The goal of No Butts: New Opportunities is to reduce the risk of smoking-related cancer for (1)consumers of substance abuse and mental health treatment at Mental Health Mental Retardation of Tarrant County (MHMR) and (2) youth who are cited for tobacco cessation, many of whom are uninsured.

No Butts will decrease the tobacco dependence of these consumers by increasing the number of these consumers’ who receive smoking cessation treatment and who make smoking quit attempts. To accomplish this, No Butts will (1) provide MHMR consumers who smoke with smoking cessation treatment along with their existing drug or mental health treatment and (2) provide a separate group for smoking cessation fo...

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The goal of No Butts: New Opportunities is to reduce the risk of smoking-related cancer for (1)consumers of substance abuse and mental health treatment at Mental Health Mental Retardation of Tarrant County (MHMR) and (2) youth who are cited for tobacco cessation, many of whom are uninsured.

No Butts will decrease the tobacco dependence of these consumers by increasing the number of these consumers’ who receive smoking cessation treatment and who make smoking quit attempts. To accomplish this, No Butts will (1) provide MHMR consumers who smoke with smoking cessation treatment along with their existing drug or mental health treatment and (2) provide a separate group for smoking cessation for MHMR consumers and youth who are cited for tobacco possession (through a partnership with Tarrant County Challenge).

Using the requested funds, all MHMR clinicians will receive training in treating tobacco dependence. MHMR clinics will make infrastructure changes to prompt clinicians to provide smoking cessation treatment and to make quitting easier for consumers. MHMR clinicians will help consumers prepare for, and will provide support through, a quit attempt, including providing Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) to ease withdrawal symptoms.

Youth who are cited for tobacco possession will receive evidence-based tobacco education from Tarrant County Challenge. Tarrant County Challenge will use grant funds to provide these services to youth who cannot pay for them and advocate for judges to refer all youth who are cited for tobacco violations to tobacco education, as required by current law.

Additionally, all No Butts consumers will also receive social media messages from Tarrant County Challenge to gain extra support. Over the three-year project period, No Butts will provide smoking cessation services to 7,500 individuals with mental health and substance abuse disorders and to 750 low-income youth with smoking violations. No Butts expects 4,125 participants to make a quit attempt and to reduce their tobacco use.

These services are especially important for people with mental illnesses or other addictions and for youth who smoke because research suggests that they are medically underserved, more addicted to tobacco and are more likely to die from smoking-related diseases than the general population. Further, these individuals are usually uninsured and would not normally be able to afford Nicotine Replacement Therapy or smoking cessation treatment, greatly decreasing their chances of being able to quit.

Without this treatment, many of these people will develop lung cancer which, because they are usually uninsured, would result in high costs to the public healthcare system. Conversely, through providing this treatment, No Butts will increase the health of consumers and decrease the public healthcare costs of treating lung cancer.

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