobacco Retailers Navigate Underage Tobacco Purchases at the Point of Sale: A Qualitative Analysis of Underage Buyers' Comments from Three U.S. states.Substance use & misuse · 2026Article
- Evaluations of Compliance With California's First Tobacco Sales Bans and Tobacco Marketing in Restricted and Cross-Border Stores.Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco · 2024Article
- "If You Just Tell Me You're 18, I'll Still Sell to You": A Qualitative Study of Underage Tobacco Product Purchasing Experiences in a Tobacco 21 Compliance Study.Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco · 2024Article
- Retailers' Compliance with Federal Age of Cigarette Sales Policies -- Pitt County, North Carolina, January-March 2022.North Carolina medical journal · 2024Article
- Rates of Age Verification for Cigarette and E-cigarette Purchases as a Function of State T21 Laws Before and After Implementation of the Federal T21 Law in the United States.Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco · 2023Article
- Assessing the Effectiveness of Tobacco 21 Laws to Reduce Underage Access to Tobacco: Protocol for a Repeated Multi-Site Study.Methods and protocols · 2023Article
- Using place-based characteristics to inform FDA tobacco sales inspections: results from a multilevel propensity score model.Tobacco control · 2022Article
- Underutilisation of no-tobacco-sale orders against retailers that repeatedly sell to minors, 2015-2019, USA.Tobacco control · 2022Article
- Retailer Compliance With Tobacco 21 in New Jersey, 2019-2020.JAMA network open · 2022Article
- Inequalities in Tobacco Retailer Compliance Violations Across the State of Oklahoma, 2015-2019.Journal of community health · 2022Article
- Evaluation of neighborhood deprivation and store characteristics in relation to tobacco retail outlet sales violations.PloS one · 2021Article
- Development of a tobacco 21 policy assessment tool and state-level analysis in the USA, 2015-2019.Tobacco control · 2020Review
- Assurances of Voluntary Compliance: A Regulatory Mechanism to Reduce Youth Access to E-Cigarettes and Limit Retail Tobacco Marketing.American journal of public health · 2020Article
- Youth source of acquisition for E-Cigarettes.Preventive medicine reports · 2019Article
- Assessment of the US Federal Retailer Violation Rate as an Estimate of the Proportion of Retailers That Illegally Sell Tobacco to Adolescents.JAMA pediatrics · 2018Article
- Comparison of Sampling Strategies for Tobacco Retailer Inspections to Maximize Coverage in Vulnerable Areas and Minimize Cost.Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco · 2018Article
- Longitudinal study of adolescent tobacco use and tobacco control policies in India.BMC public health · 2018Article
- Limited indications of tax stamp discordance and counterfeiting on cigarette packs purchased in tobacco retailers, 97 counties, USA, 2012.Preventive medicine reports · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Most smokers become addicted to tobacco products before they are legally able to purchase these products. We systematically reviewed the literature on protocols to assess underage purchase and their ecological validity. We conducted a systematic search in May 2015 in PubMed and PsycINFO. We independently screened records for inclusion. We conducted a narrative review and examined implications of two types of legal authority for protocols that govern underage buy enforcement in the United States: criminal (state-level laws prohibiting sales to youth) and administrative (federal regulations prohibiting sales to youth). Ten studies experimentally assessed underage buy protocols and 44 studies assessed the association between youth characteristics and tobacco sales. Protocols that mimicked real-world youth behaviors were consistently associated with substantially greater likelihood of a sale to a youth. Many of the tested protocols appear to be designed for compliance with criminal law rather than administrative enforcement in ways that limited ecological validity. This may be due to concerns about entrapment. For administrative enforcement in particular, entrapment may be less of an issue than commonly thought. Commonly used underage buy protocols poorly represent the reality of youths' access to tobacco from retailers. Compliance check programs should allow youth to present themselves naturally and attempt to match the community's demographic makeup.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.