An introduction to the controversy over tobacco

The tobacco industry has a long history of denying any harmful effects produced by its products. This strategy was first developed to deny any health risks associated with smoking, and has recently been extended to the denial of the risks of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), the addictive nature of nicotine, and the targeting of adolescents by tobacco advertisements. This has sewed to divert discussion of how society should address the risks of tobacco use to whether society should address tobacco use at all. if we move past these diversions and consider how society should address tobacco risks, the social sciences in general and psychology in particular have a number of insights regarding how to answer the question. The purpose of this issue of JSI is to examine some of these perspectives in an attempt to suggest how we should approach the important question of how to deal with tobacco use in our society.