BACKGROUND: In 2022, Queensland and Victoria were the only Australian states to have not implemented a tobacco retailer licensing scheme and register. This novel study aimed to develop a prototype system to periodically collect and consolidate geolocations of tobacconists and/or vape retailers (TVRs) in Queensland over 12-months to explore retailer growth.
METHODS: The ‘Text Search’ function on Google Maps application programming interface (API) was used to return business information based on a string query with a specific latitude and longitude coordinate (search points) sourced from the Australian Postcode Database (n=3481). Searches of TVRs were repeated monthly on or around the same date from July 2022 to June 2023, and results were placed in a PostreSQL database. Retailers that likely sold tobacco products but were not specialty stores (e.g. supermarkets) were excluded. Two team members independently and manually checked, confirmed, and categorised ‘New’ entries.
RESULTS: From July 2022 to June 2023, confirmed operational TVRs across Queensland increased by 14.3% from 624 to 713, a mean of 7.4 new stores per month. Of the total stores collected in July 2022, 71.5% were manually confirmed as TVRs. The proportion of new entries confirmed as TVRs increased between March and June 2023 from 40% to 86.7%. Most confirmed stores were ‘tobacco only’ but the number of confirmed TVRs categorised as ‘tobacco and vape’ and ‘vape only’ increased and decreased, respectively, over 12-months.
CONCLUSIONS: The prototype system developed in this study effectively identified and tracked the longitudinal growth of specialty tobacco/vape stores in Queensland. As the database grew, false positive results decreased as evidenced by the monthly increase in the proportion of confirmed new TVRs. Results can provide baseline and ongoing data to assist compliance with the Queensland smoking product licensing scheme, and longitudinal data to supplement evaluations of the state and federal supply policies.