Abstract
Youth smoking remains to be a major public health problem of Thailand that partly as a result of a law violation of tobacco retailer in the sale of cigarettes to youth or minors. This research aimed to explore associated and predicting factors of retailer related to tobacco sale to minors in Health Region 2. Independent variables were based on previous systematic review and qualitative research. This study gathered data through questionnaires asking opinions of a sample of 658 tobacco retailers taken through a multi stage sampling in Health Region 2. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, chi-square and multiple logistic regression analysis. The findings revealed 58.7 percent of tobacco sale to minors. The associated and predicting factors of tobacco sale to minors included duration of performing the retailer occupation (ORAdj=2.099), motivation about revenues from tobacco sales. (ORAdj=2.620), defined a youth differed from the law (ORAdj=1.993), conforming to social norms regarding the sale tobacco to minors (ORAdj=2.955), selling individual cigarettes or small packages (ORAdj=11.504), selling tobacco by self-service (ORAdj=3.825), facilitating customers to buy and smoke cigarette (ORAdj=2.392), and not asking buyer age before selling tobacco (ORAdj=1.734). The independent variables have a predictive value of 67.2 percent of the variance (Pseudo R2 = 0.672) in the behavior of selling tobacco to minors. These findings suggested that government agencies involved should strictly enforce the law in particular the ban on selling individual cigarettes or small packages and selling tobacco by self-service, together with enhancing retailer understanding on the content of tobacco control law.
