The impact of an extra one million quitters will quickly translate into improvements in health, freeing them from an addiction that dictates how they live, and in many instances, how they die. These improvements will touch families across America. There is no other public health or clinical intervention available that holds such promise. This Guideline promises to decrease the enormous burden of illness, death, and economic costs that result from tobacco addiction in our society. It is difficult to identify a condition in the United States that presents such a horrific mix of lethality, prevalence, and neglect, despite effective and readily available interventions.
Tobacco use is that condition.
The climate for treating tobacco dependence has tremendously improved over the last decade. This evidence-based Guideline takes the science, and in a practical way, translates it into cessation treatments that work. This recognition provides clinicians with a model for helping their patients quit. The new PHS Guideline provides information on innovative counseling strategies that work, including telephone counseling, and other techniques. It also contains evidence-based information about the effectiveness of new medicines that were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration when the original Guideline was issued and urges that every tobacco user who is motivated to quit be provided with one of these medicines in the absence of contraindications.