Unfiltered: Conflicts over Tobacco Policy and Public Health

by Eric A. Feldman (Editor), Ronald Bayer (Editor)

Tobacco, among the most popular consumer products of the twentieth century, is under attack. Once a behavior that knew no social bounds, cigarette smoking has been transformed into an activity that reflects sharp differences in social status.

Unfiltered tells the story of how anti-smoking advocates, public health professionals, bureaucrats, and tobacco corporations have clashed over smoking regulation. The nations discussed in this book--Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States--restrict tobacco advertising, tax tobacco products, and limit where smoking is permitted. Each is also struggling to shape a tobacco policy that ensures corporate accountability, protects individual liberty, and asserts the state's public health power.

Unfiltered offers a comparative perspective on legal, political, and social conflicts over tobacco control. The book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of how scientific evidence, global health advocacy, individual risk assessments, and governmental interests intersect in the crafting of tobacco policy. It features national case studies and cross-cultural essays by experts in health policy, law, political science, history, and sociology. The lessons in Unfiltered are crucial to all who seek to understand and influence tobacco policy and reduce tobacco-related mortality worldwide.

404 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2004

About the author

Eric Feldman’s expertise is in Japanese law, comparative public health law, and law and society. His books and articles explore the comparative dimensions of rights, dispute resolution, and legal culture, often in the context of urgent policy issues including the regulation of smoking, HIV/AIDS, and other aspects of the health care system. Feldman has twice been a Fulbright Scholar in Japan, and has also been a Visiting Professor at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris and at the University of Trento in Italy, as well as a Visiting Scholar at Waseda University’s Graduate School of Law in Tokyo. He has received grants and fellowships from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the American Bar Association, the National Science Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council, among others. Prior to joining the Penn Law faculty, he spent five years as the Associate Director of the Institute for Law and Society at New York University. He is the author of The Ritual of Rights in Japan: Law, Society, and Health Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2000), the co-editor of Blood Feuds: AIDS, Blood, and the Politics of Medical Disaster (Oxford University Press, 1999) and Unfiltered: Conflicts over Tobacco Policy and Public Health (Harvard University Press, 2004), and has published academic articles in edited volumes and journals including the California Law Review, Law in Japan, American Journal of Comparative Law, Los Angeles Times, Social and Legal Studies, Hastings Center Report, Lancet, Law and Society Review, and the Michigan Journal of International Law.