US Local Tobacco Control Laws

Building a comprehensive, open-access dataset of local tobacco control ordinances for every county and incorporated city in the United States, using AI-assisted search with a rigorous three-pass blind methodology and majority-vote reconciliation.

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Jurisdictions Complete
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Total Jurisdictions
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Ordinances Found
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States with Data

What is this?

This is a comprehensive, open-access dataset of local tobacco control ordinances for every county and incorporated city in the United States. It records which jurisdictions have which types of tobacco laws, when they took effect, and links to source documents.

The dataset is built using AI-assisted web search with a rigorous three-pass blind methodology. Each jurisdiction is independently searched multiple times, and results are reconciled by majority vote to minimize errors. The goal is to provide researchers with free, jurisdiction-level tobacco policy data that can be used to construct population-weighted policy exposure measures for panel data analysis.

What we track

Smokefree Outdoor (parks, beaches, dining)
Smokefree Indoor (beyond state law)
Tobacco Retail Sales (licensing, permits)
Flavored Tobacco Ban
Smokefree Multi-Unit Housing
Retailer Density / Proximity
Local Excise Tax
Other local ordinances

Methodology: Three-Pass Blind Search

Each jurisdiction is independently searched multiple times by separate AI agents with no knowledge of prior results. A majority-vote reconciliation determines which laws are included in the final dataset.

1

Enumerate

All counties and incorporated places from the Census Bureau (2020 PL 94-171), with FIPS codes and population.

2

Pass 1 & 2

Two independent blind searches of municipal codes, government websites, news, and policy databases. No knowledge of each other's results.

3

Reconcile

Disagreements get a tiebreaker (Pass 3). Laws found by 2+ of 3 passes are included. Single-pass findings are excluded.

Known limitations

View coverage Browse policy maps