Strengthening Tobacco 21 implementation and enforcement to reduce tobacco-related health disparities: A stakeholder engagement project.

Introduction: As a part of a priority-setting stakeholder engagement project to strengthen the impact of the federal Tobacco 21 (T21) law, we conducted a qualitative study to solicit input from a nationwide sample of tobacco control stakeholders regarding the implementation, enforcement, and equity implications of the T21 law.

Methods: Following the T21 policy evaluation guidance developed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), we identified T21 experts in four domains: policy, evaluation, subject matter, and implementation from a national search of stakeholders (invitations, n=1279) to account for geographical variation. This study presents results from five focus groups conducted in December 2021 among stakeholders (n=31) with experience in T21 policy, evaluation, subject matter, and implementation.