2025’s Top Posts – #10 – Addiction Treatment Except for Tobacco and Nicotine: A Call for Change

Over the next several days, we’ll be sharing 2025’s posts with the most views. Today is #10. (I incorrectly posted #11 as #10 yesterday.)

---

I’ve completed a monograph that calls for change in the addiction treatment arena. It focuses on our need to modify our settings and services to a tobacco-free and smoke-free model of care.

Below is the Abstract followed by the full text of the monograph.

Acknowledgements. I would like to thank the following people for their review of earlier drafts of this manuscript and providing their feedback, suggestions and encouragement:  Kim Bayha, Sandy Ellingson, Trina Fullard, Bob Lynn, Philip T. McCabe, David McCartney, Joseph Najdzion, Jason Schwartz, Mary H. Ward, and William L. White.

Disclaimer. Nothing in this document should be taken or held as clinical instruction, clinical supervision.

---

Abstract

On a scale from 0 to 10 how important is it to treat tobacco use in a patient with a substance use disorder?  And why?  Very few addiction treatment programs are tobacco free.  That fact is odd on its face, given that “addiction treatment” could be thought of as addressing addiction as a central problem, rather than treating one substance use disorder while under-treating or ignoring another.  This work will review recent findings on both the harms of use and the benefits of a tobacco-free model of addiction treatment.  Perhaps in our generation we can make this change and no longer allow tobacco and nicotine to remain the last untreated substance use disorder during addiction treatment. 

---

---

11/12/2025 update. I did a search and found that a full article write-up about the tobacco free monograph was posted at WRD news in Australia.

Here’s a link to their story: Revolutionary Tobacco-Free Addiction Treatment Shows 25% Higher Recovery Rates, New Research Reveals. September 26, 2025.