Study Says Cigarettes Become More Addictive Every Year

Posted on | January 29, 2007 | Comments Off on Study Says Cigarettes Become More Addictive Every Year

The New York Times recently reported on a Harvard School of Public Health study revealing that cigarette makers deliberately manipulate nicotine levels in cigarettes to make them more addictive. No real surprise there.

Dr. David Kessler, former head of the FDA, at the time that the FDA was pushing to gain regulatory control over nicotine, said way back then that cigarette makers had been manipulating nicotine levels for decades. Now dean of the medical school at UCSF, he reacted to the news with this comment: “Tobacco makers still have not answered some fundamental questions about why this is happening.”

The Harvard group proved that nicotine yields from smoking had increased by about 11% each year between 1998 and 2005. That caught Ted Kennedy‘s eye. He said this is “dramatic new proof that Big Tobacco is addicted to addicting millions of young smokers.”

In response, he will reintroduce a bill he filed in 2004, which passed the Senate but was defeated in the House, to finally allow the FDA to control what is the most commonly abused, most harmful and most addictive drug in the U.S. and around the world. Philip Morris says it supports Senator Kennedy’s bill, but disagrees with the findings of the Harvard study. The company says the study reflects “that there are random variations in cigarette nicotine yields.”

“Bunk” replies the study’s lead author Greg Connolly. “We know from our data that there are intentional design changes that result in more nicotine in smoke that increases the capacity for the cigarette to cause and maintain addiction.”

Dr. Richard Hurt, director of the Mayo Clinic’s nicotine dependence program sums up the frustration many of us feel when he says, “If anyone thinks that tobacco companies have changed for the better and are now reformed, I have some beachfront property in Nebraska I’d like to sell them.”

If our governmental and health leaders can’t nail this one shut, perhaps they might make Dr. Hurt an offer.