Alcohol, tobacco, obesity and the new public health

[Extract] Although drinking, smoking and obesity have long been a focus of social and moral opprobrium, during the last two decades of the twentieth century, they came under concerted attack from the field of knowledge and action that has come to be known as the new public health. Over the next two issues, Critical Public Health will feature a series of papers that critically examine public health policy and practice across these three areas. Employing a variety of disciplinary approaches, the contributors will interrogate the ways in which alcohol, tobacco and obesity have come to be constructed as 'problems' requiring intervention and examine some of the limitations of prevailing public health wisdom regarding these three issues.