Charting the dramatic and complex history of tobacco politics in California over the last 25 years of the 20th century, this text begins with the activities of a small band of activists who, in the 1970s, put forward the radical notion that people should not have to breathe second-hand tobacco smoke. Stanton Glantz and Edith Balbach follow the movement through the 1980s, when activists created hundreds of city and county ordinances by working through their local officials, to the present - when tobacco is a highly visible issue in American politics and smoke-free restaurants and bars are a reality throughout the state. The authors show how these accomplishments rest on the groundwork laid over the last two decades of the 20th century by tobacco control activists who have worked across the US to change how people view the tobacco industry and its behaviour.