The lowdown on ways around nicotine addiction maybe

Two recent news stories take a look at innovative means of handling the serious nicotine addiction that haunts cigarette smokers. The first, a New York Magazine feature that gives its readers the lowdown on e-cigarettes, conveys much of what anyone trying to quit cigarettes should know about this option. And we were intrigued by the second story, a New York Times feature on a genetically modified variety of tobacco that lowers the nicotine content of the plants by 97 percent.

According to the Times story, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has purchased nine million cigarettes manufactured with this ultra-low nicotine tobacco; the intent is to determine whether such cigarettes can be used as a smoking cessation aid. The hope is that smokers might find quitting easier if they can transition from full-nicotine cigarettes to these low-nicotine versions that still apparently look, smell, and taste like regular cigarettes, as well as offering the same habitual behaviors.

Thus far, the first two clinical trial phases of the experimental cigarettes have been encouraging; now researchers are moving on to a Phase 3 trial, which measures effectiveness and safety. Additionally, two small studies by Dr. Dorothy Hatsukami at the University of Minnesota and Dr. Neal Benowitz at the University of California, San Francisco, have found the genetically modified cigarettes to defeat what s called smoker compensation the tendency of smokers to draw harder on light cigarettes in order to get their customary dose of nicotine.

One would indeed think that these cigarettes would run into the same problem of smoker compensation that light cigarettes created, says ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross. However, there s no reason why this approach shouldn t be studied especially if the findings so far are promising.