The Association for the Treatment of Tobacco Use and Dependence (ATTUD) released a position paper, "Integrating Tobacco Treatment Within Behavioral Health." This paper is a first for ATTUD and reflects the sea change in mental health and addictions toward including smoking cessation in recovery.

ATTUD's Disparate Populations Committee Chair, Alice Dalla Palu, noted, "The committee reviewed literature for behavioral health populations and tobacco use in preparing the paper and found that most behavioral health clients want to quit tobacco use.  It is time to alter our approach to this issue, actively intervene, and not accept tobacco addiction as unapproachable with behavioral health patients. Our hope is that the paper will provide guidance and encouragement to practitioners to offer tobacco services to their patients."

The Disparate Populations Committee of ATTUD was formed to focus on client populations who are disproportionately affected by tobacco use.  The first year goal was to examine ways to address disparities within behavioral health clients. In the future, they will also focus on other disparate populations including pregnant smokers and low income populations.

Steven A. Schroeder, MD commented, "For far too long those accepting the difficult and important challenge of treating persons with mental health and addiction issues accepted the fact that most of their clients smoked.  That has changed, stimulated by the shocking statistics on the premature mortality of these individuals as well as the reluctance of nonsmokers to be exposed to second hand smoke.  The ATTUD statement should be seen as an important part of this professional transition from passively accepting smoking to actively working to help smokers quit.  We salute the ATTUD document and its leaders who prepared the statement."

Here's a link to the full text of the position paper: http://www.attud.org/pdf/ATTUD-position.pdf.

US Virgin Islands enacted smokefree workplace law: 

http://www.healthvi.org/smokefree/about.html

http://www.healthvi.org/assets/documents/text-of-act-7171.pdf