Research should continue to determine if there are more effective ways of curtailing the sale of tobacco to minors. Currently local, state, and federal governments bear the entire burden of ensuring that tobacco is sold in compliance with the law. Research is needed to determine if blog post there are practical ways of shifting some of this burden onto the manufacturers that place tobacco products into commerce. It has been suggested that tobacco companies could be required to maintain control of their products through to the point of sale to prevent smuggling and the illegal sale to minors. This proposal would require manufactures to limit the sale of their products to retailers that are official manufacturer-licensed distributors.

Manufacturers would be required to inspect their own licensees and prohibit the sale of their product by those that repeatedly sell to minors. Legal research is needed to determine if state governments have the authority to enact such a requirement. Research is needed to identify licensing models that are used for sales, distribution, or repairs of other products to determine if tobacco dealership licensing by the manufacturers is feasible. Tobacco products are arguably the most widely available consumer product in terms of the number of outlets available. Research is needed to determine the feasibility of states passing laws to limit the number of tobacco outlets in a community as is routinely done with alcohol outlets and to determine the potential public health benefit of such a policy.

Research is needed concerning the feasibility of states limiting tobacco sales to government-owned stores to ensure compliance with the law. Research is needed to determine if government-owned stores comply with alcohol sales restrictions better than privately owned stores. The FDA regulations sidestep the issue of licensing of retailers by providing that the FDA can issue an order to stop selling tobacco. However, the lack of a licensing system makes it time consuming to locate tobacco outlets for inspection purposes and makes it very difficult to ascertain to whom violation notices should be addressed. Research is needed to determine the potential impact of a federal tobacco retail license requirement. Considerations include the feasibility of this approach, the cost of implementing licensing nationally, and how much money federal licensing of retailers would save federal and state taxpayers by reducing inefficiencies in enforcement programs.

The optimum frequency at which inspections should be conducted has not been determined (DiFranza, 2005a; Jason, Billows, Schnopp-Wyatt, & King, 1996). Some states such as Florida obtain excellent Drug_discovery results through inspecting only 20% of retailers each year. Others try to inspect every retailer quarterly. Smaller fines appear to require more frequent inspections.