Due to its emotive nature, the debate about smoking has always been (and still is) a topic that is capable of polarizing opinions, including those of legal scholars. As a result the relevant literature, whether legal or scientific, tends to be inherently biased either against or in favour of tobacco products. The Tobacco Challenge by Professor Geraint Howells, one of the leading experts in European Consumer Law, provides a welcome and notable exception to this trend. This book offers a balanced account of the legal, moral and public health challenges facing governmental efforts aimed at curbing tobacco consumption. Yet its merits go well beyond that of offering an objective examination and reconstruction of such a complex area of law and policy. Howells's analysis is also refreshing, innovative and brave enough to challenge some of the main tenets of the health community's dominant thinking. Although repetitive at times, this book deserves praise for revamping the moribund legal debate on tobacco regulation in Europe and beyond. Indeed, as the tobacco control discourse has been hijacked by the imperative of 'de-normalization', i.e. to change the broad social norms around using tobacco, the opportunities for the legal system to pause, question and contribute to actual tobacco control efforts have been significantly reduced in recent times.

Addressing three central questions of legal policy, this is an interesting and comprehensive analysis of the need to control and regulate tobacco consumption. The core issues of the book are litigation vs. regulation with a comparative analysis of the US and European approaches; the challenge to regulate tobacco as a lawful product within constitutional limits to promote the reduction of risks to health and the extent to which consumers should be entrusted with information to make their own informed choices. Suggesting dialogue and transparency in policy development, this book covers advertising, psychology, ethics, economics and health in addition to the central debate about the litigation and regulation of tobacco and the role of consumer protection law and private law.

In Rethinking EU Consumer Law, the authors analyse the development of EU consumer law on the basis of a number of clear themes, which are then traced through specific areas. Recurring themes include the artificiality of the EU’s consumer image, the problems created by the drive towards maximum harmonisation, and the unexpected effects EU Consumer Law has had on national law. The book argues that EU Consumer Law has the potential of enhancing the protecting of consumers throughout the EU and could offer a model for consumer law elsewhere in the world, but in order to unlock this potential, there needs to be a rethink with regard to the EU’s approach to consumer law and policy.

Public Opinion, Public Policy, and Smoking tracks Americans’ changing attitudes about cigarette smoking over the last century. With data from more than five thousand public and privately conducted polls, this book carefully examines how Americans came to understand the health risks of smoking; how the tobacco industry sought to reframe smoking; and how public opinion support for tobacco control affected lawsuits, elections, and public policies. This book tests several well-known linkage models that connect public opinion with public policy. It shows that conventional wisdom about public opinion and tobacco control policy is often mistaken. This book offers the first in-depth look at American public opinion and cigarette smoking during the last century.

This collection of essays looks at the role the European Union could and should play in promoting healthier lifestyle, in light of the moral, philosophical, legal and political challenges associated with the regulation of individual choices. By tackling the main non-communicable diseases (NCD) risk factors (tobacco consumption, harmful use of alcohol, unhealthy diets and lack of physical activity), the contributors endeavour to identify common themes and determine whether and, if so, to what extent the lessons learned in relation to each area of EU intervention could be transposed to the others. By focusing on the European Union legal order, the book highlights both the opportunities that legal instruments offer for NCD prevention and control agenda in Europe, as well as the constraints that the law imposes on policy-makers.