From: [C reuters] at [clari.net] (Reuters)
Newsgroups: clari.news.alcohol+drugs,clari.news.issues.smoking,clari.tw.health.misc,clari.news.issues.misc,clari.tw.health
Subject: Nicotine could be as addictive as heroin -research
Organization: Copyright 1996 by Reuters
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 7:20:29 PDT
Expires: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 7:20:29 PDT
                                         
    LONDON (Reuter) - Nicotine acts on the brain in a similar  
way to drugs like cocaine and heroin and could be just as 
addictive, Italian scientists said Wednesday. 
         The researchers, writing in the science journal Nature, said  
their work went some way to refuting claims by the smoking lobby 
that tobacco was merely habit-forming rather than addictive. 
         The scientists said experiments on rats showed that nicotine  
stimulated local energy metabolism and the release of the 
neurotransmitter dopamine in the part of the brain associated 
with emotional expression. 
         The effects were the same as those triggered by cocaine and  
heroin and have been linked with addiction, said the scientists 
from the University of Cagliari in Italy. 
         ``Our results are relevant here because they show that  
nicotine shares with addictive drugs a discrete neurochemical 
and functional property...this property might itself be critical 
to the addictive properties of nicotine,'' they wrote.