The Global Policy Context

Abstract

This chapter outlines the main policy developments across the globe, with a detailed time-line of major events since the 1950s. It identifies two key eras to demonstrate that tobacco policy has changed radically since the 19th century. An era in which political economy was the dominant frame for policy choice, and the tobacco industry was encouraged by governments to grow and sell tobacco to improve the economy, has been replaced by an era in which moral, socioeconomic and public health arguments are used to justify increasingly restrictive tobacco controls. The chapter seeks to characterise the degree and tempo of global tobacco policy change, making the simple distinction between experiences in developed and developing countries (see endnote 1 on the distinction). In our analysis of developed countries we seek to qualify, to some extent, the idea of a sudden transition to tobacco control by focusing on the wide range of tobacco policy instruments that have been introduced in the past 20 years. A succession of developed countries have now signalled what appears to be a sharp break from the past by introducing bans on smoking in public and work places (clean indoor air policies). However, these developments may often be characterised as an incremental progression of, rather than a radical departure from, policies already in place.