Shrinking the reach of cigarettes: Purdue Public Health professor leads efforts to create a smoke-free future through tobacco policy research

Written By: Rebecca Hoffa, rhoffa@purdue.edu

Bukola Peters, assistant professor in the Purdue University Department of Public Health, has been assessing the tobacco industry for years, seeing policies change rapidly across retail, age groups and more. Much of her recent work has been concentrated to California because it provides a “natural experiment” due to the wide range of regulations across counties in the state, from none at all to local regulations that are stronger than state mandates.

Bukola Peters

“I’ve been in tobacco for a while, and before I started examining the several U.S. policies we have now, what I used to assess was the World Health Organization policies on tobacco, like World No Tobacco Day,” Peters said. “At that time, it was mostly policy recommendations with clear implementation strategies to help countries enact their own policies. But over time, especially in the United States, as the door for more state and local policies have been opened since the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act in 2009, there are several policies that we analyze now. It’s not just about having a policy, and does it work? But, if it works, who is it working for? And what are the unintended consequences of the policy? So, we always have to do that constant evaluation to see what’s happening.”

Peters noted the policies in question have drastically shifted the way smoking is viewed, from something accepted in public spaces to something people hide and keep secret.

“If you look at the 1990s to the early 2000s, the overall message is that cigarette retailing at that time used to encourage use,” Peters said. “It was highly visible. It was normal for you to walk into the store and see these large displays of brands and promotions. We had cigarette companies sponsoring things in the stores. Their brands were everywhere. However post-2010, specifically after the Tobacco Control Act, where the FDA was given the authority to regulate tobacco products, what happened was they now encouraged the states and the localities to create policies to regulate retail. Today, it’s a lot more restricted. In fact, it discourages use because you can’t see any cigarette products except behind the counter of the person who sells it — you don’t have access to it. We also have a lot of ID laws now, so we have a lot more enforcement mechanisms.”

The United Kingdom is working on legislation that will prevent individuals born after 2008 to ever buy cigarettes, and Peters explained preventing younger individuals from picking up smoking is an important focus, as they’re one of the primary users as tobacco products shift to appeal to their demographic.

“What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to build what we call the smoke-free generation,” Peters said. “We’re building up to that.”

In a 2026 study funded by the National Cancer Institute, Peters examined how tobacco retail licensing laws, which require retailers to obtain and renew licenses to sell tobacco, affect retailer density. She ultimately found that the combination of local and state laws have the strongest effect on reducing the number of retailers, indirectly limiting access.

“Licensing laws were not necessarily built to close retail stores,” Peters said. “They’re meant to help monitor the stores that are open for enforcement purposes. But if it’s too strong — for example, I’m a small mom-and-pop store, and I have to pay $2,000 every month for a product — I can maybe shift my attention to other products. So, we found that it tends to detract some people from selling tobacco. It also helps enforcement because the government now knows you sell tobacco, and they can come to your store to be sure you’re being compliant with tobacco laws.”

Currently, with a mentored research grant from the National Cancer Institute, Peters is working on finishing a graduate certificate in Geographic Information Systems to help her investigate cancer clusters and how that relates to the concentration of cigarette retailers.

“Now, because I have these additional analytic skills, I’m beginning to look at cancer clusters and how these are related to these retail density environments that we’re seeing — the built environments, retail density, the tobacco retailers, and what’s happening with these cancer clusters we have in different states,” Peters said. “There’s just so much going on: policy evaluation as well as looking at the relationship with cancer. At the same time, we have so many emerging products coming into the marketplace. We have the nicotine pouches and all of these other things that people can use now, and we’re trying to figure out, do the cigarette policies work for these products, or do we need new policies for this type of product?”

Tobacco policy wasn’t always the path Peters planned for herself. However, early in her career, she was placed into the work as an intern with the World Health Organization, which inspired her to continue her interest in this area and earn her PhD.

“The work was so interesting because we went around talking with policymakers and showing them evidence on the harms of tobacco,” Peters said. “That was the first time that I was actually seeing public policy being done outside of the classroom, and because I was interacting with people that make these policies, I began to see that the research people do actually can make an impact. That’s when I figured out that I wanted to be in that space.”

Ultimately, Peters’ goal has always been making a difference in policies to influence overall health and lower tobacco use.

“I know that my studies or studies I’ve been involved in have been cited in several policy documents to inform the need for regulation or the need for policy,” Peters said. “I always hope that some of the work that I do will inform the decisions that policymakers make to at least protect the public health.”