Every year, more than 400,000 Americans die prematurely because of tobacco use. Most began smoking during their teen years. Adolescent tobacco use remains our nation's most preventable threat to life and health. This public health crisis has generated widespread debate over how best to prevent young people from initiating smoking or using other tobacco products. Combating Teen Smoking is an invaluable guide for policymakers and communities on the front lines of this prevention effort.
Synthesizing recent research regarding the prevention and control of adolescent smoking, this book offers the reader a convenient compendium of what is known about adolescents and tobacco use; it also highlights areas where additional research is needed. Based on their assessment of the considerable amount of information presented, the authors recommend various ways to help slow--or even reverse--the recent rise in teenage smoking. A comprehensive antitobacco program might include, for example, antismoking media campaigns based on social marketing strategies, clean indoor air laws, and the increase of cigarette prices.
Combating Teen Smoking will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers concerned about the problem of adolescent tobacco use, including policymakers who are actively seeking ways to help reduce teen smoking.
Peter D. Jacobson is Associate Professor, University of Michigan School of Public Health. Paula Lantz is Assistant Professor, University of Michigan School of Public Health. Kenneth Warner is Richard D. Remington Collegiate Professor of Public Health and Director, University of Michigan Tobacco Research Network. Jeffrey Wasserman is Consultant, the RAND Corporation and Senior Project Director, The MEDSTAT Group. Harold Pollack is Assistant Professor, University of Michigan School of Public Health. Alexis Ahlstrom is Research Associate, University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Smoking has played an important role in the cultures of North America since ancient times. Because of the ceremonial and ritual aspects of the practice in Native American societies, smoking pipes are important cultural artifacts. The essays in The Culture of Smoking constitute the first sustained interpretive study of smoking pipes, focusing on the cultural significance of smoking both before and after European contact.

Pipes lend themselves to anthropological as well as archaeological analysis in part because they are more ceremonial than utilitarian. Thus, while their styles and provenance can reveal something about trade relationships, cultural transfer, and aesthetic influences, they also provide important information about the nature of ritual in a particular society. As the contributors demonstrate, pipes offer a window through which to view the symbolic, ideological, and political roles that smoking has played in North American societies from prehistoric times to the nineteenth century.

The eleven essays included range widely over time and region, beginning with a case study of pipes and mortuary practices in the Ohio Valley during the Early Woodland Period. Subsequent chapters examine stone pipes from coastal North Carolina during the Late Woodland Period and the role pipes played in interregional interaction among protohistoric Native American groups in the Midwest and Northeast. Other essays explore the variety of cultural and political uses of pipes during the period of European contact. The final section of the book focuses on smoking in Euro-American contexts of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.

The innovative interpretive approaches taken by the contributors and the broad historical perspective will make The Culture of Smoking a model for examining other categories of material culture, and the volume will be welcomed by anthropologists and historians as well as archaeologists.

Sean M. Rafferty is associate professor of anthropology at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

Rob Mann is the southeast regional archaeologist for Louisiana and is based in the Museum of Natural Science at Louisiana State University.

The 1966 edition of the leading medical textbook states that pregnant women can safely smoke half a pack of cigarettes a day. Yet today, women who smoke during pregnancy are among the most vilified figures in public health campaigns. Laury Oaks argues this shift is not due solely to medical findings indicating that cigarette smoking may harm the fetus. Also responsible are a variety of social factors that converged more than a decade ago to construct the demonized category of the “pregnant smoker.”

This book charts the emergence of smoking during pregnancy as a public health concern and social problem. Oaks looks at the emphasis public health educators place on individual responsibility, the current legal and social assertion of fetal personhood, the changing expectations of pregnant and prepregnant women, and the advent of antismoking campaigns. She explores how public health educators discuss “the problem” with one another, how they communicate with pregnant smokers, and how these women themselves understand the “risk” of fetal harm. Finally, Oaks discusses the various meanings of “objective” statistics on the effects of smoking on the fetus, exploring the significance of cultural context in assessing the relative importance of those numbers. She argues that rather than bombarding pregnant women with statistics, health educators should consider the daily lives of these women and their socioeconomic status to understand why some women choose to smoke during pregnancy. Without downplaying the seriousness of the health risks that smoking poses to women and their babies, the book supports new efforts that challenge the moral policing of pregnant smokers.