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Tobacco Control: reflections on the first seven years

As I announced in the Summer 1998 issue of Tobacco Control ,1 I have stepped down as editor of the journal. Simon Chapman, deputy editor since its launch, is the new editor. In light of this transition, it is timely to review the first seven years of the journal’s life. The story of the journal’s development has not been told in print, so I will begin with that prologue.

Why are there a half dozen journals in the field of alcohol abuse, but none for tobacco control? Why do we have several journals devoted to AIDS—a disease which has only been known since the early 1980s—but not one on tobacco and health? Those questions were vexing me when I worked at the Office on Smoking and Health, United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the late 1980s.

At a meeting of the World Health Organisation’s Technical Advisory Group on Tobacco or Health (TAG) in November 1989, I raised those questions and asked for the group’s support for the launch of a journal devoted to tobacco and health. The group responded favourably to the proposal, and suggested that “a platform for further discussion of the idea should be sought at the Seventh World Conference on Tobacco & Health, in Perth.”2 

At the world conference in Perth in April 1990, I convened a meeting of 25 leaders in tobacco control, from a variety of countries, to discuss the proposal. There was a strong consensus that it should move forward, and the ensuing discussion focused on who might publish such a journal. One of the attendees was Pamela Taylor, then head of public affairs for the British Medical Association. She immediately called Stephen Lock, then editor of the British Medical Journal ( BMJ ), and reported back within 24 hours that …