BIG Surprise: Vaping is LESS addictive than cigarettes

A lot of you have probably read about the new study from Penn State’s College of Medicine that concluded that the addictiveness from e-cigarettes is lower that that of cigarettes. The study was released on the 9th, I think, and was commented quite a few places. Klaus Kneale from ecigadvanced.com has written a great comment that you can read here.

The fact that e-cigarettes seems to be less addictive than cigarettes isn't really shocking to most vapers. I can tell from my own experience that I don't get the nicotine cravings are not as strong as they used to be and I can go a lot longer without my e-cigs than I could without a cigarette when I was smoking. Coincidentally I actually had a go at this this Sunday, when I left was going to a meeting. I was about to put some vaping gear in my pocket as I usually do when I go out, but decided that since it was probably going to be a short meeting I didn't need it. The meeting ended up lasting for 3 hours. Back when I was smoking I would have been trembling anxiously within an hour... but now I didn't even think about it before I got home.

The researchers suggest that this reduced addictiveness may be related to the products’ inability to deliver nicotine as effectively. While this is almost certainly true, other researchers and preliminary evidence suggests that, in the absence of smoke (and many other constituents found in tobacco cigarettes), nicotine just isn’t as addictive when delivered via vapor.

My thoughts exactly, Klaus. When I first read about the study this was the first thing that came to my mind as well. I wrote a couple of posts (here and here) about the addictiveness of nicotine earlier as well, referring to the work of Professor Peter Killeen among others. Killeen has also commented on vaping on youtube, and I highly recommend you watch this and listen to what he has to say about it:


What I personally find quite interesting is this part:

"We know nicotine is a big player in the addiction to cigarette smoke. Inhaled cigarette smoke is very addictive, and it's very fatal to a large proportion of people who use cigarettes or other forms of inhaled tobacco. How about vaping? How about inhaling nicotine? A lot of the assumptions that the scientists have made over these decades about the addictive properties of nicotine are wrong. They are wrong because they are always looking at nicotine addiction in the context of cigarettes and other inhaled tobacco products. Nicotine by itself has never been shown to be addictive. Nicotine by itself has never been shown to be addictive in individuals who have not smoked cigarettes prior to using nicotine"

The reason I put the last part of the quote above in bold is that this is one of the reasons that the gateway theory is invalid. As Steve K's puts it, this is Another Hole in the Gateway.

Nicotine addiction: When and why it all started

My post on nicotine addiction last week (Nicotine - a supersheep in wolf's clothing?) ended in a lot of questions. Now of course I wouldn't have done that without intending to give some answers, or at least attempt to do so. It appears that there is some consensus among quite a few scientists today that nicotine by itself is not very addictive. It needs some of the other chemicals in cigarette smoke to create that powerful addiction that keeps people smoking even though they are well aware that it might kill them. As professor Killeen says: the chemical addiction to cigarette smoke is indeed very real and very powerful, and nicotine plays an important role in that equation. But if you take the rest chemicals in cigarette smoke out of the equation, nicotine seems to be pretty harmless and not very addictive at all, so why is it then that nicotine has gotten all the blame?

I got an anonymous comment on one of my previous posts with a couple of links to Danish online newspaper 180grader and the excellent blog by Danish journalist Klaus K. The topic: Anti-smoking experts paid by Big Pharma. The article is written in Danish but the blog-post has been translated by Frank Davis: http://goo.gl/abfpR1.

In July this year a D.C. District Court documented the massive conflicts of interests of three prominent anti-tobacco experts, who, while appointed by the US government to be scientific editors for the official “Surgeon General”-reports on tobacco, received payment from pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKlein. The three experts in question are Neal Benowitz, Jack Henningfield and Jonathan Samet, and the court ordered that the FDA needed to remove them from TPSAC (FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee) and it also barred FDA from using a scientific report on menthol in cigarettes from 2010, that the three "experts" were responsible for. The judge said that the advice of the three experts and their reports would benefit the pharmaceutical companies by giving a huge boost to the NRT market. You can read more about the court order here, here and here.

