The association between local tobacco retail licensing and adult cigarette smoking by race/ethnicity, income, and education in California (2012–2019)

•Weak evidence that stronger TRL laws are associated with lower adult cigarette use.•Stronger TRL laws not related to sociodemographic differences in adult cigarette use.•Higher proportion of minorities living in jurisdictions with stronger TRL laws. This study investigates the association between the strength of TRL ordinances and adult cigarette use, and differences in the relationship by sociodemographic characteristics, using California as a case study. We merged geocoded data from the California Health Interview Survey with the State of Tobacco Control Reports from the American Lung Association from 2012 to 2019. Each jurisdiction was graded (A-strongest to F-weakest) based on the strength of their TRL ordinance while current cigarette use was defined as respondents who had smoked 100 or more cigarettes in their lifetime and currently smoke cigarettes every day or some days. We estimated multilevel logistic regression models to test the relationship between the strength of the TRL ordinance and current cigarette use and tested for effect modification by including interaction terms for race/ethnicity, income, and education in separate models. 11.6 % of sample participants from all years (n = 132,209) were current cigarette smokers. Adults in jurisdictions with stronger grades (A-D) had lower odds of current cigarette use (OR = 0.89, 95 % CI: 0.79–1.01) compared to adults in jurisdictions with the weakest grade (F), but the association was not statistically significant (p