Public Opinion, Public Policy, and Smoking tracks Americans’ changing attitudes about cigarette smoking over the last century. With data from more than five thousand public and privately conducted polls, this book carefully examines how Americans came to understand the health risks of smoking; how the tobacco industry sought to reframe smoking; and how public opinion support for tobacco control affected lawsuits, elections, and public policies. This book tests several well-known linkage models that connect public opinion with public policy. It shows that conventional wisdom about public opinion and tobacco control policy is often mistaken. This book offers the first in-depth look at American public opinion and cigarette smoking during the last century.

"The book...offer[s] a nice history of the changes in Americans’ awareness of the health risks of cigarette smoking and some of the major events that have occurred over the past century and a half. It also includes an extensive and detailed bibliography." - Public Opinion Quarterly

"Marshall’s book is especially innovative in focusing on what the public knew or believed and how public opinion shifted over time. Other recent historical accounts of this period have focused largely on scientific knowledge and on what scientists, health officials, and the tobacco industry knew or believed. . . Marshall’s account is optimistic." - Bulletin of the History of Medicine