Punctuated Equilibrium in Limbo: The Tobacco Lobby and U.S. State Policymaking from 1990 to 2003

Abstract

Since the mid-1980s, U.S. tobacco policy has been an intense and acrimonious issue between antitobacco advocates and the tobacco industry. In the United States, the tobacco industry has responded to heightened state antitobacco litigation, adverse public opinion, and public health advocacy by aggressively mobilizing against tobacco taxes and regulations. This article examines whether these tobacco policy trends can be generalized to punctuated equilibrium theory ideas that policy monopolies are stable over long periods and usually change because of sharp and short-term exogenous shocks to the policy system. From 1990 to 2003, there was a sharp mobilization by health advocates in all states and a significant rise in new legislation to control tobacco use. The tobacco industry, nevertheless, was able to generally keep state tobacco taxes low and counter significant regulatory threats to tobacco sales. From this, I conclude that the policy monopoly favoring the tobacco industry did not significantly change, despite the symbolic appearance of punctuation in the policy system.

The Master Settlement Agreement and Its Impact on Tobacco Use 10 Years Later

“…17,18 State tobacco control policy making became more activist and aggressive from the 1990s onward, but the tobacco industry was usually able to keep states from nonincremental regulatory changes. 19 Indeed, much state antitobacco policy activism in the fi rst decade of the 21st century originated at the city level. 20 In addition, many state antitobacco initiatives were countered by continued (and effective) efforts by the tobacco industry to market and advertise their products to minors.…”

The Role of Dynamics in Stakeholder Thinking

“…(For instance, the performance measure could exhibit considerable volatility rather than stability.) One application has been a study of tobacco industry lobbying of U.S. states (Givel 2006).…”

Understanding the Influence of Evidence in Public Health Policy: What Can We Learn from the ‘Tobacco Wars’?

“…Farquharson 2003;Givel 2006;Princen 2007). The ACF posits that networks of diverse actors (potentially including policymakers, researchers, think tanks, journalists, interest groups and others) compete to influence policy for particular issues (or 'policy subsystems', to use the language of ACF).…”

“…tobacco industry and related interests, smokers rights' groups and policymakers responsible for business and trade interests). The ACF has already been successfully applied to international tobacco control policy development (Farquharson 2003;Princen 2007), as well as to tobacco tax debates in Canada and the US (Breton et al 2006;Givel 2006). However, as Cairney (2007) points out, the ACF tends to attribute policy change of any magnitude to external shocks and has little to say about how or why coalitions lose or gain dominance over time or to the potential role of evidence within this.…”

“…Farquharson 2003;Berridge 2006;Breton et al 2006;Givel 2006;Cairney 2007;Princen 2007;Larsen 2008;Young et al 2012). It differs from most others by focusing specifically on the role of evidence and ideas in the decade-long debates about tobacco.…”