减少尼古丁水平可有助于戒断吸烟

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Addiction: Lowering Nicotine Levels May Help Cut Smoking
By ERIC NAGOURNEY
Published: November 20, 2007
Smokers who were given nicotine-reduced cigarettes for five weeks and then allowed to return to their regular brands ended up smoking less, according to the authors of a small study.

The study suggested that if the government required tobacco companies to lower the nicotine levels in cigarettes, more people might be able to quit and fewer might become addicted in the first place. The companies already make cigarettes marketed as low tar and low nicotine. But they do so, the researchers say, not by lowering the amount of nicotine but by engineering the cigarette so that, in theory at least, less nicotine and tar is inhaled.

“Because there is plenty of nicotine available in the tobacco of commercial low-yield cigarettes, it is easy for the smoker to alter puff rate and/or smoking intensity,” says the study, in the November issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention. The study was led by Dr. Neal L. Benowitz of the University of California, San Francisco.

By contrast, the cigarettes used in the study contained less nicotine. Twenty volunteers were given the cigarettes for four weeks, with the amount of nicotine in them dropping each week. Then the volunteers were told they could return to their own brands.

The researchers were mostly interested in seeing whether the smokers compensated for the reduced nicotine by smoking more or changing their style of smoking. They found that unlike with commercial low-yield cigarettes, this was not the case.