TY - JOUR T1 - Worldwide news and comment JF - Tobacco Control JO - Tob Control SP - 82 LP - 86 DO - 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2012-050448 VL - 21 IS - 2 A2 - , Y1 - 2012/03/01 UR - http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/21/2/82.abstract N2 - All articles written by David Simpson unless otherwise attributed. Ideas and items for News Analysis should be sent to: David.Simpson@ctsu.ox.ac.ukA review of 20 years of News Analysis prompts three summary comments. First, extraordinary progress has been made in tobacco control worldwide since the first story in the first edition, in 1992, which reported plans for legislation to ban tobacco advertising in the member states of the European Union. Second, the sheer range and scale of tobacco industry dishonesty and recklessness in trying to block public health efforts to prevent disease caused by its products, and to preserve business as usual, while known to all for so long, is still astonishing. And third, since colleagues all over the world have submitted so many accounts of their best health initiatives and the industry's worst perfidy, and with every edition available free in our online archive, researchers and historians have a unique and extraordinary resource charting the development of the global response to the tobacco pandemic over two decades.That first story, headlined, ‘Brussels sprouts plan for tobacco ad ban’ (puns, sometimes verging on the painful, were not uncommon in early headlines), illustrated the key aspiration of tobacco control 20 years ago: government action, by legislation. A few pioneering countries had comprehensive tobacco control laws, but this first story promised a whole group of countries enacting legislation together. Many early news stories dealt with trying to obtain laws, or implementing them in the face of tobacco industry attempts to test them to destruction. The policy areas most featured were those of greatest importance in reducing tobacco consumption, thus those resisted most furiously by the industry: banning promotion, not just regular advertising; banning smoking in public places (especially when, rather late in the day, all places of work were included); and raising tax to increase price. … ER -