Increasing Nicotine Levels Isn't the Only Chemical Trick Tobacco Companies Use to Addict New Smokers and to Keep Current Smokers Addicted
Harvard University researchers just confirmed findings from the state of Massachusetts that cigarette companies have increased nicotine levels in cigarettes by about 10-11% since 1997. Dr. Michael Rabinoff, a board certified psychiatrist on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at UCLA, expert on tobacco issues and author of Ending the Tobacco Holocaust :How Big Tobacco Affects our Health, Pocketbook, and PoliticalFreedom, and What We Can Do About It also points out that besides using increased nicotine levels to make cigarettes more addictive, tobacco companies use product engineering and many other chemical tricks to increase the addictive properties of cigarettes.
(PRWEB) January 20, 2007 -- Harvard University researchers just confirmed findings from the state of Massachusetts that cigarette companies have increased nicotine levels in cigarettes by about 10-11% since 1997.
Dr. Michael Rabinoff, a board certified psychiatrist on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at UCLA, expert on tobacco issues and author of Ending the Tobacco Holocaust: How Big Tobacco Affects Our Health, Pocketbook, and Political Freedom, and What We Can Do About It, also points out that "besides using increased nicotine levels to make cigarettes more addictive, tobacco companies use product engineering and many other chemical tricks to increase the addictive properties of cigarettes".
Dr. Rabinoff discusses many of the other chemical tricks that Big Tobacco uses to addict smokers in his new book Ending The Tobacco Holocaust (http://www.TobaccoBook.com). Some of those chemical tricks include:
Ammonia technology. Ammonia generating formulas, such as the combination of diammonium hydroxide, pectin, and ammonium hydroxide increase nicotine transfer from tobacco into smoke. Ammonia technology, reconstituted tobacco, and tobacco essence are utilized to increase freebase nicotine, and to have front-end lift (where cigarettes are engineered to have the highest level of nicotine in the first puffs). Increased free base nicotine may lead to increased distribution, faster distribution of nicotine in lungs, faster crossing of membranes, faster central nervous system penetration, and greater concentration crossing membranes at lungs and central nervous system. All of this can lead to increased impact and addictive effect.
Anesthetics such as menthol, benzaldehyde, benzoic acid, benzyl alcohol, carvacrol, cinnamaldehyde, cinnamic acid, guaiacol, linalnyl acetate, and thymol have a numbing effect on the respiratory tract, masking irritation from cigarette smoke. According to a report in the medical journal Chest, 76% of black smokers choose menthol brands compared to 23% of white smokers. The menthol brands are associated with higher levels of nicotine and carbon monoxide, and appear to be associated with increased health risks as compared to nonmenthol brands.
Bronchodilators such as cocoa, glycyrrhizin (a component of licorice), and caffeine open the airways and allow the smoke to be drawn more deeply into the lungs.
Levulinic acid binds to nicotine receptors in the brain, and increases the brain's response to nicotine.
Sugars are extensively added to cigarettes, especially "reducing sugars" used for the ammonia technology processes that increase vapor freebase nicotine. In fact, a 1990 Brown & William study found that 11.2-12.9% of Marlboro cigarettes were sugars. (Some of the sugars in tobacco are natural, but tobacco companies also add significant amounts of sugars).
According to Victor DeNoble, a former scientist at Phillip Morris, industry scientists suspected that acetaldehyde, produced by burning sugars, could enhance the addictive effects of tobacco. In the early 1980s, he used rats in researching the behavioral effects of acetaldehyde or nicotine alone, and of acetaldehyde combined with nicotine. He found that the product of acetaldehyde and dopamine was highly addictive, providing evidence that a compound in cigarettes other than nicotine could lead to addiction. (He observed that rats will repeatedly press a bar to obtain acetaldehyde). Furthermore, the experiments of Philip Morris (PM) scientists found that the addictive effect of acetaldehyde is "synergistic" with nicotine's addictive effect, so that the addictive effect of the two compounds when combined together is greater than the sum of each compound's addictive effect.
You can read more about the many chemical tricks the tobacco companies use to addict and keep smokers addicted in Chapter 4 of Ending The Tobacco Holocaust (http://www.TobaccoBook.com)
The author of Ending the Tobacco Holocaust, Michael Rabinoff D.O. Ph.D., (Elite Books, November 2006, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 1-60070-012-8, available at local bookstores, Amazon, Borders, Barnes and Noble) is a psychiatrist with many public presentations to his credit. He has a driving passion to get the message of the book to a wide audience, and the ability to engage experienced professionals to assist him towards that goal. More information about the book, and additional free information, can be found at http://www.TobaccoBook.com.
Michael Rabinoff, D.O., Ph.D., is a board-certified psychiatrist on the research faculty of the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and is also a Senior Partner in the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group. In addition, he is the C.E.O. and President of Biogenesys, Inc., a biomedical research and development corporation. He has spent over a decade researching and writing about the devastating effects of tobacco on our health, economy and nation's politics. An esteemed psychiatrist and holder of two patents, Rabinoff has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and Business Week, has published in the New England Journal of Medicine and other top-flight medical journals, and presented his findings on tobacco addiction and industry profiteers to the American Public Health Association and the World Congress on Tobacco or Health.
Media Contact: Josh Tyree 503-652-5216
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