Tobacco Industry vs. the World Health Organization: a historical confrontation between social networks of stakeholders

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present an introduction to the history of the tobacco industry and the confrontation between its social network of stakeholders and the network led by the World Health Organization (WHO), with a focus on the Brazilian context and the role of the Alliance for the Control of Tobacco Use (ACT) as the coordinator of multiple stakeholders opposing the tobacco industry strategies in Brazil. The article seeks to describe the problematic relationship between tobacco production and export on the one hand and tobacco control on the other, as exemplified by the approval, in February 2005, of the first international public health treaty (WHO Framework Convention for Tobacco Control). The text is based on research leading to a PhD thesis in 2000, which has been updated through articles and ongoing research since then, with the aim of monitoring the unfolding of this issue that is central to the public health policies