Construction of Tobacco Users and Companies in Anti-smoking Policy Debates in the Czech Republic

Only limited attention has been paid to social constructions of both tobacco smokers and tobacco companies. There is a significant scholarly effort to explain the adoption of increasingly restrictive tobacco control policies in Western democracies, but these studies are usually based on an examination of individual instruments (Studlar, Christensen, and Sitasari 2011) and do not inquire into complex interactions of policy design and target populations (Schneider and Ingram 1993). However, extensive research on the attitudes towards smokers and tobacco companies exists. Several studies point out the rising social unacceptability of tobacco use and even stigmatization of smokers (Stuber, Galea, and Link 2008). This may lead to blaming smokers for both irresponsible and unhealthy behaviour and also less willingness to offer them state support for their medical expenses (Gollust and Lynch 2011). Also, tobacco companies are seen as untruthful, even by their customers (Hammond et al. 2006). The Czech Republic has a notably high rate of smoking and tobacco control measures are rather weak (e.g., the CR was the last signatory of the WHO Framework Convention for Tobacco Control among the EU countries). Tobacco policy has been highly contested area, with some policy-makers openly supporting the tobacco industry (Levy et al. 2012). In this paper, social constructions of tobacco users and companies are analysed in order to identify and delineate policy-makers’ perspectives on these main targets of anti-smoking policy. For that purpose, frame analysis of the set of legislative communications (mainly speeches during plenary sessions to key anti-smoking laws in Czech Parliament’s Chamber of Deputies and Senate between 1995 and 2015) is carried out. References: Gollust, Sarah E., and Julia Lynch. 2011. “Who Deserves Health Care? The Effects of Causal Attributions and Group Cues on Public Attitudes about Responsibility for Health Care Costs.” Journal of Health Politics, Policy & Law 36 (6): 1061–95. doi:10.1215/03616878-1460578. Hammond, David, Geoffrey T. Fong, Mark P. Zanna, James F. Thrasher, and Ron Borland. 2006. “Tobacco Denormalization and Industry Beliefs Among Smokers from Four Countries.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 31 (3): 225–32. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2006.04.004. Levy, David T., Hana Ross, Alexandra Kmetova, Eva Kralikova, Michal Stoklosa, and Kenneth Blackman. 2012. “The Czech Republic SimSmoke: The Effect of Tobacco Control Policies on Smoking Prevalence and Smoking Attributable Deaths in the Czech Republic.” International Scholarly Research Notices 2012 (April): e329721. doi:10.5402/2012/329721. Schneider, Anne L., and Helen M. Ingram. 1993. “Social Construction of Target Populations: Implications for Politics and Policy.” American Political Science Review 87: 334–47. Stuber, Jennifer, Sandro Galea, and Bruce G. Link. 2008. “Smoking and the Emergence of a Stigmatized Social Status.” Social Science & Medicine, Stigma, Prejudice, Discrimination and Health, 67 (3): 420–30. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.03.010. Studlar, Donley T., Kyle Christensen, and Arnita Sitasari. 2011. “Tobacco Control in the EU-15: The Role of Member States and the European Union.” Journal of European Public Policy 18 (5): 728–45. doi:10.1080/13501763.2011.586801.