The farther away tobacco shops are, the more likely smokers are to quit, a new study in Finland shows.
Researchers discovered that for every 500-meter (around a third of a mile) increase in distance to a tobacco shop, a smoker’s odds of quitting went from 20% to 60%, Fox News reports.
Dr. Mika Kivimaki, senior author from the University College London and the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, says that they did expect distance to be a factor in smoking. “But it was a surprise that the association was so strong,” he says.
For the study, Kivimaki and a team put together the results of two prior studies that included more than 20,000 smokers and former smokers in total. Study participants answered smoking behavior surveys two times, three to nine years apart. The researchers geocoded the participants’ residential addresses and locations of their nearest tobacco stores.
When the two studies started, there were 6,259 smokers in one group and 1,090 in the other. By the second survey, 28% and 39%, respectively, had stopped smoking.
Between the surveys, 39% of the participants had also switched residential addresses.
Those who transferred at least 500 meters more from a tobacco shop were around 16% more likely to quit smoking than people who remained at the same distance from the nearest store.
On a personal level, individuals who moved 500 meters farther away during the study were 57% more likely to stop smoking after the move, even when risk factors for relapse such as marriage, health status, and financial situation were added to the equation.
Of the ex-smokers who started the study, around 7% had relapsed by the second survey, though this relapse was not linked with distance to a tobacco outlet, according to the researchers.
Kivimaki told Reuters, “Perhaps, a longer distance to a tobacco shop makes the decision to quit smoking a bit easier.” Moving away from a tobacco source, or removing a source close by, increases the odds of quitting — something policymakers might be able to use, he says.
Our findings are consistent with a more general principle, ‘Make the healthier choice the easier choice,’
Kivimaki adds, pointing out that reducing the availability of tobacco products is in sync with public health policies, and that their findings support these.
It’s not clear, however, if the same results apply to workplaces, or only to residential areas, Kivimaki admits.
Dr. Cheryl Bettigole and Dr. Thomas Farley, both from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, wrote a commentary accompanying the study that says, “We can now conclude that tobacco outlets and the heavy dose of tobacco marketing they dump into their communities cause smoking – more precisely, they inhibit quitting among smokers.”
In the United States, they add, there are some policies that try to address the risk factors of smoking retail outlets. For example, New Orleans limits the number of tobacco shops near schools, and San Francisco has a cap on the number of tobacco licenses granted to every supervisorial district.
The study was published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
