Smoking Tobacco and the Brain

Cigarette smoking, the chief avoidable cause of premature death in this country, is responsible for more than 300,000 premature deaths each year. Smoking is an avoidable cause of death. The way to avoid it? Quit smoking. But people can't quit because it's too hard -- because smoking is addictive. The Surgeon General issued a report entitled Nicotine Addiction. Throughout its 600+ pages he gives a highly detailed explanation of just why nicotine is addictive.

The Surgeon General listed criteria for establishing a drug as addictive and showed how nicotine adheres to these criteria. The following are some of those criteria for determining that a drug is addictive (all information is based on US Department of Health and Human Services. The Health Consequences of Smoking: Nicotine Addiction: A Report of the Surgeon General 1988.):

Users develop a compulsive use of the drug despite damage to individual or society. Smoking causes lung cancer, other cancers, chronic obstructive lung disease, heart disease, complications of pregnancy, and several other adverse health effects. Smoking has been associated with antiestrogenic effects such as earlier menopause and increased osteoporosis. Nicotine is known to enter the amniotic fluid, umbilical cord of the fetus, and the breast milk of expectant mothers. Despite these known negative effects of smoking, people continue using cigarettes.

The drug is rewarding and drug seeking takes superiority over other important priorities. In a study by Henningfield, Miyasato, Jasinshki (1985) nicotine was seen to act as a euphoriant and at high doses acted similar to stimulants such as cocaine or amphetamines. Nicotine has been seen to produce other desirable effects as well. It is possible that nicotine improves attention, however most studies in this area compare smokers smoking to smokers not smoking, thus it is unsure whether smoking enhances attention or abstinence for someone who regularly smokes impairs attention. Due to a wide range of results, studies have not been able to conclusively show that smoking improves learning or memory; nonetheless, many smokers claim it does both. They also assert that smoking is relaxing and causes pleasurable feelings. Indeed studies have associated the onset of smoking during the teenage years with high levels of stress present at this time. Because smokers believe smoking to cause all of these beneficial effects, smokers will often stop what they are doing to take breaks for smoking in order to maintain the nicotine level to which their body has grown accustomed.

The drug produces changes in a person’s mood that are mainly controlled by effects in the brain.