Washington and Geneva arrive in Buenos Aires: notes on the history of the habit of smoking and its medicalization

Abstract

For much of the twentieth century both the civilian and military governments did not consider smoking a priority concern. It was only in the last decade of the twentieth century that the international movement against cigarettes, led by the World Health Organization, US organizations and academics, began to have some impact on Argentina's political scene. It was in this context that a new professional group managed to foment the creation of a broad anti-smoking political bloc. In this process, voluntarism focused on individual programs to quit smoking that had marked much of the initiatives of the twentieth century, ended up being replaced by public policies designed to ensure smoke free environments and combat passive smoking.