Review and Assessment of Retail Tobacco Data

IMPAQ worked with the Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) to validate their investigation management system and expand its scope to include data from other agencies, state and local governments, and the private sector. The enhanced system will allow CTP to understand and use its investigative resources more effectively, to help ensure retailers do not sell tobacco products to minors.

We validated and augmented CTP data while exploring opportunities to improve its use. This includes analyzing retailer violation rates at a regional level using geospatial and visually enhanced techniques. Our approach included using count-based anomaly detection and spatial event detection systems to look for data patterns that indicate events of interest. We identified important data gaps and investigated the potential for new, automated detection and monitoring capabilities that will assist the Office of Compliance and Enforcement fulfill its important mission.

Our team included research practice leads, senior research associates, and analysts with more than 60 years of combined research and data analytics experience.