Benowitz, Henningfield and Samet were also responsible for another report, the "Surgeon General"-report of 2006 on The health consequences of involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke (2nd hand smoking), and Benowitz and Henninfield was also responsible for the "Surgeon General"-report of 1988. And guess what this one was about... Nicotine Addiction (!). It's not difficult to see how these two reports would benefit Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKlein and their nicotine replacement products hugely now is it? Have a look at the cover of the two reports by the way... see any logos you recognize?

The conclusion that Benowitz and Henningfield presented in the 1988 report was this: Nicotine is addictive, and that it is stronger than the addiction of heroin and cocaine. Having this report to back up their newly released nicotine-replacement product, Nicorette, was of course a huge advantage for Pfizer at the time. Klaus K sums this up pretty neatly:

There is no doubt that Benowitz ‘and Henningfield’s report on nicotine addiction was valuable for Nicorette producers. Apart from a few critical sections the report appears unilaterally as a kind of scientific advertising publication for Nicorette and other pharmaceutical nicotine products – endorsed by the US government Surgeon General.

In my previous post I mentioned several scientists saying that nicotine by itself is not very addictive. It requires the "help" of other chemicals in tobacco to cause the chemical addiction. There has been quite a lot of research done on the subject, and the scientist making this claim has new, good scientific reports supporting their claims. But on the other side, according to Israeli nicotine researchers Hanan Frenk and Reuven Dar, the Benowitz and Henningfield report seems to be virtually the only reference used when academics and journalists write about nicotine. Klaus K gives us even more indications that nicotine is not very addictive on by itself:

The addiction theory of nicotine has been laid to rest by virtually every nicotine researcher since it was demonstrated that smokers prefer nicotine-free cigarettes over Nicorette in trials. Mice and rats have never been interested in nicotine, and the researcher who originally had his name linked to the nicotine addiction theory – the Swedish medical researcher Karl Fagerström – today recognizes that nicotine is not an addictive factor in smoking.

The French smoking cessation specialist, Robert Molimard, wrote in the 2013 article, “The Myth of Nicotine Addiction” on the nicotine report that there has never been any proof that one can become addicted to nicotine, and the report therefore does not demonstrate that, contrary to the claim in the title – yet the chapter “Treatment” is dedicated to the companies’ Nicorette gum, which had just come on the market:

“In this huge book with 3,200 references, we would look in vain for a single article showing that man can be dependent on nicotine only. On the other hand, the “Treatment” chapter focuses immediately on the “Nicotine replacement therapy”. But then we did not have any hindsight about the efficiency of this new treatment, because the FDA had just approved the marketing of the 2 mg gum.”

To sum up a bit:

• There is lots of pretty new and convincing research showing that nicotine by itself, is not very addictive.
• The one report that is usually referenced as proof that nicotine is addictive, is written in 1988 by Benowitz and Henningfield who was (and still is, I believe) on the payroll of pharmaceutical giants that had just released a product that would benefit hugely from this.
• The FDA is ordered by a federal court to remove these so-called experts from the TPSAC for writing reports that they and their employers would benefit financially from. Judge Richard Leon had this to say about the matter: 

“The presence of conflicted members on [FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, TPSAC] irrevocably tainted its very composition and its work product”

“the Committee’s findings and recommendations…are, at a minimum, suspect, and, at worst, untrustworthy.”

It very much looks like nicotine addiction was a lie that Benowitz and Henningfield created back in 1988 on assignment from Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKlein, for their own financial benefit. Smokers were mislead into believing they were addicted to nicotine, and that the solution was Nicorette. Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKlein needed something their new Nicorette could be a solution for, so they ordered it from Benowitz and Henningfield. But surely, these well respected companies could not do such a thing you say? Well, this is what Dr. Peter Rost, former vice CEO and whistleblower from Pfizer, has to say about the matter:

“You give them grants, you establish friendships, you make sure they become beholden to you, you start programs with them, which they can make a profit from. But they are not going to continue to get money, unless they are saying what you want them to say.

Everybody knows that this is how things work. They know it and you know it – it’s only maybe the public that does not know it.

That’s how you influence the medical establishment. Simply, with money.”

Still wondering why so many "medical experts" are part of campaigns against e-cigarettes?