The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: State and local policy initiatives play an integral role in preventing and controlling tobacco use in the United States. For this reason, and to evaluate the effect of state tobacco policy mandates on the public health, information on tobacco control laws is of interest to the public health community, tobacco control researchers and many others. This poster will provide an overview of the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) State Cancer Legislative Database (SCLD), demonstrate the nature and extent of SCLD tobacco information, and discuss using the SCLD as a research tool.

Methods: NCI has tracked tobacco legislation for many years, and since1989, the SCLD Program has monitored such measures in-depth. The SCLD, available for public use on the Internet at www.scld-nci.net, allows users to locate synopses of state-level bills and statutes via text or keyword searches.

Results: On November 30, 2005, the database contained over 3,300 tobacco-related records, including 1,116 youth access, 843 clean indoor air, and 787 related to excise taxes and other topics. While other notable tobacco control legislative databases exist, SCLD is often considered an authoritative source for detailed qualitative analyses of state laws. SCLD provides the contextual information necessary for understanding some policy nuances. Recent uses of SCLD data include using SCLD ratings data to assess the relationship between state laws and tobacco-related behavior changes; and developing articles such as, Krauss M, Mueller N, Luke D. Interorganizational relationships within state tobacco control networks: a social network analysis. Prev Chronic Dis [serial online] 2004 Oct [date cited].