The scope of this study is to analyze the creation process of the first international public health treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC); which was signed in 2003 and came into force in 2005. The hypothesis is that the previous decades, before the creation of FCTC, overlap with the stage of emergence of an international norm on tobacco control – a denomination used in this present analysis as an attempt to synthesize, under a single analytical concept, the myriad of ideas, understandings, and international prescriptions about tobacco control; which has been developed during the last five decades. In this perspective, the creation of FCTC would correspond to the institutionalization of tobacco control norms at the international level. Furthermore, this institutionalization would represent a tipping point in the whole evolution process of the international norm on tobacco control. This would set the limits of the beginning of a new stage, characterized by the dynamic of socialization of the norm; as well by the occurrence of a cascade effect, where more countries start to adopt the norm and do it in a faster way. With the purpose of analyzing the internalization process of the international norm in question, the present study selects the Brazilian case; emphasizing how domestic particularities of different countries dictate the speed in which this norm evolves, and also determine future possibilities.