Nicotine, Smoking and the Low Tar Programme

This is a publication comprising the proceedings of a symposium - "Nicotine, smoking and the low tar programme", held in November 1986, which aimed to form a base on which informed public health decisions on reducing harmful yields of tobacco smoke can be made and revised. Whilst the long-standing policy of reducing the harmful yields of tobacco smoke has been kept under constant review, only lately has sufficient data emerged to give some indication of the effects on health that these reductions may have had. The importance of tar in relation to lung diseases has been well discussed and documented, but the role played by nicotine in numerous smoking-related diseases has been less clear. That nicotine confers benefits to the smoker is discussed, as is its role in compensatory smoking. Important attention was focused on whether nicotine may be a co-carcinogen but the evidence remains equivocal. Other aspects on the toxicity of nicotine were also considered, for example the possibility that nicotine may affect hormone-dependent disorders such as endometrial cancer and osteoporosis.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 The toxicity of nicotine: central nervous system toxicity of nicotine, Neil L.Benowitz; toxicology of nicotine - its role in the aetiology of cancer due to cigarette smoking and cardiovascular disease, L.S.Levy and P.A.Martin; nicotine, a tobacco-specific precursor for carcinogens, Dietrich Hoffmann; the toxicity of nicotine - cancer, Francis J.C.Roe. Part 2 Smoking habits and related mortality in the UK: trends in cigarette smoking habits in the United Kingdom, 1905-1985, Stephanie Kiryluk and Nicholas Wald; trends in mortality from smoking-related diseases in England and Wales, Sarah C.Darby et al. Part 3 Smoking yields and compensation: limitations to potential uses for data based on the machine smoking of cigarettes - cigarette smoke contents, W.S.Rickert et al; estimating the extent of compensatory smoking, Alison Stephen et al; consistency of nicotine intake in smokers of cigarettes with varying nicotine yields, F.Adlkofer et al. Part 4 Determinants of low tar smoking and of compensation: dosimetric studies of compensatory cigarette smoking, Neal L.Benowitz; nicotine and the self-regulation of smoke intake, M.A.H.Russell; isolating the role of nicotine in human smoking behaviour, M.J.Jarvis; the funtional use of nicotine, D.M.Warburton; on the reduction of nicotine in cigarette smoke, Dietrich Hoffmann and Isle Hoffmann; the possible role of factors other than nicotine in compensatory smoking, Frank A.Fairweather; factors influencing choice of low-tar cigarettes, Martin Jarvis et al; the role of nicotine in the tar reduction programme, Sir Peter Froggatt and Nicholas Wald.