Stop Smoking Help

Scientists are reporting the first successful strategy to reduce smoking nicotine dependence while allowing them to continue smoking. The study provides strong support for proposals now being considered in Congress to authorize FDA regulation of cigarette smoking, according to the research team.

The key to the success of the clinical trial comes with cigarette smokers in a gradual decrease in nicotine content in a number of weeks. If such cigarettes were federally mandated, smokers who find it easier to quit smoking, and younger could avoid addiction to smoking, according to scientists. Snuff products marketed under the company nicotine alternatives, in fact, do not change the level of nicotine absorbed by smokers, they added.

The research was conducted by scientists at UCSF and San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center and was reported in the November 14 issue of the journal “Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention. ” Legislation

the FDA authority to regulate snuff products currently under consideration in Congress. The regulatory authority of the autonomy of the agency to develop and enforce standards to make cigarettes less harmful - including the reduction of nicotine in cigarettes so that they would be less addictive, said Neal Benowitz, MD, head of the study team and an expert in the pharmacology and health effects of nicotine in snuff and other products.

smokers and health experts have been concerned that reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes to snuff would lead to a greater number of cigarettes and therefore increased exposure to smoke snuff in other toxins, as seen in smokers of the currently marketed low-nicotine cigarettes, Benowitz said. New research on the low nicotine content cigarettes strongly counters that prediction.

In the study, 20 healthy adult smokers smoked their usual brand for a week and then followed a six-week smoking cigarettes with progressively decreased nicotine content.

At the end of this period, which were free to return to their usual commercial cigarette brand, and most of them did. When tested one month later, were about 40 percent of smoking fewer cigarettes per day, with a comparable reduction in nicotine intake, compared to when the study began. Even more promising, one fourth of smokers quit smoking entirely while the study is ongoing, the researchers found.

“This study supports the idea that if tobacco companies are required to reduce levels of nicotine in cigarettes to snuff, young people who start smoking could avoid becoming addicts, and for a long time smokers could reduce their consumption of snuff or end, said Benowitz.

“This could spare millions of people from the serious health effects of long-term smoking,” he added.

Benowitz is a UCSF professor of medicine, psychiatry and biopharmaceutical sciences, and chief of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at SFGH. In 1994, Benowitz and colleague Jack Henningfield proposed in the “New England Journal of Medicine” that federal regulations require cigarette manufacturers to gradually reduce the nicotine content of cigarettes sold in the U.S.

Scientists have conducted studies to test strategies for reducing the nicotine, the commercial application of low-yield cigarettes. These cigarettes do reduce nicotine during testing machine snuff, because manufacturers have designed cigarettes to burn faster, and they have used highly porous paper and over the vent filter. These cigarettes contain significant levels of nicotine, and “cigarette engineering” does not lead to decreased nicotine intake, because smokers are able to easily obtain the nicotine by taking more and more frequent puffs, Benowitz and his co-authors noted.

In the new study, the absolute content of nicotine in snuff has been reduced so it was very difficult or impossible to compensate for the consumption of snuff with greater intensity. Besides the reduction of smoking and nicotine levels, the UCSF scientists looked for changes in exposure to carbon monoxide, smoke carcinogens in snuff and cardiovascular disease risk factors. All these remained stable or decreased, indicating that smokers were not exposed to higher levels of tobacco smoke toxins when they switched, and therefore would not be put at risk by a nicotine reduction intervention.

Benowitz and his colleagues are now conducting a larger and longer clinical study on efficacy and safety of reducing nicotine levels in cigarettes. Also planned to examine whether the reduced nicotine cigarettes result in reduced addiction potential among adolescent experimental smokers.

Smoking is a disgusting habit, and I love it. See how degraded, demoralized and desperate to quit smoking can do to this woman.

It gives me added! If I try to go over a couple of hours without a cigarette Shakey and i start getting nervous and irritable. Drugs are addictive. You know how when people (not me) are on drugs when they do not have any, they receive all nervous and Shakey? this is how I am when I need a cigarette!