Duty calls: hospitals' responsibility for controlling the tobacco epidemic

Growing public awareness of the health hazards associated with smoking and the growing social unacceptability of the smoking habit constitute one of the major public health revolutions of our time. In recent years, almost all of the country's major medical and health professional organizations have become actively involved in the tobacco control movement. Unfortunately, hospitals and their professional associations have been conspicuously absent from the ranks of those leading this effort. The authors argue that the American Hospital Association and individual hospitals have an opportunity and a duty to become leaders in the effort to reduce tobacco addiction in this country and around the world. Specific suggestions are provided for individual hospitals and for their professional associations to work toward protecting the health of nonsmokers by eliminating cigarette smoking in hospitals, to work for political solutions to eliminate efforts by tobacco companies to promote smoking, and to reduce the incidence of smoking initiation among young people.