“A major contribution not just to tobacco control research but also to research on global governance and public health . . . thorough [and] compelling.” —Frank J. Chaloupka IV, Institute for Health Research and Policy, University of Illinois–Chicago As the era of globalization progressed, the tobacco industry capitalized on its elements—including trade liberalization, foreign direct investment, and global communications—to expand into countries where effective tobacco control programs were not in place. As a consequence, tobacco became the leading cause of preventable death in the world, killing more people each year than HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. In the mid-1990s, a committed group of public health professionals and institutions sought to challenge the tobacco industry’s expansion by negotiating a binding international law under the auspices of the World Health Organization. The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC)—the first collective global response to the causation of avoidable chronic disease—was one of the most quickly ratified treaties in United Nations history. In The Global War on Tobacco, Heather Wipfli tells the engaging story of the FCTC, from its start as an unlikely civil society proposal to its enactment in 178 countries as of June 2014. Wipfli also reveals how globalization offers anti-tobacco advocates significant cooperative opportunities to share knowledge and address cross-border public health problems. The book—the first to delve deeply into the origin and development of the FCTC—seeks to advance understanding of how non-state actors, transnational networks, and international institutionalization can impact global governance for health. Case studies from a variety of diverse high-, middle-, and low-income countries provide real-world examples of the success or failure of tobacco control. Written with public health professionals and students in mind, The Global War on Tobacco is a fascinating look at how international relations is changing to respond to the modern global marketplace and protect human health.

The first major book by political scientists explaining global tobacco control policy. It identifies a history of minimal tobacco control then charts the extent to which governments have regulated tobacco in the modern era. It identifies major policy change from the post-war period and uses theories of public policy to help explain the change.

Aimed at public health professionals and students, The Global War on Tobacco is a fascinating look at how international relations is changing to respond to the modern global marketplace and protect human health.

Smoke and Mirrors: The Canadian tobacco war

The story of tobacco’s fortunes seems simple: science triumphed over addiction and profit. Yet the reality is more complicated—and more political. Historically it was not just bad habits but also the state that lifted the tobacco industry. What brought about change was not medical advice but organized pressure: a movement for nonsmoker’s rights.

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • No book before this one has rendered the story of cigarettes—mankind's most common self-destructive instrument and its most profitable consumer product—with such sweep and enlivening detail. "A great battleship of a book—formidable, majestic.”—The New York Times Book Review Here for the first time, in a story full of the complexities and contradictions of human nature, all the strands of the historical process—financial, social, psychological, medical, political, and legal—are woven together in a riveting narrative. The key characters are the top corporate executives, public health investigators, and antismoking activists who have clashed ever more stridently as Americans debate whether smoking should be closely regulated as a major health menace. We see tobacco spread rapidly from its aboriginal sources in the New World 500 years ago, as it becomes increasingly viewed by some as sinful and some as alluring, and by government as a windfall source of tax revenue. With the arrival of the cigarette in the late-nineteenth century, smoking changes from a luxury and occasional pastime to an everyday—to some, indispensable—habit, aided markedly by the exuberance of the tobacco huskers. This free-enterprise success saga grows shadowed, from the middle of this century, as science begins to understand the cigarette's toxicity. Ironically the more detailed and persuasive the findings by medical investigators, the more cigarette makers prosper by seeming to modify their product with filters and reduced dosages of tar and nicotine. We see the tobacco manufacturers come under intensifying assault as a rogue industry for knowingly and callously plying their hazardous wares while insisting that the health charges against them (a) remain unproven, and (b) are universally understood, so smokers indulge at their own risk. Among the eye-opening disclosures here: outrageous pseudo-scientific claims made for cigarettes throughout the '30s and '40s, and the story of how the tobacco industry and the National Cancer Institute spent millions to develop a "safer" cigarette that was never brought to market. Dealing with an emotional subject that has generated more heat than light, this book is a dispassionate tour de force that examines the nature of the companies' culpability, the complicity of society as a whole, and the shaky moral ground claimed by smokers who are now demanding recompense.