Spatiotemporal surveillance of tobacco-retailer inspections and underage sales in New Jersey, 2013 – 2025
Danlin YuAbstract
Introduction
Tobacco use remains a major preventable health threat. New Jersey conducts compliance inspections under contract with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to enforce federal tobacco laws and regulations. Linking inspection patterns to retailer environments and community characteristics can identify enforcement gaps and inform youth tobacco control.
Methods
We linked FDA compliance outcomes, National Neighborhood Data Archive densities of tobacco, vape, and convenience stores, and American Community Survey covariates for 654 ZIP code tabulation areas (ZCTAs), 2013 – 2025. Using Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation, we fitted Bayesian spatiotemporal models for inspection counts (Poisson, population offset) and underage-sales violations given inspections (binomial), with retailer, socioeconomic, spatial, and temporal effects.
Results
Across 8,502 ZCTA-years, 55,036 inspections identified 9,272 violations. After adjustment, inspection intensity was higher with population and convenience-store density and lower with income, poverty, Black population share, education, and unemployment. Among inspected ZCTAs, violation risk was higher with greater vape store density, poverty, and Black population share, and lower where inspection intensity was higher. Violation risk rose across periods in both the full and first-inspection samples while inspections declined, producing weak risk-enforcement alignment and high-risk, low-inspection mismatch in about 8% of ZCTA-years.
Conclusions
Spatiotemporal models reveal uneven inspection intensity and underage-sales risk across New Jersey. Aligning inspections with modeled risk, while pairing compliance checks with retailer education and support rather than intensified enforcement in already scrutinized disadvantaged communities, could strengthen youth tobacco control efforts.