Nicotine, the Wonder Drug?

Discover Magazine ^ | February 05, 2014 | Dan Hurley

[jjsheridan5]

To help counter the never-ending onslaught of misguided myths about nicotine:

Nicotine clearly has health benefits. But what is really interesting is that nicotine is not addictive, despite common perception:

Perhaps most surprising is that, in studies by Boyd and others, nicotine has not caused addiction or withdrawal when used to treat disease. These findings fly in the face of nicotine’s reputation as one of the most addictive substances known, but it’s a reputation built on myth.

Coupled with the myth about toxicity (covered in many different publications -- the current "official" toxicity is a never proven wild-a**-guess made 100 years ago, and never challenged, despite ample evidence that it was incorrect by a substantial margin), and we find that the anti-nicotine movement is a fraud, all the way through.

Nicotine is not addictive (on its own), carries no real health risks (unless it is in the form of tobacco), and has non-trivial health benefits.

The hysteria about nicotine is, like most left-wing movements, all about money and power, with no concern at all for scientific accuracy.

[I cannot think of a name]

My Dad died of complications related to Parkinson’s. Turns out it is one of the strangest illnesses in the world. Parkinson’s almost seems to prevent cancer - except for melanoma - which is worse in Parkinson patients. And according to my Dad's main doctor, there is a vaccination against Parkinson’s - smoking. He said in more than twenty years he could only remember one smoker with Parkinson’s.

Not sure smoking is worth all the other risks, but there are apparently a few good things that come from it.

I actually wish the Doctor hadn't told us that, because my Mom had convinced my Dad to give up smoking right after they were married. You can imagine how that made her feel.

[ClearCase_guy]

No health risk? No such thing as nicotine poisoning?

[rktman]

I’m offended, on behalf of tobacco, for it being called “noxious”. When will the insults and bullying stop? :>} I still use the legal delivery system for my daily dose of Ol’ nic. I know. I’m a bad person.

[jjsheridan5]

Smoking probably isn’t worth the risk. But nicotine ingested in some other fashion may very well be.

[PeterPrinciple]

No health risk? No such thing as nicotine poisoning?

---

Too much water can poison us also. Moderation?

[jjsheridan5]

No health risk? No such thing as nicotine poisoning?

I mentioned nicotine toxicity, so this was clearly not a well-thought out question. Nicotine toxicity exists, just as toxicity exists for every chemical. But the levels of toxicity usually cited are comically low, being derived from a 100 year old self-experimentation, resulting in a wild-a**-guess about the level of toxicity. While this level has never been challenged formally, there is a wealth of anecdotal data that suggests that nicotine toxicity is only a realistic problem in extreme cases. By way of example, most attempts to commit suicide via nicotine ingestion have merely ended up with nasty cases of nausea, despite being well above the "official" level of toxicity.

[Clintons Are White Trash]

Very interesting article - thank you for posting this!

[jjsheridan5]

I’m offended, on behalf of tobacco, for it being called “noxious”.

I agree with you. Tobacco in and of itself is quite good (although today's cigarettes, with all of the added chemicals, may qualify as "noxious"). Apparently, it is also quite tasty. I know that at least one avant-garde restaurant actually makes dishes with sauteed tobacco leaves, and that native tribes consumed it as a leafy green. I wouldn't do that with tobacco grown for cigarettes, however.

[Marie]

Ever smoker that I personally know insists that the patches do nothing to help with cravings. (One of my friends said that it made them much worse.)

I’ve been saying for years that there’s something else in a cigarette that’s being overlooked. Kind of nice to have that validated.

[jjsheridan5]

I found the same thing. The patch (and the gum) both result in a weird uncomfortable feeling, one that would be best resolved with a cigarette. There are probably three things going on: first, as the article alludes to, there are thousands of other chemicals in tobacco, and it appears that it is some magic combination of chemicals resulting in addiction. Second, the chemicals used in curing also play a role — snus, which are cured with salt water, are much less potent than ammonia cured tobacco. Third, combustion itself results in a more rapid and concentrated delivery of these chemicals to the brain.

