Public Health Advocacy and Tobacco Control: Making Smoking History »

Simon Chapman is Professor in Public Health at the University of Sydney. He is the author of 11 books and major government reports, 302 papers and 112 letters and commentaries in peer reviewed journals. He is the Editor of the BMJ journal "Tobacco Control".

Simon Chapman is one of the world’s leading advocates for tobacco control, having won the coveted Luther Terry and WHO medals. His experience straddles 30 years of activism, highly original research and analysis, having run advocacy training on every continent and editing the British Medical Journal’s Tobacco Control research journal. In this often witty and personal book, he lays out a program for making smoking history. He eviscerates ineffective approaches, condemns overly enthusiastic policies which ignore important ethical principles, and provides a cookbook of strategy and tactics for denormalising smoking and the industry which promotes it.

Public Health Advocacy and Tobacco Control is divided into two sections. The first contains chapters spanning such key topics as the place of advocacy in tobacco control, ethical issues, smoking cessation and prevention, harm reduction and product regulation and the denormalisation of smoking. The second section provides an invaluable A-Z of tobacco control advocacy strategy from Accuracy to Whistleblowers.

Preface     ix
Acknowledgements     xvi
Major Challenges for Tobacco Control This Century     1
Death is Inevitable, So Why Bother With Tobacco Control? Ethical Issues and Tobacco Control     3
The ethics of tobacco control     11
The ethics of smokers "knowingly" harming themselves     12
"Informed" smokers: policy implications     13
What is a "fully or adequately informed" smoker?     14
The tobacco industry's current information inaction     17
Ethical implications of addiction in tobacco control     18
When smoking harms others     19
Ethical aspects of the social costs of smoking     20
Conclusions     22
The Place of Advocacy in Tobacco Control     23
Policy wish lists     24
Advocacy: the neglected sibling of public health     27
Unravelling gossamer with boxing gloves     34
Banning smoking in workplaces     40
Political insights into advocacy for smokefree bars     49
The News on Smoking     62
Impacts of the media     63
Framing     67
Criteria for newsworthiness     68
Making news on tobacco control     70
Dead Customersare Unprofitable Customers: Potential and Pitfalls in Harm Reduction and Product Regulation     76
Overview     80
Ways to engineer tobacco products     82
PREPs: potential reduced exposure products     88
Who will use the new reduced-harm products?     101
Will smokeless tobacco transpose to cultures with no traditions of use?     104
High-delivery nicotine replacement therapy     108
Combustible tobacco: enter the dragon     111
Ingredients     120
Summary and conclusions     124
Accelerating Smoking Cessation and Prevention in Whole Communities     129
Why do people stop smoking?     133
How do most people stop smoking?     137
Preventing the uptake of smoking in children     150
The Denormalisation of Smoking     153
When policy moves beyond evidence: banning smoking outdoors     160
The "smoker-free" workplace: banning smokers from workplaces     167
Vector Control: Controlling the Tobacco Industry and its Promotions     172
Promoting tobacco use after advertising bans     175
Should we control smoking in movies?     180
Corporate responsibility and the tobacco industry     190
Academic denormalisation      195
Making Smoking History: How Low Can We Go?     198
Greatest reductions in national prevalence     198
How reliable are the data?     199
Projections for Australia     199
Subpopulations with high smoking rates     200
The future     203
An A-Z of Tobacco Control Advocacy Strategy     207
Introduction     209
Ten basic questions for planning advocacy strategy     211
AN A-Z OF STRATEGY     214
Accuracy     214
Acronyms     215
Action alerts     216
Advertising in advocacy     219
Analogies, metaphors, similes and word pictures     220
Anniversaries     221
Be there! The first rule of advocacy     221
Bluff     222
Boycotts     222
Bureaucratic constraints     223
Celebrities     225
Columnists     227
Creative epidemiology     227
Criticising government     230
Demonstrations     231
Divide and rule     233
Doctors     234
Editorials     235
Elitism     236
Engaging communities     236
Fact sheets     238
Gate-crashing     238
Infiltration     239
Inside and outside the tent     241
Internet     241
Interview strategies     242
Jargon and ghetto language     251
Know your opposition     251
Learning from other campaigners     252
Letters to politicians     252
Letters to the editor     255
Local newspapers     257
Mailing lists     257
Marginal seats     258
Media cannibalism (or how media feed off each other)     259
Media conferences     260
Media etiquette     261
Media logs     262
Media releases (press releases)     263
Meeting with the tobacco industry     263
Networks and coalitions     265
Online polls     266
Op-ed opinion page access     267
Open letters     268
Opinion polls     269
Opportunism     270
Parody     271
Petitions     272
Pictures and graphics     273
Piggy-backing      273
Precedents     274
Press agencies     274
Private sector alliances     275
Publicising others' research     275
Radicalism     276
Reporters and journalists     277
Scream test     280
Shareholders     281
Slow news days     283
Strategic research     283
Talent (spokespeople)     284
Talkback (access) radio     285
Targeting or narrowcasting     287
Whistle-blowers     288
Wolves in sheep's clothing     289
References     291
Index     325