It’s time to treat smoking as an addiction

The recent 50th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Surgeon-General’s report on smoking provides a good opportunity to reflect on how far we’ve come in the war on tobacco, as well as how far we have left to go. Dr. Andrew Pipe, the chief of the division of prevention and rehabilitation at the Ottawa Heart Institute, says smoking cessation should be promoted as aggressively as blood-pressure control. When someone suffers from hypertension, they are not asked to consider getting their blood pressure down some day, they are prescribed medication, given a follow-up appointment and offered lifestyle counselling. Smoking is much more deadly, but not taken as seriously. Read more here.