Human rights and tobacco control (Elgar studies in health and the law) Gispen M., Toebes B. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. 2020. pp. 296.

• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Author: Andrea Boggio
• Date: 01 March 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.479

DOI: 10.1002/wmh3.479

BOOK REVIEW

Human rights and tobacco control (Elgar

studies in health and the law)

Gispen M., Toebes B.

Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. 2020. pp. 296.

Editors Maire Elske Gispen and Brigit Toebes from the Faculty of Law of the University of

Groningen put together a valuable collection exploring the relationship between tobacco

control policies and programs and international human rights law.

The volume is divided into three parts, along predictable but valuable lines. Part I is

comprised of two essays providing normative reflections on tobacco control. They explore

the philosophical foundations for restricting individuals' freedom to smoke, the role that

dignity and agency play in this context, and raise the question of whether a human right to

tobacco control exists.

Part II collects various essays exploring international and regional approaches to

tobacco control. The scope of this section of the book is comprehensive. A batch of essays

covers the international human rights regime and regional systems (EU, ASEAN, Africa, the

Americas through the Inter‐American Human Rights Systems). Another batch looks at

issues that intersect with these regimes: Corporate accountability, the drug control systems

set up as part of the “war on drugs”to fight illicit drugs, international economic law, and

international trade regulation. In addition, a chapter covers the history of the negotiation and

drafting of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control—one of the only two binding

international legal instruments adopted by the World Health Organization in its several

decades of activities. The historical record reveals that human rights law was virtually absent

from that process and that arguing that human rights contribute to the international tobacco

control regime would be a form of revisionist history.

Part III presents four essays focusing on particular elements of tobacco control law in

different countries: smoke‐free environments in Italy, ending tobacco use in Finland,

e‐cigarettes in Belgium, and packaging regulations in Australia.

The essays are well‐written, well‐researched, and authored by an excellent roster of

experts. Overall, the book accomplishes the two goals it intended to deliver. The first is to

integrate the analysis of tobacco control regimes with international and regional human

rights frameworks. This goal aligns with contemporary scholarly and advocacy trends to

“mainstream”human rights in various policy areas. Second, it aims to clarify how human

rights law, with its binding comments for governments, can strengthen tobacco control

initiatives and ensure more robust protection of human health. The essays show that various

human rights, from both Covenants, can be examined in connection with tobacco control

strategies: the rights to health, an adequate standard of living, life, information and edu-

cation, and a healthy environment. This breadth is one of the volume's strengths, as it

broadens the analysis beyond the right to health (the usual suspect) and explores how

tobacco control strategies implicate both political/civil and economic–social–cultural rights.

As an essay by Taylor and McCarthy points out, political and civil rights were brought into

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