Researchers from the ASPiRE team at the University of North Carolina, led by ASPiRE’s Shelley Golden, developed a protocol to identify U.S. tobacco retailers between 2000 and 2017. Using industry codes and retailer names from a national database, they calculated annual counts of tobacco retailers, together with retailer openings and closings. They found a net increase of 12% over this period overall, from over 317,000 retailers in 2000 to over 356,000 in 2017, with a peak of over 412,000 in 2009. These trends may be useful for forecasting or evaluating potential policy impacts. Read the paper.