Treating Addiction to Tobacco and Nicotine Products

"Since the invention of the cigarette-making machine towards the end of the nineteenth century and then throughout the twentieth century, cigarettes have been by far the most common form of nicotine consumption in the United States, with cigars and oral tobacco (chew and snuff) trailing far behind. Despite declines in smoking, it remains the number one cause of preventable death in the United States. It has been estimated that tobacco smoking causes over 400,000 premature deaths per year in the United States and 4.9 million deaths per year worldwide (8.8% of all global deaths). Since only the beginning of the twenty-first century has the tobacco industry acknowledged the scientific consensus on the addictiveness and other health effects of cigarettes and has diversified into marketing a range of other products. The 1964 U.S. Surgeon General's report on tobacco and health concluded that cigarettes are a cause of lung cancer, and numerous follow-up reports clarified the enormous harmfulness of cigarette smoking. This book describes the harms to health from smoking cigarettes and other tobacco products, the relative harms from non-smoked nicotine products, the neurobiology of tobacco/nicotine dependence and addiction, comorbidities of tobacco addiction with other behavioral health conditions, and ways to address tobacco/nicotine use in the clinical setting and engage patients in treatment"--