ABSTRACT

The treatment of nicotine dependence remains a significant challenge to the medical community. Despite the wide acknowledgment of the key role physicans, dentists, and other health professionals need to play in reducing tobacco use (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1994b), and the results of many clinical trials demonstrating that they can treat nicotine dependence successfully (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1996), there remain a significant number of physicians, dentists, and their staffs who do not regularly provide treatment for what is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States (Lindsay et al., 1994).