With a few exceptions, future meetings sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) will only be held in communities that have enacted comprehensive smoke-free policies, the agency said.

NIDA announced a new policy banning meetings in cities or states that allow indoor smoking; exemptions would be granted only under special circumstances, said NIDA director Nora Volkow. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) recently announced a similar policy.

Volkow announced the rules during a keynote presentation at the "Up in Smoke: Tobacco and the American Youth" conference, sponsored by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University. "NIDA hopes the new meeting policy will raise awareness of the importance of protecting nonsmokers from secondhand-smoke exposure, and will encourage communities to adopt nonsmoking regulations for public facilities," she said.

The policy will go into effect on Jan. 1 and applies to meetings with 20 or more attendees that occur annually. It will not apply to meetings that have already been arranged or where NIDA is not the sole or primary sponsor. The agency will use NCI's new smokefree meeting planning guide in determining sites.