Key Points
➤ All patients who use tobacco should receive treatment for
their dependence, rather than simply being encouraged to
stop.
➤ The goal is to improve patient-centered care of tobacco
dependence by identifying a single evidence-based pathway
that balances important outcomes, including short- and long-
term tobacco abstinence and serious adverse events (SAEs),
while accounting for important clinical variability.
➤ The panel recognized that the epidemic of tobacco
dependence involves an array of social, environmental, and
behavioral determinants. However, the panel had to omit
important topics, such as communication and counseling
methods, healthcare system designs, epidemic-control
policies, and second-line therapy, because each is sufficiently
robust to warrant its own guideline.
➤ This guideline was created with the assumption that accepted
foundations of tobacco-dependence treatment are already in
practice (Box 1).
