Regulating Tobacco

Abstract The proliferation of lawsuits against the tobacco industry has had profound implications for American health policy, tort law, civil law, and welfare and social policy. Since the publication of Rabin and Sugarman’s Smoking Policy, class action suits, FDA regulation, clean air legislation, health insurance reimbursement, and extensive advertising have brought tobacco to the forefront of national and public policy debates. This collection includes essays by eleven leading public health experts, economists, physicians, political scientists, and lawyers, whose activities encompass Congressional testimonies, Surgeon General’s reports on youth smoking, and clinical trials for drugs for smoking cessation. They analyze specific strategies that have been used to influence tobacco use—including taxation, regulation of advertising and promotion, regulation of indoor smoking, control of youth access to cigarettes and other tobacco products, litigation, and subsidies of smoking cessation—and set them against the latest scientific findings about tobacco use and the changing cultural and political setting against which policy decisions are being made. In addition to Rabin and Sugarman, contributors include Frank Chaloupka, Peter Jacobson, Robert Kagan, Nancy Rigotti, John Slade, and Ken Warner.