Into the next millenium at the "one stop shopping guide" for tobacco control.

After working as Ron Davis’ deputy for the past seven years, I’m honoured and excited to have accepted the editor’s post now that Ron has moved on to become North American editor for the British Medical Journal. All who have followed the progress of Tobacco Control since its launch in 1992 will know what a unique journal it has become under his leadership. From its often riveting covers, through its solid stock of original articles and to its compelling blend of news analysis and advocacy studies, the journal is—as an industry conference was advised from our very first year—“an unlimited source of information” which the delegates were advised emphatically to “READ and READ again”. I believe the journal’s strengths centre around our recognition that the tobacco control field requires research and advocacy talent from a very diverse range of disciplines and experiences. We will continue to actively facilitate the publication of high-quality research and scholarship from this diverse field and make particular eVorts to encourage papers from multidisciplinary groups. There are some profound challenges facing our field in the new millenium. The following five particularly interest me. + What advocacy strategies and ways of framing tobacco control issues will have most impact on the governments and populations of less developed countries where progress against tobacco is mostly in its infancy, and both population size and tobacco use is rising rapidly? + How can we better encourage research scholarship into the advocacy process? + Several nations with robust tobacco control programmes have seen (particularly male) smoking prevalence fall continually over the past 30 years, only to stall around 20–25% during the 1990s. Will it be possible to get and keep smoking prevalence below 20%, particularly in nations where regulations and programmes have already gone a long way towards the “gold standards” of comprehensive tobacco control policies such as those described by the World Health Organisation. + What insights can qualitative methods bring to the goal of rejuvenating these stalled declines? + How will the harm reduction debate in tobacco control develop?