Nicotine

Gov. Parris N. Glendening said yesterday he will ask the General Assembly to require health insurers to cover anti-smoking medications and treatment -- a proposal likely to draw opposition from the industry and from lawmakers when they meet next month.Accepting an award in Annapolis from anti-smoking advocates, Glendening called on health plans to help pay for the drugs and counseling smokers need to quit."Someone told me the insurance companies are going to fight us on this," Glendening said.

WASHINGTON -- Days of reckoning seem to arrive so regularly for the nation's tobacco companies that potential legal catastrophe is almost routine.As the tobacco companies face an ominous government lawsuit while paying out millions of dollars in state tobacco settlements, a confrontation this week at the Supreme Court could decide the beleaguered industry's future.In a hearing set for Wednesday, the justices will examine a legal question that on the surface seems simple: Does the Food and Drug Administration have the authority to regulate nicotine as a drug, and cigarettes as a device for delivering nicotine into the human body?

Men and women have long had separate bathrooms and sports teams. But it may be what they really need is their own stop-smoking classes.In a rare "real life" study conducted outside the laboratory, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that men and women smoked for different reasons. Both reached for cigarettes when angry or anxious -- but these urges were stronger for men. And only men used nicotine to combat sadness and exhaustion.Women smoked more often when they were happy.

BOSTON -- My, how I had missed them. Their sheer nerve, their unabridged bluster, their unparalleled corporate villainy.There was a tobacco mogul once again on the podium, whining about how Congress had betrayed him, declaring that the deal they struck last June was dead. And all I could think of was: YESSSSS, THEY'RE BACK!Steven Goldstone of R.J.R. Nabisco, a man in a nicotine-induced state of self-righteousness, complained that the tobacco industry was being unfairly discriminated against.

In the first criminal charge to result from the three-year Justice Department investigation of the tobacco industry, a California biotechnology company admitted yesterday that it illegally conspired with cigarette maker Brown & Williamson to develop a high-nicotine tobacco.People familiar with the continuing federal probe said the relatively minor charge against DNA Plant Technology Corp. -- that it violated a tobacco seed-export law that has since been repealed -- has ominous implications for Brown & Williamson and for the industry as a whole.

Three-fourths of smokers want to quit, but less than 10 percent who try each year succeed long-term, according to health researchers. Smokers who resolve to kick their deadly habit in 1998 should find it a little easier, though.A new smokeless nicotine inhaler that resembles a fat plastic cigarette, and the first non-nicotine anti-smoking drug were approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1997. They join a number of other products and social support systems to aid in stubbing out that tobacco habit:Smokeless nicotine inhaler: The smokeless nicotine inhaler has just become available by prescription in the Baltimore-Washington area.

They don't call Bawlmer the Ozone Capital of America for nothing.Think of City Hall as the big casino where Hizzoner bet the store on further legalization of gambling.When NASA's astronomers finally made contact with life forms on another planet, it was pet rocks.Poor Joe Camel overdosed on nicotine.Pub Date: 7/16/97

DURHAM, N.C. -- Brooke Group Ltd.'s Liggett tobacco division worked to develop a cigarette with an artificially increased nicotine impact, according to internal Liggett research documents.The cigarette maker also worked to make a "less hazardous" cigarette, although Liggett and other tobacco companies had claimed that smoking is not hazardous to a smoker's health, nor is nicotine addictive.The documents could help show that Liggett manipulated nicotine levels to keep their customers hooked on the products, evidence which could be used in court against other tobacco companies in health-related lawsuits by 22 states, including Maryland.

A colorless, oily liquid used widely as an insecticide, it is fatal to humans in a large dose.Yet nicotine's extraordinary power over the human psyche has shaped history. Export of that exotic New World weed Nicotiana tabacum turned Colonial America into a trading power. Later, nicotine's addictive grip helped build the cigarette industry into a commercial and political colossus.Now the biochemistry of nicotine is a key to the lawsuits that have forced Big Tobacco to bargain with its foes.

Dr. Victor DeNoble is still a cautious man.Although it has been almost three years since the former Philip Morris Cos. researcher testified against the company before a congressional subcommittee about the effects of nicotine, DeNoble says the tobacco titan would still like to have his head."

