DRAFT – DO NOT CITE OR QUOTE
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new audience. A particularly strong narrative will operate on both the empirical level
(demonstrating that secondhand smoke is harmful to nonsmokers) and the moral level
(invoking core values in a way that frames legislative inaction as immoral).
Although the work of Cohen et al. (2000) was based on Canadian legislative
debates, a convincing argument can be made that the majority of U.S. citizens share
many these same deeply held beliefs and that the tobacco industry strategy is used in the
U.S. as well (Schotland and Bero 2002). Additionally, as a simple reading of the
American Lung Association’s most recent version of “State Legislated Actions on
Tobacco Issues” makes clear, in the U.S., like in Canada, the major tobacco companies
continue to win most of the battles over state regulation of their products.
Finally, in 2001 Jacobson, Selvin, and Pomfret extended the analysis of the
effects of discursive frames on decision-making processes by examining courtroom
decisions. In this analysis, they concluded that the side that controls the rhetoric during a
court case (as measured by issues “[the] court raised and/or discussed”) is more likely
than not to win the case (Jacobson, et al., 2001:283). The idea that control of rhetoric
influences debate outcomes has not yet been tested in the legislative arena with regard to
issues of clean indoor air. As legislators discuss their positions rather extensively in
committees we can use these discussions to test the hypothesis that the rhetoric used by
legislators corresponds with their final committee vote on the issue. If this is true, we
should be able to predict the outcome of a legislative vote (at least at the committee level)
by paying attention to which side controls the rhetoric most affectively.
A theoretical model of health policy formation emerges from this discussion:
narrative story lines are introduced into health policy discussions for numerous reasons.
Convention