California Journal of Politics and Policy

Public health and public administration literature speaks to the fact that smoke-free policy has been steadily diffusing within and between states for the last decade. The literature suggests common strengths and challenges associated with advocacy efforts in tobacco control. The similarities suggest that policy activity in this area fits with policy-making theory of the advocacy coalition framework (ACF). After reviewing relevant literature on tobacco control advocacy and theories of policy making, this study discusses a grounded theory qualitative analysis of focus group data to examine to what degree the themes and grounded theory derived from the data conform to the advocacy coalition framework and concludes by looking at an emerging issue in tobacco control, regulating the use of electronic cigarettes and how the modified version of the advocacy coalition framework could be applied.