Compliance for Kids: a community-based tobacco prevention project.

This article reports on the findings of a pre-test/post-test evaluation of the Compliance for Kids program carried out in three different communities. It demonstrates that it is indeed possible for a locally directed program to influence community standards of behaviour. It also suggests that in larger areas, such programs might better be implemented at the neighbourhood than at the city-wide level; and that merchants are influenced more by threat of enforcement than knowledge of laws. Such findings reinforce the need both for continued community programming and comprehensive legislation and enforcement.