TY - JOUR T1 - Training the lawmakers JF - Tobacco Control JO - Tob Control SP - 132 LP - 132 DO - 10.1136/tc.8.2.132a VL - 8 IS - 2 A2 - , Y1 - 1999/06/01 UR - http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/8/2/132.2.abstract N2 - “If only our country’s health minister could have heard that discussion!”—how often have frustrated tobacco control advocates said something like this after a particularly rich session at a conference where all too many of the participants were recognised experts in the field, and none at all were politicians or their advisory officials. Most important, how often have such sentiments been expressed when a conference has yet again agreed that prevention of tobacco use is essentially a political struggle; getting the health ministers and other senior lawmakers to sit down and hear why and how to enact effective tobacco control legislation has seemed fine in theory, but almost as difficult to achieve as the legislation itself.At last there has been a major conference to try to remedy this. The first international policy conference on children and tobacco took place in the United States in Washington, DC, … ER -