The Community Intervention Trial for smoking cessation (COMMIT) is sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and involves eleven pairs of communities in North America. COMMIT emphasizes a partnership between the eleven research institutions and their respective intervention communities in developing the structures needed to implement the intervention protocol. We summarize the epidemiological data and describe the prior community interventions that set the stage for COMMIT, and discuss how COMMIT may inform state-wide tobacco reduction demonstration programs. An overview of the articles that describe the COMMIT intervention and evaluation plan is presented.