When the legislative process becomes part of the health’s promoters’ agenda, a new and not very explored relation between the health and the politics starts. The legislative measures, one of the four basic strategies for the promotion of health, are the strategic field for the articulation and consolidation of the healthy public politics, on of the five action areas in the health promotion; its positive development depends on, amongst other things, the influence of the first of the levels for a permanent social change: the rhetoric (Colomer, 2001:40). Thus, the next attempt explores the nature and the contents of the rhetoric, characterized as a competition between arguments, within the framework of the debate on the initiatives for the regulation of smoking in Colombia.

These arguments are characterized by the controversy between public health and economy and the tension between three social values: health-freedom-equity.