U.S. Tobacco Control: Public Health, Political Economy, or Morality Policy?

Abstract

Abstract Tobacco control policy usually has been framed in terms of public health and political economy, but it also has been called a morality issue. Through a systematic historical analysis, this paper examines dimensions of morality policy and evaluates tobacco control in the United States for its fit with those characteristics. Moral concerns have been a part of tobacco control policy at certain times, first in the early twentieth century, and, more recently, since the mid‐1980s with the rise of “denormalization” of tobacco as a goal of some antitobacco organizations. Drawing from recent studies of other “morality” policy issues, it argues that tobacco control is a “blended” issue, one which can take on different dimensions depending on successful interest group framing. The adoption of Healthy Public Policy as a governmental goal has coincided with a movement toward a “secular morality” in the political culture, facilitating a broader appeal to the public.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 41 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.