Cited by 15Indigenous Peoples' Rights and LawGlobal Public Health Policies and EpidemiologySmoking Behavior and Cessation

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 18 of the 20 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 51 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Common state mechanisms regulating tribal tobacco taxation and sales, the USA, 2015

Open access

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Native American tribes, as sovereign nations, are exempt from state tobacco excise taxation, and self-govern on-reservation activity in the USA. Under Federal law, state excise taxes are owed by non-members purchasing tobacco on tribal land, but states are limited in how they enforce or collect these taxes. This study highlights the various policy approaches that states have taken to regulate tobacco sales on tribal lands given jurisdictional challenges. METHODS: State laws (statutes, regulations and case law), Attorney General opinions, and revenue notices and rulings effective as of 1 January 2015 for all 50 states and the District of Columbia were compiled using Boolean searches in Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw. Laws were limited to those addressing taxation compacts or tobacco sales involving tribal entities. Master Settlement Agreement laws and non-codified tribal codes/compacts were excluded. RESULTS: Twenty of the 34 states with tribal lands address tribal tobacco sales. Fourteen states address intergovernmental compacts: 11 are tobacco specific, and suggest or require specific provisions. Fifteen states address tribal tax stamps: 2 explicitly prohibit stamping tribally sold products, 9 stamp all products, and 4 stamp some. Prepayment of excise tax is required in 12 states: 6 on all products, 4 on products in excess of quota, and 2 on products sold by non-tribal retailers. 6 states use quotas to limit tax-free tobacco available to tribes. CONCLUSIONS: Many states with a tribal presence have no formal strategies for non-members purchasing tobacco on tribal lands. Formalising policies and harmonising tax rates may assist states in collecting tax revenue from non-tribal consumers.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This study compiled state laws effective 1 January 2015 to describe how states regulate tobacco taxation and sales on tribal lands. It found that 20 of the 34 states with tribal lands addressed tribal tobacco sales, using compacts, tax stamps, prepayment, and quotas, while 14 tribal-presence states had no tribal-specific tobacco sales laws under the study’s parameters.

Key findings

  • Of the 34 states with tribal lands, 20 had codified laws addressing tribal compacts or tribal tobacco sales; 14 states with tribal lands had no tribal-specific tobacco sales laws as defined by the study, and 17 states had no tribal lands.
  • Fourteen states addressed intergovernmental compacts; all but New York suggested or required specific compact provisions, with the most common being revenue collection/sharing (11 states), enforcement (6), duration/renewal (6), and distribution of funds (4).
  • Fifteen states addressed on-reservation tax stamps: 2 explicitly prohibited stamping tribally sold products, 9 stamped all products, and 4 stamped some products.
  • Twelve states required excise tax prepayment: 6 on all products, 4 on products in excess of quota, and 2 on products sold by non-tribal retailers; 6 states used quotas to limit tax-free tobacco available to tribes, 2 of which used a coupon or voucher system.

Methods

  • Legal research compiled state statutes, regulations, case law, Attorney General opinions, and revenue notices/rulings effective as of 1 January 2015 for all 50 states and the District of Columbia using Boolean searches in Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw.
  • Laws were limited to those addressing taxation compacts or tobacco sales involving tribal entities; Master Settlement Agreement laws and non-codified tribal codes/compacts were excluded.
  • Laws were coded by two independent attorney coders with final consensus coding, uploaded into RedCap, and exported to STATA v. 10.1 for descriptive analysis using dichotomous indicators.

Limitations

  • Stated: the study excluded collection and analysis of compacts generally not incorporated into official state statutory or administrative law, so it is limited to codified compacts and does not reflect non-codified compacts that may exist.
  • Stated: nuances or gaps in implementation or enforcement at the agency level were not captured unless included in codified law, official agency rulings, or case law.
  • Evident from the design: this is a cross-sectional legal compilation as of 1 January 2015 and does not measure the actual effectiveness or enforcement outcomes of the identified mechanisms.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2016-053079

Cites

18 of 18 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

36 Own result · 14 Own interpretation · 12 Not checked yet · 8 Check pending · 8 No full text of the sources · 6 Sources not found · 5 Own method · 4 No basis given

Verify all 21 references — free account

Show all 40 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 24
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 40
53 of 53
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    States do not have jurisdiction on tribal lands and are unable to use the court system to pursue back taxes.

    “As per the nature of tribal sovereignty, states do not have jurisdiction on tribal lands, and are unable to use the court system to pursue back taxes.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    This issue has not been explored comprehensively across all states.

    “To our knowledge, while some studies have examined state-specific tribal tobacco regulation efforts, this issue has not been explored comprehensively across all states.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Tribal tobacco sales are not limited to members of the tribe; anyone can purchase tobacco from tribal retailers.

    “Tribal tobacco sales are not limited to members of the tribe; anyone can purchase tobacco from tribal retailers, and they do.”
3 of 3

Citations

Cites

Show all 20 references

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. Gourdet, 2015, Tobacco product taxation: an analysis of state tax schemes nationwide, selected years, 2005–2014
  2. Williams v. Lee, 358 U.S. 217, 220 (1959).
  3. Zelio, 2005, Piecing together the state-tribal tax puzzle
  4. Bureau of Indian Affairs, 2015, Indian entities recognized and eligible to receive services from the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, Fedl Reg, 80
  5. Chaloupka, 2016, A significant cigarette tax rate increase in Oklahoma would produce a large, sustained increase in state tobacco tax revenues

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 15

Metadata

Authors
DeLong, H., Chriqui, J., Leider, J., & Chaloupka, F. J.
Affiliations
University of Illinois Chicago (US)
Corresponding author
DeLong, Hillary
Venue
Tobacco Control
Publisher
BMJ
Published
2016-06-27
Volume
25
Issue
Suppl 1
Pages
i32-i37
ISSN
  • 0964-4563 (ISSN-L)
  • 1468-3318
OpenAlex
W2469918504
Cited by
15
References
20
Citations by year
2025: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 1
FWCI
42.27
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by-nc
Locations
  • Tobacco Control (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • HighWire Press Open Archive (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Cancer Institute (UO1-CA154248)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Law › Indigenous Peoples' Rights and Law
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Global Public Health Policies and Epidemiology
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Smoking Behavior and Cessation
Keywords
Native American tribes, tribal areas, state tax policy, tax quota, tax collection, jurisdictional conflict, tribal sovereignty, United States
MeSH terms
Commerce, Humans, Indians, North American, Public Policy, Smoking, State Government, Taxes, United States, Tobacco Products

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-11-11, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-11-11 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review