Recommendations

• Treatment should be an essential component of a tobacco control strategy and should be integrated with other tobacco control policies; for example, taxation increases should be combined with greater availability of treatment (see also Treatment Guidelines section of the Efficacy section).
• Article 14 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control states that countries shall develop evidence-based treatment guidelines and take effective measures to promote adequate treatment for tobacco dependence
• Some of these measures have costs associated with them (e.g., setting up specialist tobacco treatment services, a national quit line, or reimbursing medication) but others have a low or no cost (such as asking health professionals to give a few minutes brief advice about the harm of smoking and the importance of quitting, approving the use of medications for smoking cessation and other broader indications, expanding access to medications e.g., enabling NRT to be available without prescription over the counter, allowing the marketing of treatment medications). Lower income countries that are at an early stage of tackling the tobacco problem should first focus on low or no cost strategies. Nevertheless the treatment strategies identified here are all cost-effective.
• Treatment should be accessible to all tobacco users, including those who use tobacco in the context of other addictions or have mental health illnesses.
• Treatment systems should as far as possible offer, and make accessible to all tobacco users, a full range of effective, evidence-based treatments, such as routine advice to stop by healthcare professionals, more intensive support to quit (given individually or in groups), and pharmacological approaches.
• Effective treatment interventions should be integrated into, and funded from within, healthcare systems.
• Pre- and post-certification education and training in cessation of tobacco use should be introduced into the curricula of healthcare professionals. Healthcare professionals should be strongly encouraged to act as role models for the public, and not use tobacco products themselves.
• Treatment systems should offer a range of indicated uses for treatment products, consistent with the evidence on efficacy, scientific understanding of the nature and causes of tobacco use and relapse, and the needs of consumers to choose the interventions most acceptable to them.
• The regulatory barriers that prevent effective treatment products being made as widely available as possible should be reformed so that, at the very least, addicted tobacco users who wish to stop can acquire tobacco dependence treatment products at least as easily as they can acquire tobacco products.
• Campaigns should continue to be developed to increase public awareness of the benefits of quitting and the treatment options available, including addressing misperceptions regarding safety and efficacy of treatments.