Ciggyfree Blog

For over four decades the tobacco industry has used machine testing approved by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to measure tar and nicotine levels in cigarettes.  But in a 4-0 vote, the FTC has now shunned the tests, known as the Cambridge Filter Method, rescinding guidance it established 42 years ago.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) found that cigarette design changes had reduced the amount of tar and nicotine measured by smoking machines using the Cambridge Filter Method. However, there was no evidence the changes reduced disease in smokers. Furthermore, the machine does not account for ways in which smokers adjust their behavior, such as inhaling deeper or more often to maintain nicotine levels.

The FTC said the test method is flawed, and results in erroneous marketing of tar and nicotine levels that could deceive consumers into believing that lighter cigarettes were more safe.  The move means that future advertising that includes the tar levels for cigarettes will not be permitted to include terms such as “by FTC method.”  “Our action today ensures that tobacco companies may not wrap their misleading tar and nicotine ratings in a cloak of government sponsorship,” said FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz.  “Simply put, the FTC will not be a smokescreen for tobacco companies’ shameful marketing practices.”

Using current methods, cigarettes with a tar levels in excess of 15 milligrams per cigarette are typically called “full flavored”, while those with less than 15 milligrams are considered “low” or “light”. Cigarettes with tar levels below 6 milligrams are regarded as “ultra low” or “ultra light.”  “The most important aspect of this decision is that it says to consumers that tobacco industry claims relating to tar and nicotine are at best flawed and most likely misleading,” Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, told Reuters.

The commission said that during the 1960s it believed that providing consumers with uniform, standardized information about tar and nicotine levels in cigarettes would help them make better decisions. At that time, most public health officials believed that reducing the amount of tar in a cigarette would also reduce a smoker’s risk of lung cancer. However, that belief no longer exists.

Findings could point towards more successful smoking cessation efforts.  The study was published in an online Early Edition issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the week of November 24. Scripps Florida is a division of The Scripps Research Institute.
The neuropeptide, hypocretin-1 (Orexin A), may initiate a key signaling cascade, a series of closely linked biochemical reactions, which maintains tobacco addiction in human smokers and could be a potential target for developing new smoking cessation treatments.

“Blocking hypocretin-1 receptors not only decreased the motivation to continue nicotine use in rats, it also abolished the stimulatory effects of nicotine on their brain reward circuitries,” said Paul Kenny, Ph.D., the Scripps Research scientist at Scripps Florida who led the study. “This suggests that hypocretin-1 may play a major role in driving tobacco use in smokers to want more nicotine. If we can find a way to effectively block this receptor, it could mean a novel way to help break people’s addiction to tobacco.”

Cigarette smoking is one of the largest preventable causes of death and disease in developed countries, and accounts for approximately 440,000 deaths and $160 billion in health-related costs annually in the United States alone. Despite years of health warnings concerning the well-known adverse consequences of tobacco smoking, only about ten percent of smokers who attempt to quit annually manage to remain smoke free after one year, highlighting the difficulty in quitting the smoking habit.

In the study, Kenny and a postdoctoral fellow in his laboratory, Jonathan Hollander, Ph.D., blocked the hypocretin-1 receptor using low doses of the selective antagonist SB-334867, a commercially available compound often used in research.

“While hypocretin 2 systems, otherwise known as orexin B, have been mainly implicated in regulating sleep,” Kenny said, “hypocretin 1, also known as orexin A, appears to be more involved in regulating motivated behavior. Our previous studies in close collaboration with other Scripps Research scientists have shown that hypocretin-1 receptors play a central role in regulating relapse to cocaine seeking. With that in mind, it seemed reasonable to test whether it was involved in nicotine reward as well.”

The new study indeed showed that blocking the receptor in rats significantly decreased nicotine self-administration and also the motivation to seek and obtain the drug. These findings suggest that hypocretin-1 receptors play a critical role maintaining nicotine-taking behavior in rats, and perhaps also in sustaining the tobacco habit in human smokers.

SMOKERS ARE poorly equipped to deal with distress without resorting to cigarettes because of their implicit belief that smoking helps them to deal with difficult feelings, a conference for psychologists was told yesterday.

Nigel Vahey of NUI Maynooth said research had found that a key psychological component of tobacco-dependence involved the implicit belief that smoking was an effective way of regulating unpalatable feelings.

“In other words, to the degree that smokers implicitly believe that smoking can enhance their enjoyment and reduce their distress, then they are more likely to engage in smoking as a means of controlling and coping with fluctuating feelings throughout the day,” he said.  Smoking was used as a way to avoid dealing with painful thoughts and emotions but this was unproductive as it did not make those feelings go away permanently.

“Such people who smoke to regulate their feelings, whether consciously or unconsciously, become very poorly equipped to cope with distress of any sort without recourse to smoking,” Mr Vahey said.  This made quitting even more difficult.  “Smokers must not only cope with biological cravings for nicotine, but must also learn to cope with distressing feelings in more productive ways.”  He said treatment that dealt with this issue was more successful long term than nicotine replacement therapy or other medications.

