Epilogue to Special Issue on Tobacco and Other Substance Use Disorders: Links and Implications

ABSTRACT

This paper summarizes The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse special issue and offers suggestions for future steps. People who use alcohol or other addictive substances are much more likely to use tobacco. Yet, clinicians and scientists have long regarded these addiction categories as separate and unrelated. The resultant benign neglect of tobacco use has had disastrous consequences on patients. This special issue is an important step toward remedying that situation. It has reviewed what is known and what more needs to be discovered regarding the co-occurrence of tobacco use disorder (TUD) and other substance use disorders (SUDs). The timing of this special issue occurs at a moment when smoking rates among both adults and youth are at a modern low. But not all segments of the population have benefited from this improvement. In particular, those with a SUD smoke two to four times the rate of the general population and thus suffer disproportionately from the myriad tobacco-induced diseases. The multi-disciplinary contributors to this special issue have reviewed various aspects of the co-occurring disorders. What emerges is a complex portrait. In some categories, the facts are stark, such as the strong association between SUDs and tobacco use and the toll they both extract. In others, such as the emerging new electronic nicotine delivery devices, there are intriguing associations that warrant further investigation. What is clear is that the historic schism between smoking and other addictions needs to be breached in order to improve the health of the public. This special issue should be viewed as a call to action for breaching that schism.

KEYWORDS:

• Substance use disorder
• smoking cessation
• nicotine
• tobacco control

Conflicts of interest

Steven Schroeder does not have any conflicts of interest to this report.

Financial disclosures

Steven Schroeder has no financial disclosures.

Funding

This work was supported in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Truth Initiative.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Truth Initiative.