Who enrolls in a self-help cessation program for smokeless tobacco?

To further our understanding of the representativeness of the smokeless tob acco (SLT) user recruited to various treatment settings, and to suggest gap s in services available to SLT users, we first compared participants who en rolled in a self-help cessation program with two samples of nontreatment-se eking SLT users: SLT users identified through a random digit dialing (RDD) survey, and SLT users who came to I of 75 dental practices for a routine cl eaning visit. We found that those in the self-help SLT cessation program we re older, more educated, more likely to have made a serious quit attempt, a nd used more SLT weekly than those who did not seek treatment. Secondly, we compared SLT users seeking treatment in three different treatment settings varying in accessibility and intensity: self-help study participants, SLT users enrolled in a clinic-based study, and callers to the California Help Line for SLT cessation. Participants differed across the three studies on d emographics, some measures of dependence, and history of SLT use. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.