Effective health promotion against tobacco use

Abstract

The development of tobacco control policies and programs has been shaped by two concurrent forces. The first is the public health tradition of evidence-based decision making, which compels the abandonment of ineffective strategies and the continuous improvement of effective ones. The second is the tobacco industry tradition of resisting public health initiatives in order to maintain tobacco sales. This on-going battle has slowed progress in reducing death and disease from tobacco. Nonetheless, after five decades of research on, and evaluation of public health strategies, a consensus on a set of effective measures to curb the tobacco epidemic has emerged (Jha & Chaloupka, 1999).