TOBACCO CONTROL POLICY in the NETHERLANDS Between Economy, Public Health, and Ideology

TOBACCO CONTROL POLICY IN THE NETHERLANDS Between Economy, Public Health, and Ideology Marc C. Willemsen Palgrave Studies in Public Health Policy Research Series Editors Patrick Fafard University of Ottawa Ottawa, ON, Canada Evelyne de Leeuw University of New South Wales Australia Liverpool, NSW, Australia Public health has increasingly cast the net wider. The field has moved on from a hygiene perspective and infectious and occupational disease base (where it was born in the 19th century) to a concern for unhealthy life- styles post-WWII, and more recently to the uneven distribution of health and its (re)sources. It is of course interesting that these ‘paradigms’ in many places around the world live right next to each other. Hygiene, life- styles, and health equity form the complex (indeed, wicked) policy agen- das for health and social/sustainable development. All of these, it is now recognized, are part of the ‘social determinants of health’. The broad new public health agenda, with its multitude of competing issues, professions, and perspectives requires a much more sophisticated understanding of government and the policy process. In effect, there is a growing recognition of the extent to which the public health community writ large needs to better understand government and move beyond what has traditionally been a certain naiveté about politics and the process of policy making. Public health scholars and practitioners have embraced this need to understand, and influence, how governments at all levels make policy choices and decisions. Political scientists and international relations scholars and practitioners are engaging in the growing public health agenda as it forms an interesting expanse of glocal policy development and implementation. Broader, more detailed, and more profound scholarship is required at the interface between health and political science. This series will thus be a powerful tool to build bridges between political science, international relations and public health. It will showcase the potential of rigorous political and international relations science for better understanding public health issues. It will also support the public health professional with a new theoretical and methodological toolbox. The series will include mono- graphs (both conventional and shorter Pivots) and collections that appeal to three audiences: scholars of public health, public health practitioners, and members of the political science community with an interest in public health policy and politics. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15414 Marc C. Willemsen Tobacco Control Policy in the Netherlands Between Economy, Public Health, and Ideology Marc C. Willemsen Maastricht University Maastricht, The Netherlands Palgrave Studies in Public Health Policy Research ISBN 978-3-319-72367-9 ISBN 978-3-319-72368-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72368-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937408 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This book is an open access publication Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu- tional affiliations. Cover illustration: Esben Klinker Hansen | Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For Jacqueline, Emma, and Julia PREFACE We doubt whether a man ever brings his faculties to bear with their whole force on a subject, until he writes upon it for the instruction or gratification of others. —William Ellery Channing, 1890 If one is lucky, at some point in one’s life, things fall into place. The process of writing this book and doing research for it was such an experience. For me, writing a book about Dutch tobacco control policy was the next logical step after more than a quarter of a century of research into tobacco control. I started my academic career developing and studying smoking cessation interventions. In the 1990s I became frustrated by the fact that regardless how much attention and counselling smokers who try to quit receive, the majority of quitters relapse within a year—most in the first month after treatment. Realising that even a combination of the best and most intensive treatment does not produce success rates much higher than 30%, I turned to more fundamental questions: what makes cigarettes so addictive, and what can be done to motivate whole populations to quit smoking? In 1998 I started to work for the Stichting Volksgezondheid en Roken (Dutch Smoking or Health Foundation) (STIVORO), the national expert centre on tobacco control. This gave me first-hand knowledge of tobacco control in practice, and I gradually learned about the political aspects of tobacco control. My appointment as Professor in Tobacco Control Research at the Department of Health Promotion at Maastricht University gave me the opportunity to cross the bridge from tobacco vii viii PREFACE control research to tobacco policy research. I familiarised myself with the public policy literature, contacted political scientists, and attended the fifth Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Conference of the Parties (FCTC COP) in 2012 in Seoul to witness tobacco control politics and advocacy in action at the global level. I discovered that tobacco policy is an important topic for public policy scientists, but that insights from political science have not even begun to be absorbed by the tobacco control research community. I was thrilled when the opportunity arose for me to write a book about this. Most of the time the process of writing was a great pleasure, with many moments of excitement when I discovered new things and my understanding was deepened. The book has also turned into the first comprehensive historical account of tobacco control in the Netherlands, written for an international readership. Inspiration for this work came from two sources. One was a book by Clavier and De Leeuw (2013) which drew attention to the fact that the health promotion field lacks a theoretical understanding of the adoption and implementation of health policies. The other was a book that presented an approach to the study of tobacco control policy that does justice to insights from public policy and political sciences while being accessible to those working outside the public policy field (Cairney, Studlar, & Mamudu, 2012). The first source made me realise that there is an under- recognised knowledge gap in the tobacco control field that needs to be filled, and the second presented me with a solution. There are so many public policy theories available that it can be quite overwhelming for a rela- tive layperson, so I was pleased to stumble on to the general analytical framework provided by Cairney and his colleagues. It allowed me to focus on the basis elements of the policymaking process and to apply a logical structure to this book. I felt confident enough to borrow insights from two theories that I found particularly interesting, the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA) and the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). However, I call on political scientists and public policy scholars to join me in studying the case of Dutch tobacco control. There is much more to learn from the enormous amount of information and data on Dutch tobacco control policy as I discovered, and it is available for further research. I am most grateful for a grant from STIVORO, which made it possible to afford the necessary research and to dedicate working time to write this book. As part of STIVORO’s science team, I had obtained first-hand knowledge of tobacco control and the workings of the broader tobacco control coalition in the Netherlands. In addition, from 2013 until 2017, PREFACE ix I worked for the Dutch Alliance for a smoke free society (ANR). These employments gave me relevant data and information—a clear advantage, given the complexity of the topic—but there was also the danger of bias. I distanced myself as much as possible from my own contribution to the processes I examined. I further reduced the risk of personal bias by having people critically comment on the work. I thank Paul Cairney, Pieter de Coninck, Sanne Heijndijk, Gera Nagelhout, Dewi Segaar, Fleur van Bladeren, Bas van den Putte, and Heide Weishaar for reading and giving feedback on draft versions of the book.

Load more