By Ryan Coffman, Tobacco Policy and Control Program Manager, Philadelphia Department of Public Health

As the Tobacco Policy and Control Program Manager with the Department of Public Health, I help patients from many backgrounds to quit smoking. Over the years, I have learned from my patients that illegally sold tobacco products play an important role both in them getting addicted to tobacco, and in making it harder for them to quit.

An overwhelming majority of the patients I counsel started smoking when they were teenagers. Often their first cigarette didn’t come from an older brother or sister or from their mom’s purse. It was the illegal tobacco sale by their local tobacco retailer that led them to become daily smokers, which in turn led to their serious medical issues.

These harms are not the same across all neighborhoods. In January 2020, PDPH revoked tobacco sales privileges for 149 tobacco retailers who had been caught selling to children between three and seven times over two years. Most of these stores were in low-income neighborhoods throughout the city. The same neighborhoods that are already hurting from higher rates of tobacco use and tobacco-related deaths also have higher rates of illegal tobacco sales.

As part of our ongoing commitment to protect our city’s children from illegally sold tobacco products, the health department is making the data of illegal tobacco sales available on Open Data Philly. This data will be updated monthly and will enable any member of the public or the press to search the tobacco sale violation history of the tobacco retailers in their neighborhood.  To make this search process easier, we created a dashboard to allow the user to filter the data according to date, number of violations, location, and other important features.

We must always remember that these essential laws are not in place to inconvenience tobacco retailers, but to protect the residents of our city from a deadly product. Ultimately, that illegal tobacco sale to a child could start a lifetime of nicotine addiction. That is someone’s child, and we all have an interest in protecting our city’s children.

If this concerns you, there is a quick and effective way that you can help your community to be safer and heathier. Any Philadelphia resident can hold all tobacco retailers accountable by reporting illegal sales. You can text “Smoke” to 474747, call 1-888-99-SMOKE or visit SmokeFree Philly.