Smoking: Who Has the Right?

Is cigarette smoking an addiction or a choice? Does society or the government have the right to decide who may smoke and where? Are there such things as "smoker's rights"? Unique and timely, this collection is the very best work on the subject from the leading experts in public policy, health, economics, law, sociology, psychology, and history, seeking answers to questions that divide the nation.

Included are essays by George J. Annas, Gary S. Becker, Peter L. Berger, Richard Daynard, Antony Flew, Peter D. Jacobson, Stanton Glantz, Robert E. Goodin, Joseph R. Gusfield, Stephen J. Heishman, Graham E. Kelder, David A. Kessler, Mark Edward Lender, Stephen C. Littlechild, Rajendra Persaud, Robert N. Procter, David Ryder, Robert J. Samuelson, John Slade, Edward L. Sweda Jr., Robert W. Tollison, Richard E. Wagner, Lee S. Weinberg, Walter Williams, and Richard Vatz, among others.

What should our smoking policies be? This question offers a unique opportunity to explore conflicting political, economic, legal, and social perspectives on health, choice, and personal responsibility. While some view the tobacco industry as demonized by anti-smoking campaigns, others regard extensive regulation as the "only" option. Psychologist Jeffrey A. Schaler and health policy analyst Magda E. Schaler present the best arguments on the smoking debate to assist readers on both sides of the issue in forming their own conclusions about the "right to smoke" versus the widely asserted public health goal of a tobacco-free society.

Booknews

Assembles primary documents, historical surveys, and perspectives from a number of positions and disciplines on the rights claimed by some Americans to regulate public health and by others to pursue their lives and businesses by their own standards. The bombshell Brown and Williamson documents and various medical position papers are included. Among the topics are a sociological view, the criminal case against the industry, stigma, authority versus autonomy, property rights, smokers' right to health care, and the corrupted science of passive smoking. No index. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Jeffrey A. Schaler (Erdenheim, PA) is on the faculty of American University's School of Public Affairs; Johns Hopkins University, and the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. Magda E. Schaler (New York, NY) is an assistant faculty advisor at Columbia University School of Public Health.