Wanna Quit Smoking?, try brain damage Options

[PalePhoenix]

Recent research funded by the National Institutes on Drug Abuse and of Neurological Disorders and Stroke suggests that damage to a portion of the brain may result in an instant release from addiction to one of the most destructive, legal behaviors engaged in by humans: Smoking.

Scientists studying stroke patients are reporting today that an injury to a specific part of the brain, near the ear, can instantly and permanently break a smoking habit. People with the injury who stopped smoking found that their bodies, as one man put it, “forgot the urge to smoke.”

The finding, which appears in the journal Science, is based on a small study. But experts say it is likely to alter the course of addiction research, pointing researchers toward new ideas for treatment. While no one is suggesting brain injury as a solution for addiction, the finding suggests that therapies might focus on the insula, a prune-size region under the frontal lobes that is thought to register gut feelings and is apparently a critical part of the network that sustains addictive behavior.

Previous research on addicts focused on regions of the cortex involved in thinking and decision making. But while those regions are involved in maintaining habits, the new study suggests that they are not as central as the insula is. The study did not examine dependence on alcohol, cocaine or other substances. Yet smoking is at least as hard to quit as any other habit, and it probably involves the same brain circuits, experts said. Most smokers who manage to quit do so only after repeated attempts, and the craving for cigarettes usually lasts for years, if not a lifetime.

“This is the first time we’ve shown anything like this, that damage to a specific brain area could remove the problem of addiction entirely,” said Dr. Nora Volkow.“It’s absolutely mind-boggling.” (read more...)

The article was so nice, they ran it twice. Here is the original abstract, with links to the full-text PDF, if you find neurobiology terms sexy and glamorous.

While it is obviously beyond our present technology to inflict intentional brain damage for a specific result, we may see the emergence of similar devices to the vagus nerve stimulator (still barbaric, but who's counting), which is used for severe cases of depression. One of the primary issues with poking around in older areas--from an evolutionary standpoint--of the brain is that it's like a dangerous game of Jenga. We have no idea what pulling one peg might do to several others. Craving and addiction, like obesity for instance, may be such a problem for us because the structures and neurochemistry that created us had other things in mind when the impulses were developed in our species.

This is your brain NOT on drugs.

[ganymede]

Now all we have to do is stick bolts into people's temples like Frankenstein's neck. Actually, that's not a half-bad concept. Some kind of dermal stimulator, about the size of a dime, and you just tap it when you've got a craving. Wear it for six months, and voila, your body should have been able to work through the physical addictions.

[Semperfidel]

There's been a study on how age affects a person's desire to quit smoking.

A new study shows that obstacles to smoking cessation and motives for quitting smoking vary with age. The study* found that smokers over age 65 reported quitting smoking due to physician pressure and stress due to a major health problem, while smokers under age 65 reported cigarette cost and tobacco odor as reasons for quitting.

If that doesn't suit you, then try moving to Kuala Lumpur, where they equate smokers with animals and are going to bar them from future elections.

[ganymede]

Fibromyalgia is a real disease. Or so says Pfizer in a new television advertising campaign for Lyrica, the first medicine approved to treat the pain condition, whose very existence is questioned by some doctors... (read more)

I didn't think fibro-whatever was like "Restless Leg Syndrome" or "Halitosis." I really didn't. I just hate that Lyrica commercial, with the older white lady who's got all these clicks in her voice. You really have to listen to her. If it's a voice-over, it sucks. It's probably her real voice, which, umm...

[walken]Needs more cowbell[/walken]

[Semperfidel]

Another move to compel smoking cessation through shame and taxation:

'£10 licence to smoke' proposed

Smokers could be forced to pay £10 for a permit to buy tobacco if a government health advisory body gets its way. No one would be able to buy cigarettes without the permit, under the idea proposed by Health England.

Its chairman, Professor Julian Le Grand, told BBC Radio 5 Live the scheme would make a big difference to the number of people giving up smoking. But smokers' rights group Forest described the idea as "outrageous", given how much tax smokers already pay.

Professor Le Grand, a former adviser to ex-PM Tony Blair, said cash raised by the proposed scheme would go to the NHS. He said it was the inconvenience of getting a permit - as much as the cost - that would deter people from persisting with the smoking habit.

"You've got to get a form, a complex form - the government's good at complex forms; you have got to get a photograph. It's a little bit of a problem to actually do it, so you have got to make a conscious decision every year to opt in to being a smoker..." (read more)

I can't think of too many other vices for which people have come up with so many bad ways to do a good thing. The others are masturbation and eating.

Twenty bucks a year to help subsidize the later cost of treating these same individuals for higher rates of cancer and lung disease sounds as fair to me as any other tax, but it's the forms and the photographing that don't fly. It's like having a sex offender-type list of people who are addicts mostly harming themselves.

