Is There a Real Cure for Nicotine Addiction?

Posted by Grace Bridges

There are two parts of the addiction to cigarettes.

  • Physical addiction to nicotine
  • Behavior addiction of handling and lighting cigarettes

There is absolutely no disagreement that nicotine is addictive.

The Physical Nicotine Addiction

Everybody agrees that it is, in fact, an addictive substance…and it is poison, too. Nicotine is the tobacco plant’s natural protection against insects. In the same volume, nicotine is a poison that is more deadly than strychnine and rattlesnake venom.

Nicotine is three times more lethal than arsenic.

Within eight seconds of inhaling cigarette smoke, dopamine is released into the blood stream.

Dopamine is a kind of chemical messenger that is similar to adrenaline. Dopamine affects the way that the brain processes emotional responses, pain and pleasure.

Nicotine, therefore, affects the mood of the person who is inhaling the tobacco smoke.

Nicotine in cigarette smoke actually alters transmitters and receptors in the brain. This alteration causes addiction.

When any attempt is made to stop supplying nicotine to the body is made there will be extreme anxiety and strong mood swings.

The Behavioral Addiction of Nicotine

Consider this: Smoking is a whole body habit. The removing a cigarette from a package; the handling of a cigarette; the lighting of a cigarette; inhaling smoke; exhaling smoke; tapping ashes off the cigarette as it burns; even extinguishing the cigarette after it has been smoked are all part of the total smoking addiction.

So what’s the answer?
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Public Smoking Policies

Posted by Grace Bridges

The anti-smoking movement is nothing if not persistent. There have always been two sides to the smoking issue; those who were “for” and those who were “against”.

For a long time, those who were “for” smoking….tobacco growers, tobacco product manufacturers, tobacco companies, and tobacco users were winning the war of public opinion as well as the legislation wars.

Ashtrays were provided. Spittoons were visible and handily placed in all public buildings. Smoking was “cool”.

Public figures were smokers…so were movie stars. The famous and the infamous were smokers. Cigarettes and cigars were smoked on stage and on screen. Most men smoked and it didn’t take women more than a decade to catch up.

Then along about 1964, the Surgeon General of the United States issued the first “warning” about the dangers of smoking…and all bets were off.
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The Exploding Cigar Urban Legend

Posted by Grace Bridges

cigars, cigarettes, tobacco There are several versions of this urban legend and the accuracy of all of them is still undetermined but it makes a good story.

In all of the various versions of the exploding cigar story Ulysses S. Grant gives an exploding cigar to somebody (depending upon which version is being told). The recipient of the cigar saves it as a memento of meeting the President. Eventually somebody (again depending upon which version is being told) many years later lights the cigar (usually at the worst possible moment) and Grant’s practical joke finally bears fruit.

Urban legends are, if nothing else, interesting. Most of the various versions of the exploding cigar story are variations of the Associated Press news article that was published December 20, 1932.

One of the versions goes like this:
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Cigars – Cigarettes – Which is Worse?

Posted by Grace Bridges

cigarettes, cigars, nicotine, stop smoking Surprisingly, in today’s modern enlightened world where cigarette smoking is deemed socially unacceptable and cigarette smokers are summarily banned from most social gatherings, cigar smoking is more in vogue than ever.

It simply doesn’t make any sense. Tobacco smoke…whether is comes from tobacco wrapped in nice white paper with a filter on one end or from a tobacco that is wrapped in a dark tobacco leaf…is still harmful. Many television shows depict the heroes as cigar smokers….cigarette smokers are always the villains.

Okay…I’ll get off my soap box now and just tell you about cigars. The first depiction we have of cigar smoking comes from the Mediterranean region in the 10th century on pieces of pottery that have been uncovered.

Christopher Columbus is credited (blamed) for introducing tobacco to Europe. (Tobacco plants are not native to any countries other than the Americas.)
There’s a story
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How Cigarettes Evolved

Posted by Grace Bridges

Cigarettes, Smoking Cigarettes Cigarettes are addictive. There is no question about that fact. There isn’t any question about the fact that cigarettes cause many different kinds of cancer as well as heart disease and a variety of other diseases.

This post is not intended to encourage the smoking of cigarettes but rather to simply inform the reader about cigarettes.

The earliest use of cigarettes that we have evidence of was in Central America during the 9th century AD. Priests and deities are depicted smoking using reeds and smoking tubes on pottery found from that period. Tobacco was only one of the ingredients used in these early cigarettes. There were other psychoactive drugs used as well.

Actually the spread of cigarette smoking was rather slow as compared to many other changes in the world. It wasn’t until the mid 1800’s when the Crimean Wars were fought that British soldiers adopted the habit of their Ottoman comrades who rolled tobacco in newsprint and smoked it.
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The First Anti-smoking Laws

Posted by Grace Bridges

no smoking, stop smoking Tobacco and smoking first arrived in The Ottoman Empire (what’s now Turkey) in the late 1500’s. Tobacco use was first restricted to social uses. Tobacco and smoking were welcomed with the same enthusiasm as coffee as imports from the new world.

Eventually smoking became even more popular to people of all social classes. Smoking was more popular than drinking coffee!

But trouble was brewing (pardon the pun) for smokers!

Ancient Turkey covered a lot of territory all through the Mediterranean area. There were a great many people and different cultures so, as you might imagine, there were a lot of different opinions about tobacco, smoking and its use.

Guess what? The anti-tobacco protests began almost immediately. Of course, if there are protests, you can be certain that laws aren’t going to be far behind.

Laws were enacted to restrict tobacco smoking in certain areas like in the markets, coffeehouses and other public places.

There’s more…..
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The first Smoker

Posted by Grace Bridges

stop smokingAccording to the Huron Indian myth back in ancient times the land was completely barren. The people were starving so the Great Spirit sent a woman to save human kind. She traveled over the world and everywhere her right hand touched the ground potatoes grew. Everywhere her left hand touched the ground corn grew. The world was saved. The land was fertile and producing so the woman sat down to rest and when she got up….tobacco grew where she had rested.

That’s a neat story but it still doesn’t explain who the first person was who rolled up a dry tobacco leaf, set fire to one end and inhaled the smoke through the other end.

There is a little evidence of the presence of nicotine in a few Old World plants like belladonna and Nicotiana Africana and some remnants of nicotine have been found in human remains and in pipes in the near East and in Africa. However, there is absolutely no evidence of any kind of habitual use of nicotine in the ancient world anywhere except in the Americas.
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