Freedom of choice in personal habits is all well and good, but I cannot understand how, after all we know, employees of tobacco companies go home at night. How would you like to explain to your kids that your career is based on selling illness and death, and that you are completely dependent on getting teens addicted? A nasty business.
Some cigarettes have a "kick" containing 35 times more "freebase" nicotine - the most addictive form - than others, researchers have found. The findings could help rate the addictiveness of different brands, they say.Posted by Alan at July 28, 2003 08:29 PM"Free-base" nicotine is a particularly potent form of the naturally-occurring tobacco drug because it is in an extremely volatile, uncombined form. This means it can be much more rapidly absorbed by the lungs and brain than nicotine derivatives such as nornicotine or its salts.
Previous research has shown that a drug's addictiveness is influenced by the speed at which it is delivered to the brain and absorbed into and from the blood stream.
"The study shows that the modern cigarette does to nicotine what crack does to cocaine," says addiction expert Jack Henningfield, at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
via New Scientist