Previous systematic reviews have found consistent evidence of a positive association between exposure to point-of-sale (POS) tobacco promotion and increased smoking and smoking susceptibility among children and adolescents. No meta-analysis has been conducted on these studies to date.
Systematic literature searches were carried out to identify all quantitative observational studies that examined the relationship between POS tobacco promotion and individual-level smoking and smoking-related cognitions among children and adolescents, published between January 1990 and June 2014. Random-effects meta-analyses were used. Subgroup analyses were conducted according to extent of tobacco POS advertising environment in the study environment. Sensitivity analyses were performed according to study size and quality.
13 studies met the inclusion criteria; 11 reported data for behavioural outcomes, 6 for cognitive outcomes (each of these assessed smoking susceptibility). The studies were cross-sectional, with the exception of 2 cohort studies. For the behavioural outcomes, the pooled OR was 1.61 (95% CI 1.33 to 1.96) and for smoking susceptibility the pooled OR was 1.32 (95% CI 1.09 to 1.61).
Children and adolescents more frequently exposed to POS tobacco promotion have around 1.6 times higher odds of having tried smoking and around 1.3 times higher odds of being susceptible to future smoking, compared with those less frequently exposed. Together with the available evaluations of POS display bans, the results strongly indicate that legislation banning tobacco POS promotion will effectively reduce smoking among young people.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 335. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 22 June 2025.
All research outputs
#124,404
of 34,307,719 outputs
Outputs from Tobacco Control
#78
of 4,018 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#1,651
of 447,300 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Tobacco Control
#3
of 34 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,307,719 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,018 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 36.0. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 34 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its contemporaries.
