Tobacco smoking is considered the big killer and one of the most avoidable risk factors for many human pathologies. Reducing and controlling tobacco smoking should be a primary aim for a certain population, in order to reduce harms to health caused by this important risk factor, and it seems urgent to adopt intervention tools involved in responsibility fields such as health care, education, politics, economy and media. Among health professionals the prevalence of tobacco smoke is extremely high, more than other professional categories, and this could be partly attributed to a low weight that tobacco smoking has in the medical curriculum of future physicians, that will contribute in a determinant way to healthy choices of their patients. In order to realise that, the medical students need to be adequately trained with the aim of acquire competences and skills that help patients to prevent tobacco smoking and to increase smoking cessation, through a programme oriented to specific issue related to the potential harm of tobacco products. A survey conducted by Ferry et al. in the American Schools of Medicine underlined the lack of courses related to tobacco smoking. Moreover, a randomised trial carried out by Cummings et al., the Schools of Medicine result as the ideal setting to teach smoking cessation techniques to health professionals. The National Cancer Institute in 1992 recommended that primary and secondary prevention interventions on tobacco smoking will become mandatory in the curriculum of Medical USA students. However, until now this recommendation still is far from being fully implemented. The aim of the book is to give an overview on the epidemiology of tobacco smoking among different settings and populations, but with a special focus on health professionals and medicals students, and to show available examples of smoking prevention and cessation training in different settings.

Smoking was and remains one of the most important public healthcare issues. It is estimated that every year six million people die as a result of tobacco consumption. Several diseases are caused or worsened by smoking: different cancer types, heart disease, stroke, lung diseases and others. In this book we describe the different toxic effects of smoke on the human body in active and in passive smokers. It is also well known that many people who smoke wish to quit, but they rarely succeed. Smoking prevention and cessation are of utmost importance, thus we also describe different strategies and aspects of these issues. We hope that this book will help readers to understand better the effects of smoking and learn about new ideas on how to effectively help other people to stop smoking.

Despite the frequent co-occurrence of alcohol & tobacco addiction, until recently little was known about the relationship between ethanol & nicotine. This compendium is based on presentations at a symposium held in 1994. Scientists at the conference were senior researchers concerned with co-occurrence of alcohol & tobacco dependence. They summarized the state of knowledge on a specific topic in their assigned domains & identify issues most in need of further investigation. The papers are in 2 sections: psychosocial & biological mechanisms of alcohol-tobacco use: & alcohol-tobacco use & dependence: treatment, early intervention, & policy. Illustrations.