Is nicotine important in tobacco smoking?
- 1 May 1977
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Wiley in Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics
- Vol. 21 (5), 520-529
- https://doi.org/10.1002/cpt1977215520
Abstract
Tobacco smoking is generally regarded as a form of nicotine dependence, but the evidence for this is slender. Two experiments are described here which examine the hypothesis that habitual smokers need nicotine and that they regulate their intakes of this drug. A laboratory test for smoking was devised which permitted the continuous monitoring of puffing as well as of selected physiologic variables; the procedure was also designed to reduce the influence of smoking habits and rituals. In the first experiment, inhaled amounts of tobacco smoke reduced subsequent ad libitum smoking in a dose-related way. In the second experiment comparable doses of nicotine were given intravenously to the same subjects, but they failed to affect ongoing smoking. However, both the inhaled and intravenous doses of the drug produced very similar physiologic effects. These experiments do not, therefore, support the nicotine-dependence hypothesis; thus the ways, if any, in which this drug sustains the tobacco-smoking habit merit further examination.This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
- Reactions to cigarettes as a function of nicotine and “tar”Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 1976
- The role of nicotine as a determinant of cigarette smoking frequency in man with observations of certain cardiovascular effects associated with the tobacco alkaloidClinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 1967
- ADDICTIVE ASPECTS IN HEAVY CIGARETTE SMOKINGAmerican Journal of Psychiatry, 1963