[irishblessing]

On the flipside of those attempts to tighten anti-smoking laws ("It's for your own good!"), some Minneapolis bars have come up with a clever way to get around them. It probably won't take state lawmakers long to close the loophole, but you have to give them props for creativity:

Smoking ban workaround catches on at bars across state

Having patrons become "actors" when entire bar is turned into a "stage" started as a one-night experiment 2 weeks ago, but now it's becoming a way around state law.

What started as a quirky idea to get around the statewide smoking ban appears to be spreading like wildfire.

Dozens of bars are expected to stage "theater nights'' this weekend in which patrons are dubbed actors. The law, which went into effect in October, permits performers to smoke during a theatrical production. "Two weeks ago, we had one bar doing this,'' said Mark Benjamin, a criminal defense attorney who launched the theater-night idea... (read more)

I think more people got on board because it was a lawyer who came up with the idea, but I don't think they need a special piece of legislation to stop the practice. Though I'm not sure how close in line Minnesota laws are with other states, it's pretty clear the proprietors and bar owners are "acting in bad faith." They might not get closed or fined, but things like that can get your liquor license pulled...and then where would everyone be?

[Bryan9000]

A lot of other bars are using, or looking for, ways to work around the bans.

Amsterdam’s announcement last June sounded so patently absurd to Reuters that its article about the news was placed in the “Oddly Enough” category. Ban smoking in Amsterdam? Smoking something they aren’t allowed at home is exactly why thousands of tourists flock there every year. But the prime minister was unequivocal, vowing that the city’s coffee shops “will be smoke-free” when the ban takes effect on July 1, 2008.

Eight months after the announcement, though, the Dutch health minister, Ab Klink, has told lawmakers that smoking could continue at the shops, as long as no tobacco is in the mix, according to the Dutch News Service. Those who prefer to accent their marijuana high with a bit of tobacco as well will have to go outside or to separate tobacco-smoking rooms. The alternative will be going tobacco-free, as the ban seeks, by smoking marijuana alone.

“Klink does not expect that cannabis users will switch en masse to ‘pure’ joints,” the Dutch report said. “He will arrange a study, though, of whether the smoking habits of coffee shop visitors change after the ban.”

Several areas in Germany have been relaxing their smoking rules as well, Der Spiegel reported today. In the east, a court ruled in favor of exempting establishments that are too small to be subdivided into smoking and non-smoking sections. In the southwest, hookah bars were exempted by another court, which noted that their very business was based on smoking. And in Bavaria, in the southeast, local officials decided to allow smoking in festival tents, which are filled with hordes of merrymakers during Oktoberfest. (read more)

Just to piss off my Jewish friends, I'm banning matzah...and crackers. The edible kind.

[JBlueEyes]

Don't you all know that smoking ages you? That's why a Japanese company is using wrinkles to avoid marketing to minors:

Cigarette vending machines in Japan may soon start counting wrinkles, crow's feet and skin sags to see if the customer is old enough to smoke.

The legal age for smoking in Japan is 20 and as the country's 570,000 tobacco vending machines prepare for a July regulation requiring them to ensure buyers are not underage, a company has developed a system to identify age by studying facial features.

By having the customer look into a digital camera attached to the machine, Fujitaka Co's system will compare facial characteristics, such as wrinkles surrounding the eyes, bone structure and skin sags, to the facial data of over 100,000 people, Hajime Yamamoto, a company spokesman said.

"With face recognition, so long as you've got some change and you are an adult, you can buy cigarettes like before. The problem of minors borrowing (identification) cards to purchase cigarettes could be avoided as well," Yamamoto said... (read more)

[irishblessing]

Just a word from your sponsors, Chantix kills. (!?)

[JBlueEyes]

BELMONT, Calif. — During her 50 years of smoking, Edith Frederickson says, she has lit up in restaurants and bars, airplanes and trains, and indoors and out, all as part of a two-pack-a-day habit that she regrets not a bit. But as of two weeks ago, Ms. Frederickson can no longer smoke in the one place she loves the most: her home. (read more)

This has gone too far.

[Xaotrix]

BELMONT, Calif. — During her 50 years of smoking, Edith Frederickson says, she has lit up in restaurants and bars, airplanes and trains, and indoors and out, all as part of a two-pack-a-day habit that she regrets not a bit. But as of two weeks ago, Ms. Frederickson can no longer smoke in the one place she loves the most: her home. (read more)

This has gone too far.

I smoke and I'm proud of it. I know it'll kill me one of these days. My cousin died of emphysema, so it must run in the family, but that was a very distant cousin. I'm probably going to end up being one of those bitchy 100 year-old sucking on filterless Chesterfields (do they even still MAKE those?).