But really, we don’t know what is really going on. The one thing we can say with a reasonable degree of confidence is that if nicotine is addictive, it is only trivially so.

[Wolfie]

Ha, you guys are starting to sound more and more like the pot-heads.

[chrisser]

Perhaps most surprising is that, in studies by Boyd and others, nicotine has not caused addiction or withdrawal when used to treat disease. These findings fly in the face of nicotine’s reputation as one of the most addictive substances known, but it’s a reputation built on myth.

As a former smoker, former by switching to e-cigarettes, I find this not to be the case entirely.

Perhaps e-cigs aren't pure nicotine, but there is a definite withdrawal issue with them. It's not as bad as tobacco, but it's still there.

Several times I've run out of e-cig juice and fallen back onto analogs because of the withdrawal cravings.

[jjsheridan5]

Ha, you guys are starting to sound more and more like the pot-heads.

A thousand pot-heads typing for a thousand years would be hard pressed to come up with an observation as inane as that.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

I quit smoking 15 years ago, using the little lozenges.

Can’t seem to shake the lozenges.

[Dusty Road]

It’s the thing’s you associate with smoking that are addicting. Quit for 5 1/2 years and one day the phone rang and before I answered it I grabbed an ash tray and pulled it closer. After dinner, sitting on the patio, taking a break from garden work, those were the tough times.

[TalBlack]

“So what was it about tobacco that ravaged the heart, lungs, teeth and skin... “

It is the WILD ABUSE of cigarettes that causes all the problems. Abuse ANYTHING to the degree that smokers abuse cigarettes and you’ll have big health problems.

I’d be willing to bet that 1 or 2 cigs a day wouldn’t hurt almost anyone and may even help most in certain ways.

[jjsheridan5]

Correlation doesn't imply causation. I, too, have observed this. There are a couple of possibilities: one is that once you have become addicted to the cocktail of chemicals in tobacco, there is some change in the brain that makes us susceptible to addiction of nicotine (in other words, for a non-smoker, nicotine is not addictive, but for a life-long smoker, it is). The more likely explanation is this, in my opinion: nicotine has a number of positive benefits. When you stop smoking (which you are addicted to), you are struggling with "withdrawal". Nicotine's positive benefits make that withdrawal tolerable. So when you remove nicotine, it isn't that you are suffering from withdrawal from nicotine: rather, it is that the chemical which was helping you deal with withdrawal is now absent, and you are now fully exposed to the underlying addiction.

This dovetails with other studies that show that tobacco (and presumably nicotine), are highly beneficial for people dealing with any addiction. So much so, that it used to be conventional wisdom to provide drug addicts with tobacco to help them deal with cessation.

[jjsheridan5]

I remember my doctor telling me years ago that anything less than 10 cigarettes per day was unlikely to cause problems down the road. Unfortunately, I was fully brainwashed by years of PSA’s informing me that there was no “safe” level of smoking, so I did what everyone else did: smoke like a chimney with the intention of quitting at a later date.

So you are probably correct. It is the abuse of cigarettes that is most likely the underlying culprit.

[chrisser]

Another thing I find interesting, purely from my observation...

I have a hard time tolerating e-cigarettes. Especially the propylene glycol based juices, but even the vegetable glycerine ones often cause me to cough and eventually wheeze.

I don’t have any problem at all tolerating regular cigarettes. The last time I had any unpleasant side effects while using was about a decade ago during an extremely stressful time when I got up to over a pack a day, and then I had a cough. Normally, cigarettes seem to have something in them that helps cover up the irritation they cause. It’s only when you try to stop using them and the mollification is taken away, that you realize the damage they have been doing.

That makes switching awfully difficult going from regular cigarettes to e-cigs, while it’s extremely easy to go from e-cigs back to regular cigarettes. Going the first way gets you double the discomfort while going backwards gives instant gratification while removing all irritation.