Sistema de localización en base a los modelos paramétricos

schemes are briefly summarised in table 2.5 (Allen Consulting Group, 2002).

Table 2.5: Properties associated with various forms of licensing

Notification/regi stration Accreditation Negative licensing Positive licensing Notification x X X Prior approval X X Standards Optional X X X Enforcement or compulsion X X X

Source: Allen Consulting Group (2002)

A detailed discussion of the pros and cons of the different licensing schemes and on

implementation issues and best practices is beyond the scope of this report. The reader is instead referred to other documents on this topic, especially the report by the Allen Consulting Group (2002) commissioned by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing in Australia. (Positive) licensing of tobacco retailers is in place in five Australian states as well as in Singapore, Canada and 39 states of the United States. Moreover, in Europe, the licensing of tobacco retailers has been implemented in Finland and Hungary and proposed (but not implemented) in Norway. In France, a specific licensing system has been operating for many years, but license requirements do not include health-related community purpose conditions.

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, retailers do not need a license to sell tobacco, but they break the law by selling tobacco to someone under 18 years of age, and if they do so on a number of occasions they may lose their right to sell tobacco for up to one year. This is a form of ‘negative licensing’.

The focus of this paragraph will be on ‘positive’ licensing at the level of retailers because this is the form most of the tobacco literature addresses, although several countries have explicitly opted for a registration scheme (e.g., Scotland and Ireland), which is assumed to be less costly and creates less administrative burden. With a registration scheme, fees are usually minimal (and may not be a deterrent for stopping sales), and there is no assessment of retailers (‘they are simply included in a list’).

The implementation of licensing schemes has been described as a potentially effective instrument to achieve reductions in points of sale for tobacco. However, so far it has rarely been explicitly used as a tool to limit retailer numbers (Tilson, 2011; The Center for Public Health and Tobacco Policy, 2010; ChangeLabSolutions, 2012). This may be because government interventions in the tobacco market seem to be most easily justified when it concerns the protection of children and deterring youth from smoking (Allen Consulting Group, 2002), which seems to be the most cited reason for implementing license schemes (i.e., to improve enforcement of the legal age to sell tobacco

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products). In addition to licensing, a related instrument is ‘zoning’, which focuses not on the retailer itself but on the way land is used. As with licensing, zoning laws have been proposed to reduce tobacco availability, for example, by prohibiting the sale of tobacco within a certain distance from schools or youth-oriented facilities or in residential areas or by limiting the proximity of tobacco retailers to each other (www.Countertobacco.org; Tilson, 2011).

Tilson (2011) lists a number of ways a licensing system might serve to reduce the number and/or density of tobacco vendors (although this has been rarely done yet):

 by attrition

 by not permitting any new licenses or limiting the total number of licenses

 by not renewing the licenses of retailers who contravene tobacco laws

 by not granting new licenses to a particular class of trade (e.g., pharmacies)

 by holding a lottery for a limited number of available licenses

 by auctioning off the limited number of available licenses to the highest bidders.

Moreover, a licensing law could also prohibit licenses for tobacco retailers operating too close to a school or other areas frequented by youth or in residential areas (as with zoning laws).

Cohen & Anglin (2009) also suggest imposing a moratorium on the number of new licenses until a target has been reached (such as 10 per 20 square miles). They also mention that, ideally, licenses would be expensive, causing some retailers to abandon sales. These measures may result in a gradual reduction of retail outlets, allowing sufficient time to adjust for untoward effects but at the cost of potentially delayed health benefits.

2.4.2 Evaluation studies of licensing schemes

Thus far, only two studies in peer-reviewed journals could be identified that explore the effects of introducing (positive) licensing schemes (Bowden et al., 2014; Coxe et al., 2014). The first study suggests that increasing license fees may be effective in reducing some types of tobacco retail outlets (Bowden et al., 2014). The second (small scale) study showed that after implementing a (local) tobacco retail permit, with a four-fold higher fee compared to state retail license fees, there was an immediate reduction in density, proximity to schools, and overall tobacco retailers.

On the first of January 2007, the South Australian (SA) Government increased the annual fee for a retail tobacco license from 12.90 to 200 AUD (≈ from 8.8 to 136 euro; exchange rates as of April 2014), with annual indexation. Bowden et al. (2014) found that according to data from the SA Government Tobacco Licensing System database, the total number of retail licenses decreased by 24% from December 2007 to December 2009. This reduction occurred predominantly in

entertainment establishments, where 31% of the licensees recorded in 2007 no longer had a license in 2009, while 20% had reduced the number of points of sale within the same venue. The authors reported that this reduction might to some extent also be attributed to the implementation of an indoor smoking ban in entertainment outlets that sell liquor. There was almost no impact on other business types, which appeared to have much higher volumes of tobacco sales.

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