American researchers have recently discovered a connection between two proteins in the brain, linking nicotine addiction and autism.  According to a study presented at a Society for Neuroscience meeting, there is a physical and functional association between these two conditions.  The study showed that the neurexin-1 beta proteins, which are a part of the brain’s chemical communication system, are related to a certain type of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor and play an important role in the proper formation and maturation of synapses.  Proper synapse function is critical to the central nervous system’s ability to connect and control other body systems.

Previous studies had reported that while such nicotinic receptors are absent in the brain of autistic patients, there are quite a few number of these receptors in the brain of addicts.  Findings revealed that nicotine increases the neurexin-1 levels in the brain of smokers, bringing more nicotinic receptors to the synapses and making them more efficient.

Scientists believe drugs used to curb nicotine addiction can also be effective in alleviating autism symptoms.

The public forests of western Oregon provide enormous benefits to the American people. They are the sources of clean drinking water for many communities, provide hiking, fishing, camping, rafting, and other recreational opportunities not often found on private lands, and provide key habitat for a wide range of wildlife and fish species, especially wildlife that are threatened with extinction such as marbled murrelets, northern spotted owls, and wild Pacific salmon.

The plan proposed by BLM for western Oregon public forests will seriously reduce streamside protections, increase clearcuts, and diminish the careful balance of wildlife protections developed through the Northwest Forest Plan. Ancient Forests are scheduled to eventually be logged. The plan unrealistically includes a 43% increase in BLM’s budget, and also depends on the construction of over 1,300 miles of logging roads. The erroneous purpose of the plan is to dramatically increase logging levels. Logging should be focused on restoration projects, and in areas that would benefit by reducing fire threats to homes and property.

I urge you to withdraw the current plan and issue a new plan that focuses on protecting the lands that BLM is supposed to be managing to benefit all the American people.

Bush Administration is rushing to finalize plans that open up thousands of acres of forest in Oregon. Under the plans, these forests with their towering trees, rushing rivers and wildlife habitat, would see logging levels increase dramatically, more than tripling current levels.

But the story’s not over yet. Please join me and tens of thousands of other Americans who are opposing this plan.

Click below to take immediate action.
http://action.wilderness.org/campaign/ognw?rk=rdsNkSs1DNDdW

With Barack Obama having been elected the next president of the United States on November 4, Americans are now expecting to see him keep his promise of bringing the change that the nation needs.

Currently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is said to begin to both monitor more closely and to instate stricter regulations, as well, where imports are concerned, in order to prevent incidents similar to the recent salmonella outbreak from occurring in the future.

Moreover, since president-elect Obama, who is a former smoker trying to break the habit with the help of nicotine gum, is a sponsor of a legislation that aims to enable the FDA to only control (but not to ban) tobacco products, rumor has it that new institutions would be given the power to ban cigarettes and other products of the like.

Under former U.S. president George W. Bush’s administration, the FDA has come into much criticism, many claiming that it had become too lenient with regards to food and drugs safety measures, giving rise to consumer protection issues.

The Great American Smokeout is scheduled for the third Thursday in November, which motivates me to share thoughts and observations about smoking cessation.

Over the years, I have helped many people to quit smoking using hypnotherapy as a valuable tool. By the same token, there are people who would not quit, no matter what, the incorrigible or people who think they are so powerless.

After all, many medical professionals and the Surgeon General have blasted away that nicotine addiction is harder to overcome than heroin or cocaine. This probably reinforces what some people want to hear: “I would quit, but it is too hard.”

I will quote observations from medical people and then will share my personal observations with you.

Dr. Raul Rodriguez of Rivercrest Hospital, a psychiatrist and addictionologist, shared that nicotine addiction is a function of how many years spent smoking and the mental attitude of the person. When asked whether or not smokers wanting to quit had to be admitted for detox, he denied the need, because nicotine addiction was not as severe, but he likes the patch, an anti-depressant or gum to help with the process of smoking cessation.

My esteemed colleague of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, Dr. Dabney Ewin, a clinical professor of psychiatry and surgery at Tulane Medical School and Louisiana State University Medical School, shared his viewpoints with me: “The word addiction has lost its meaning in the scientific community and it no longer refers to a bodily need for a particular chemical because it indiscriminately describes strong emotional desires such as addicted to chocolate, sports, computers, foreign oil.

“People who think of themselves as addicts have adopted a fixed idea that they are helpless to overcome the problem. Another of their fixed ideas is that smoking had/has social value as in being cool. Removing this fixed idea causes anxiety, because people believe they are violating this fixed idea. An interesting study of 12,000 smokers by Tindle (et al 2006) noted that people who smoke low nicotine cigarettes are more than 50 percent less likely to quit smoking than those who smoke regular cigarettes. That finding is incompatible with chemical addiction”