It is over 45 years since I first became engaged with questions about how best to reduce tobacco use across populations and the diseases that this causes. Across this time I have met, often worked with and become close friends with many of the best minds in international tobacco control. Seventeen years of that time were spent being deputy editor (1992–97) and then editor (1998–2008) of Tobacco Control, the world’s first research journal entirely dedicated to reducing tobacco use and the diseases it causes. During those years, it was a rare day when I was not reading and editing one or more of the thousands of papers that were submitted to the journal, even on Christmas Day. There are very few long-term researchers active across the many disciplinary and sub-topic fields of tobacco control whose most important work I’ve not read.
Trying to list and thank everyone who has ever influenced my thinking about tobacco control is an almost boundless task. But the following people are those to whom across different times – including during the writing of this book – I owe a huge collective debt in many ways: Mary Assunta, Emily Banks, David Bareham, Lisa Bero, John Bevins, Stella Bialous, Ron Borland, Fiona Byrne, Cynthia Callard, Tom Carroll, Stacy Carter, Joanna Cohen, Greg Connolly, John Cornwall, Elif Dağlı, Mike Daube, the late Ron Davis, Tom Eissenberg, Sherry Emery, Michael Farrell, Cecilia Farren, Esteve Fernández, Becky Freeman, Coral Gartner, Anna Gilmore, Gary Giovino, Stan Glantz, the late Nigel Gray, Paul Grogan, Prakash Gupta, Wayne Hall, Abby Haynes, Marita Hefler, David Hill, Janet Hoek, Bobbie Jacobson, the late Konrad Jamrozik, Anne Jones, Melissa Jones, Luk Joossens, Harald and Justyna Klingemann, Kylie Lindorff, Ruth Malone, Bernie McKay, Judith Mackay, Ross MacKenzie, Martin McKee, Wasim Maziak, Robert Moodie, Michael Moore, Matt Myers, Andrew Penman, Matthew Peters, Richard Peto, Chris Picton, John Pierce, Charlotta Pisinger, Angela Pratt, Robert Proctor, Nicola Roxon, Rob Sanson-Fisher, Michelle Scollo, Stan Shatenstein, David Simpson, Andrea Smith, Maurice Swanson, Prakit Vathesatogkit, Melanie Wakefield, Raoul Walsh, Ken Warner, Ann Westmore, Sarah White and Pin Pin Zheng.
Thanks also go to seven Australian and international colleagues for their critical reading of parts of or the entire manuscript, to my long-time editor at Sydney University Press, the wonderful Agata Mrva-Montoya and to Jo Lyons who edited the final text.
I also want to thank two people I will always regard as my career mentors: Henry Mayer (1919–91), professor of politics at the University of Sydney, and Steve Leeder, the head of department in the early stage of my academic career. Henry was a man with a true European renaissance intellect who called me out of the blue one day after reading an early paper I’d written. Over the next few years, we would lunch and talk and he would send me large envelopes each week stuffed with notes about what I needed to read across a sometimes bewildering range of often esoteric material. Steve gave me every encouragement and a very long leash from which to explore whatever I felt interesting and important. That was the best supervisory and mentoring gift I could have ever received.
But my greatest thanks must go to my parents and several teachers who, perhaps without knowing they were doing it, must have done everything right to foment in me a deep instinct for scepticism. For as long as I can remember, my immediate response to anything redolent with dogma or orthodoxy has been to quietly and then sometimes loudly interrogate it. In 2013 when I was given the Australian Skeptic of the Year award, I couldn’t have been more pleased.
This is my tenth and probably last book. I’ve deeply enjoyed writing it and hope its readers will get the same satisfaction. As always, thanks to Trish and my amazing family for all the love we share, and especially to Ali for taking the public health advocacy baton at full speed.
30 March 2022