In September, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Scotland launched a report, The unwelcome guest: how Scotland invited the tobacco industry to smoke outside. Using previously uncovered tobacco industry documents as well as government, press and internal archives, the report shows how the campaign to go smoke-free in Scotland—the first part of the UK to do it—was won, and how the tobacco industry tried to stop the legislation being passed.

Hospitality groups such as the Scottish Licensed Trade Association (SLTA) hired the public relations firm Media House and created a new alliance called Against an Outright Ban (AOB) to lobby Scottish politicians not to ban smoking in public places. British tobacco companies, a tobacco industry funded “smokers’ rights” group …