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Tobacco and the invention of quitting: a history of gender, excess and will‐power
Author(s) -
White Cameron,
Oliffe John L.,
Bottorff Joan L.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2012.01529.x
Subject(s) - consumption (sociology) , power (physics) , tobacco control , tobacco industry , smoking cessation , control (management) , public health , smoking history , function (biology) , political science , economics , sociology , medicine , social science , management , law , physics , nursing , pathology , quantum mechanics , evolutionary biology , biology
Since the rise of concern about the relationship between smoking and health in the 1950s and 1960s, the tobacco industry has emphasised notions of individual choice to negate the arguments of the public health sector and legitimatise the industry’s presence in the marketplace. Central to this notion of individual choice has been the idea that the control of tobacco consumption (including quitting) is a function of will‐power and that smokers can quit if they really want to. This article examines the way will‐power developed as the centrepiece of debates about smoking consumption and cessation in the 1950s and 1960s.