Punching Above Their Weight Through Policy Learning: Tobacco Control Policies in Ireland

† An earlier version of this paper was presented at a colloquium at the University of Stirling. Thanks to the participants there, especially Paul Cairney, for their comments.

Abstract

Ireland's tobacco control policy today is recognised as one of the strongest in Europe and the world, largely on the basis of its first-in-the-world general workplace smoking ban in 2004. However, it is insufficiently recognised that Ireland has persistently and deliberately developed tobacco control policies since the 1970s, a longer period than most countries. Using a five-fold analysis of factors influencing tobacco policy: agendas, socio-economic setting (including public opinion), networks, institutions, and ideas (including scientific information and diffusion), this paper explains policy development in Ireland over the long term. It demonstrates how a small country, not dependent on tobacco growing or a domestic tobacco industry but also having only a small research and bureaucratic capacity, has managed to create a strong tobacco control policy. Even though it is a European Union member, Ireland has utilised diffusion of research and policy in the English-speaking world, especially paying close attention to the USA, to develop its position as a world policy leader in tobacco control.

Keywords:

• smoking
• policy learning
• diffusion
• policy agenda
• United States
• European Union

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the people in Ireland who agreed to talk to me about this issue, the reviewers of the manuscript, and to Michael Marsh (Trinity College, Dublin) for his stimulating thoughts on this topic over the years.

Notes

† An earlier version of this paper was presented at a colloquium at the University of Stirling. Thanks to the participants there, especially Paul Cairney, for their comments.

1 New Zealand has also announced its intentions to introduce plain packaging.

2 Duina and Kurzer (2004) also do not discuss other small state advocates, but instead concentrate on larger member states plus two resistant small states, Austria and Denmark.

3 The terminology of this literature is confusing, but it all discusses similar phenomena, whether it is called policy learning, policy transfer, diffusion, emulation, isomorphism, or policy borrowing. See, for example, Rose (2005), Marsh and Sharman (2009), and De Francesco 2013.

4 At this time, Ireland was closely attached to the British economy, which also featured high cigarette taxes.

5 Perhaps because of an error in the document from the Health Service Executive (2010), several sources subsequently report that the first Irish cigarette package warnings were in 1991 when the EU-mandated warnings were adopted. See Reed (2011), Currie (2012), and Currie and Clancy (2010). For the corrective, see the appendix on Irish legislation in 1979; Roemer (1982); Sasco et al. (1989, 1992); European Commission (2004); Studlar et al. (2011); and Hiilamo et al. (2012).

6 Ireland has legislated infrequently on tobacco, but these are usually broad documents authorising the Minister of Health to use Statutory Instruments to present specific measures to achieve the policy goals enumerated. See http://www.dohc.ie/about_us/divisions/tobacco_control/

7 For an example of these problems, see Bowers’ (2003) critical review of Micheál Martin's tenure as Health Minister in 2002. Tobacco is not mentioned in this article, which predates the dramatic announcement of workplace non-smoking regulations later that month. Another example occurred more recently in the 2014 cabinet reshuffle that led to the separation of the Health and Children's ministries, with James Reilly retaining responsibility for the latter, including ‘co-sponsorship’ of anti-smoking and some other aspects of public health, while Leo Varadkar became Minister for Health to deal with the ‘Angola’ problems. See O'Keeffe (2014)

8 This included the merger of the OTC into the Health Service Executive, where it was renamed The National Tobacco Control Office.

9 Until overturned by the EU Court of Justice in 2010, Ireland also had a minimum price for cigarettes, an unusual policy instrument.

10 As in other countries, there is a debate in Ireland about how to deal with e-cigarettes, but there is push by some anti-tobacco groups to treat them as medical devices, therefore subject to greater regulation. The EU declined to go this far.

11 One interviewee suggested that international evidence was used more as a justification for already decided action than genuine evidence gathering on which to base a decision. While there obviously was some of this during the campaign for smoke-free legislation in 2003 (see Gilmore 2005), the bulk of the evidence, however, indicates that the extraordinary expense and effort, dating back to the Oireachtas committees and Tom Power's work in the Health Ministry, constituted a genuine attempt to find out ‘what worked’ elsewhere.

12 The state of Minnesota sued US tobacco companies, and the subsequent trial resulted in the judge ordering the mass release of tobacco industry documents that have proven to be a treasure trove for analysis of industry knowledge and behaviour.

13 The Irish-based tobacco companies themselves have both threatened litigation as a discouragement for legislation as well as carrying out these threats in Irish and European courts, with little success in the latter (Gilmore 2005; see the appendix).

14 Eventually the US Congress passed the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act to satisfy the Supreme Court's objections.

15 Ireland's role in EU tobacco policy has not been recognised in the broader literature on the state's relationship with the EU. See Laffan and O'Mahony (2008).