A recently published study by ASPiRE’s Amanda Kong and Joseph Lee found greater
tobacco and alcohol product availability in North Carolina communities with highly
concentrated racial or economic segregation. Researchers created a list of probable tobacco
retailers, along with a list of alcohol retailers from the state alcohol commission and
compared then to three census tract-level measures of race and economic segregation. “A
centralized agency overseeing tobacco and alcohol outlet permits and strategies to reduce
the retail availability of these harmful products (e.g., capping the number of permits) are
needed to intervene upon these inequities,” the authors concluded. Read the paper.