SAMHSA Synar Reports: State-Level Youth Tobacco Sales Compliance

SAMHSA's Synar Reports provide data on compliance with the Synar Amendment from 1997 to 2018. The dataset tracks state-level enforcement of youth tobacco access laws and the percentage of retailers selling tobacco to minors. Columns suggest metrics are organized by federal fiscal year, state, and specific compliance measures.

Use Cases

• Tracking state compliance rates over time using FFY Year, LocationAbbr, and Data_Value.
• Analyzing geographic patterns of retailer violations using GeoLocation (state) and LocationDesc.
• Comparing specific enforcement measures across states using MeasureDesc and SubMeasure.
• Investigating data quality and footnotes using Data_Value_Footnote_Symbol and Data_Value_Footnote.

Strengths

• Provides a 22-year time series from 1997 to 2018.
• Contains detailed geographic annotation at the state level.
• Includes metadata columns for data quality footnotes and measure descriptions.

Limitations

• Metadata conflicts exist: one source lists a last update of 2025-06-28, another lists 2023-08 25.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown across all sources.
• Column information is incomplete for the datagov platform entry.

Provenance

Source

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

Collection Method

Administrative reports from state enforcement of youth tobacco access laws.

Time Range

1997-2018

Freshness

2025-06-28 23:01:55.857639

Geography

United States (state-level)