In recent years, tobacco politics has been a multi-layered issue fraught with significant legal, commercial, and public policy implications. From the outset, Martha A. Derthick′s Up in Smoke took a nuanced look at tobacco politics in a new era of "adversarial legalism" and the consequences, both intended and unintended, of the MSA (Master Settlement Agreement).

Now, with a brand new 3rd edition, the book returns to "ordinary politics" and the passage of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act which gave the FDA broad authority to regulate both the manufacture and marketing of tobacco products. Derthick shows our political institutions working as they should, even if slowly, with partisanship and interest group activity playing their part in putting restraints on cigarette smoking.