Vaccines to help people recover from such addictions as nicotine, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines appear scientifically and medically achievable after doctors reported Monday that a vaccine to treat cocaine dependence had produced a large enough antibody response to reduce cocaine use in 38 percent of addicted individuals. Those results come on the heels of last week's announcement that the federal government will fund a large clinical trial of a nicotine vaccine based on earlier promising studies.

Smokers who have long been harangued about the medical consequences of their habit have a new one to ponder: It might be harming their sleep. A new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine found that smokers are four times as likely as nonsmokers to report trouble sleeping and feeling rested the next day. Measurements of brain activity showed that they aren't experiencing as much deep sleep during the night, a possible side effect of...

It's the time of year when people resolve to make changes in their lives. And we probably all know someone -- it might even be ourselves -- who vowed to quit smoking. We also all know someone who stopped for a few days then lit back up. Here's a closer look at one of the most difficult resolutions to keep: "I vow to quit smoking." According to a 2006 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 41 percent of smokers try to quit at least once during the year. But only about 10 percent actually succeed.

Baltimore residents who wish to quit smoking can obtain free nicotine patches or gum - as well as free telephone counseling sessions with experienced smoking-cessation experts - under a program coordinated by the Baltimore City Health Department. The patches and gum can be obtained by calling 800-QUIT-NOW. The service is funded by the state and run by Free and Clear. The city's share of Maryland's tobacco control program is paying for the nicotine replacement therapy, according to health officials.

Baltimore will be one of four cities airing edgy new ads aimed at helping people quit smoking, city officials announced yesterday. The ad campaign, called "EX" (as in ex-smoker), is part of a pilot program sponsored by the American Legacy Foundation, a Washington-based anti-smoking advocacy organization. The foundation is best known for its provocative "Truth" anti-smoking spots targeting teens. One ad, for example, features a cowboy with a smoking-related laryngectomy crooning in Times Square.

I want to let you know that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can have very serious side effects. Between 1996 and 1998, I took HRT under the advisement of my obstetrician/gynecologist. She told me that the benefits of taking HRT outweighed the risks and that it would protect my heart. The dose I took was very low. In May 1998, I drove myself to the emergency room, where I was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis (blood clots from my calf to my groin) and also a number of blood clots in my lungs.

CHICAGO -- Vaccines, the most potent medical weapon ever devised to vanquish deadly germs, are being called on to do something totally different and culturally revolutionary - to inoculate people against bad habits such as overeating, cigarette smoking and drug use. Whether this new era of vaccine research can actually subdue many of the poor lifestyle choices that are today's biggest threats to health, causing obesity, cancer, heart disease and other...

I am highly susceptible to mosquito bites and often get a dozen bites in the same time frame that others get one. I have tried many remedies to prevent the bites, such as natural insect repellants and vitamin B. I am still "fresh bait." Years ago, someone told me to rub hydrogen peroxide as soon as possible on the bites. Doing this alleviates the pain from the stings and itching within minutes. We heard from another reader that Listerine can keep mosquitoes away: "I have been using Listerine as an insect repellant and wonder if other readers have tried it. ... I just wipe it on with a gauze pad, and it works for me!"

Is tobacco about to meet its match? New insights into how nicotine behaves in the body are paving the way for better drugs to help smokers beat their addiction, researchers reported this week at the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists' annual meeting in Baltimore. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 70 percent of the nation's 46 million smokers say they want to quit. But fewer than 5 percent of those who go cold turkey manage to stay nicotine-free.

There was a time not long ago when psychiatric hospitals doled out cigarettes as rewards for good behavior. Outpatient clinics were thick with smoke, and patients smoked butts down to yellow-stained fingers. Laws in Maryland and other states banished tobacco from hospitals and health clinics in the late 1990s, but smoking rates among the severely mentally ill - especially those with schizophrenia and bipolar illness - remain two to three times higher than among the general population. Though surely not the only cause, the smoking rates correspond with similarly high rates of diabetes and heart and lung disease among the mentally ill. People with severe mental afflictions also die about 10 years earlier than others - and suicide accounts for only a fraction of the difference.