Published by Wiley-Blackwell, the contents of Professor Simon Chapman’s new book, Public Health Advocacy and Tobacco Control: Making Smoking History, may potentially upset players in both the tobacco industry and the health sector.
Consisting of two parts, Professor Chapman first lays out a blistering critique of both ineffective and unethical strategies. Berating the World Health Organization for its 2005 policy of not employing workers who smoked, and openly questioning if the move to ban outdoor smoking had backfired by undermining public trust, the author is scathing in his assessment of media censorship. He is contemptuous about attempts to censor smoking out of movies, likening it to something more fitting of a North Korean-style state control. He also forensically dissects the “seduction of harm reduction” – asking tough questions about the wisdom of trusting the tobacco industry’s claims to have produced less harmful products.
The second part of Professor Chapman’s book is a detailed A-Z blueprint of strategies to denormalise smoking and the industry that promotes it that Chapman and his colleagues have used to bring Australian tobacco use down to be second only to Canada’s.
Professor Chapman says “In Australia we have many lessons to offer other nations struggling to keep the tobacco industry away from their children and reduce what continues to be an unparalleled death toll of 5 million deaths annually from tobacco use. But we need to take both ethical and realistic stock of the ways we go about this. I hope this book will be immensely useful to anyone wanting to learn how to control contemporary public health academics.”
The Table of Contents and additional information on the book is available at: www.blackwellpublishing.com/9781405161633
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Professor Chapman is a recipient of the World Health Organization’s ‘World No Tobacco Day’ Medal and the international Luther Terry medal for ‘Outstanding Individual Leadership in Tobacco Control’.
Launch Details:
Bob Carr will co-launch the book with Professor Chapman on Wednesday 29 August 2007 at 5pm.
Venue: Burkitt-Ford Library, The Edward Ford Building, University of Sydney
RSVP: Rosemary Blouin, sydney-events@coop-bookshop.com.au, or 02-9351 3705.
If you’d like a review copy of the book, or information on the contributing authors please contact Alina Boey, PR and Communications Manager at alina.boey@asia.blackwellpublishing.com or call 03-83591046.
This press release is also available online at http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/press/pressitem.asp?ref=1397
