ABSTRACT
Modern interest in smoking cessation began in the late 1950s and the early 1960s with the growing awareness of the risks of cigarette smoking, culminating in the first Surgeon General’s Report on the health consequences of smoking (U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1964). The initial emphasis on cessation methods was not on drug treatments, but on psychological interventions. As the need to help some smokers in their efforts to stop became recognized, various group and individual counseling methods were developed by organizations such as the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society, and the American Heart Association, as well as private groups such as Smokenders (Schwartz, 1987). The actual birth of drug treatment for smoking cessation began not with smoking cessation, but with the successful use of methadone for the treatment of opiate addiction in the early 1960s. Methadone treatment
popular-ized the concept that one drug of abuse, administered by a different route, could diminish craving and propensity to relapse to the initial drug of abuse. This led to the development and initial introduction of nicotine gum in the early 1980s. Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), initially with nicotine gum, subsequently with the nicotine patch, and later with the nicotine inhaler and nasal spray, has consistently proven efficacious when compared with placebo, as discussed in detail in this book by Eissenberg and colleagues.
