From 1998 to 2002, Robert L. Rabin, J.D., Ph.D., A. Calder Mackay Professor of Law, Stanford University, and former director of the RWJF national program, Tobacco Policy Research and Evaluation Program, (see Program Results) led a project to commission essays and prepare Regulating Tobacco, a book that assesses the principal tobacco-control strategies and explores how they might be used in the future.

Key Results

• Oxford University Press published hardcover and softcover editions of Regulating Tobacco in November 2001. Rabin and Stephen D. Sugarman (Agnes Roddy Robb Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley) edited this collection of nine essays by scholars from the fields of law, medicine, public health, political science and economics.
  
  The editors' introduction suggests that no single-strategy approach is as promising as a multi-strategy package of initiatives aimed at specific groups. The essays address the following topics:
  • The politics of tobacco regulation in the United States.
  • Tobacco taxation.
  • Marketing policies (such as constraints on tobacco advertising).
  • The role of policy in methods to reduce harm to smokers (such as smoking cessation).
  • Reducing youth access to tobacco products.
  • Tobacco litigation.
  • Curbs on secondhand smoke (clean indoor air restrictions).
  • Global regulation through the World Health Organization's proposed tobacco-control treaty.
  
  (See the Appendix for chapter titles with authors' names and affiliations.)

Oxford University Press conducted a promotional campaign for the book and has distributed 1,350 copies to date. It can be ordered online from the publisher or from the American Public Health Association's online bookstore.

Funding

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) supported this project through a grant of $157,115.