The Politics of Tobacco Regulation in the United States

Abstract

Abstract During the 1940s and 1950s, cigarette smoking rivaled baseball as America’s national pastime. On motion picture screens, cigarettes were depicted as wholly desirable, smoked by the glamorous and sophisticated, by gritty Gis winning World War II, and tilting up at a jaunty angle from President Franklin Roosevelt’s profile. In 1965, 52% of American adult men were cigarette smokers. Now, however, cigarettes are widely castigated as the nation’s number one public health problem. Cigarette manufacturers have been besieged by multimillion and even multibillion dollar lawsuits; their shares trade at a record low price-earnings ratio (Norris 2000). In many cities, office workers who want a cigarette break are forced to huddle outside the building’s doorway. In 1995, only 25% of American adults were smokers, and in many social circles, smoking is regarded as pathological. This remarkable transformation is far from complete. Millions of Americans have not quit smoking, hundreds of thousands continue to die from lung cancer and other diseases each year, and teenagers still join the army of the addicted in disturbingly large numbers. Nevertheless, it seems clear that tobacco, once unchallenged, is now on the defensive, and few would bet that in 25 years the proportion of Americans who smoke cigarettes as we know them will be as high as it is today.

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