Roddy Reid's book Globalizing Tobacco Control provides a comparative framework for understanding how cigarettes, once an iconic symbol of modernity, became the bête noire of global health by the end of the twentieth century. Although his specific focus is on transformations in health policy and public perceptions under way since the 1980s in California, France, and Japan, many of his insights are applicable more broadly. His analysis of the global trends and local developments that led to similar yet distinctive tobacco control programs in three different contexts sheds light on potential problems with the implementation of international tobacco control efforts in other societies. Public health professionals and antismoking activists would do well to note Reid's central argument: while nonsmoking is increasingly becoming a social norm worldwide, the processes that encourage or discourage smoking within particular localities are always historically and culturally specific.
