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Newly discovered evidence con- ·
firms a long-held suspicion:
Smoking is our number-one
drug addiction problem. Yet
this realization provides the
best clue to a program of over–
coming this health hazard.
ent outpouring ofstudies
m research centers now
upports a long-conjec–
ured theory: For most
smokers, smoking is a
particular!y stubborn form of ·drug
addiction- addiction to the nicotine
molecule.
Experts in the Office of Smoking
and Health (part of the U.S. Depart–
ment of Health, Education and Wel–
fare) have bowed to the weight of
growing evidence. And United States
Surgeon General Julius B. Richmond,
in his signed preface to the 1979 feder–
al report on smoking, calls nicotine "a
powerful addictive drug."
Not Just a Habit
Medica/ World News,
March 5,
1979, carried summaries of the re–
cent studies confirming nicotine's ad–
dictive powers.
SMOKING
IT'SMORE THANJUST
ABADHABIT!
16
by
Donald D. Schroeder
These findings answer, in great
part, why smoking is more than justa
hard-to-break habit that can be over–
come with health warnings, stop–
smoking campaigns, curbs on ciga–
rette advertising or "safer" low–
tarjlow-nicotine cigarettes.
For millions of people, smoking is
as much a classic drug addiction
problem-both physically and psy-
chologically-as heroin addiction.
But as in other forms of drug addic–
tion, individuals vary in how their
bodies metabolize nicotine, and thus
in how they respond when deprived
of it. (Apparently only a lucky few,
for unknown reasons, can smoke reg–
ular!y and not become addicted.)
The latest findings add weight to
already voluminous reports and
warnings that reveal smoking to be a
serious and damaging personal and
national health problem. Govern–
ment authorities feel smoking is the
single largest acquired cause of poor
health. Even so, one must be strongly
motivated to break nicotine's vicious
grip.
The good news is that sorne thirty
million Americans have shaken the
smoking habit since 1964. The bad
news is that a decade-long barrage of
anti-cigarette campaigns only tempo–
rari1y dented the ranks of the smok–
ing population. Over fifty million
Americans still smoke. And now
more and more persons, especially
teenagers andwomen under peer and
advertising pressures, are joining the
smokers' ranks. Many are destined to
become nicotine junkies!
Former Assumptions Erroneous
The original surgeon general's report
on smoking and health released in
1964 alleged, with little supportive
evidence, that smoking is a bad babit
but not addicting, that no tolerance is
developed, and that no antisocial be–
havior is caused by it. All three of
these allegations have now been deci–
sively refuted.
As far back as 1942, in the British
medica! publication
The Lancet,
Dr.
Lennox M. Johriston reported that
"smoking
toba~co
is essentially a
means of administering nicotine, just
as smoking opium is a means of ad–
ministering morphine." He based his
assumption on the finding that when
he and 35 . other volunteer smokers
received modest injections of nico–
tine, they "were disinclined to smoke
for sorne time thereafter."
Sul?sequent well-controlled stud–
ies- one of them at the University of
Michigan MedicaJ School-con–
firmed the observation that nicotine
injections temporarily diminish a
smoker's need to smoke.
The
PLAIN TRUTH August 1979