Youth addiction programs and tobacco

CrossCurrents

Like addiction programs for adults, those targeting youth struggle with the issue of integrating tobacco cessation into treatment. A 2006 Centre for Addiction and Mental Health national survey of smoking cessation services in adolescent residential substance abuse treatment programs found that 85 per cent of these youth smoked cigarettes. Of the 50 centres surveyed, 80 per cent allowed youth to smoke, with a variety of restrictions during treatment, and only about 50 per cent offered individual or group counselling to help youth quit smoking.

"All of the facilities saw smoking as a key dependency issue," says Russ Callaghan, lead researcher on the project. “A lot would say that smoking may be the dependency that causes the greatest harm in the long run, but there are other addictions they see as more immediate and problematic, like cocaine dependence or intravenous drug use.”

Similar to adult treatment centres, the belief among staff that youth will drop out of the program is often a key barrier to smoking bans, but Callaghan says the evidence does not support this fear. "I did some other research on smoking bans because it was thought that smoking bans affected recruitment and retention of adolescents, but in fact, admissions and drop­out rates for inpatient treatment showed that smoking bans didn’t effect recruitment or retention."

Callaghan also notes that lack of staff training is a major barrier to integrating smoking cessation services and smoking bans into treatment programs for alcohol and other drugs. “Right now there exist protocols but we don’t have a standardized protocol for integrating both tobacco and other drugs into the program,” says Callaghan. "There are treatment centres that have done it, but I don’t think the protocols are widely available."

 

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