No More Smoking: A “Quit” Coach Is Just a Text Message Away
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For anyone who resolves to stop smoking, help is as close as your cell phone.
According to NIDA’s 2011 Monitoring the Future survey results, teen smoking rates are currently at their lowest since the survey began in 1975. However, many teens continue to take up the habit—19 percent of 12th-graders reported past-month cigarette use.
By now, we all know that smoking has negative health effects. These include lung and heart disease and particularly cancer—since cigarettes contain chemicals that are carcinogenic, or cancer-causing. However, when it comes to quitting, the main problem is nicotine. Nicotine is addictive and makes quitting notoriously hard.
To help teens quit, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) recently launched SmokefreeTXT, a free text-to-quit service that sends text messages with encouragement, advice, and tips directly to teens’ cell phones.
How It Works
Sign up at www.teen.smokefree.gov or text “QUIT” to “iQUIT” (47848) and provide the date you smoked last. After that, you’ll receive text messages for up to 6 weeks. Research shows that support for quitting continues to be important beyond the first few weeks.
Smokefree Teen
The text-to-quit campaign is just one feature of a broader effort to encourage teens to quit smoking. NCI’s new Smokefree Teen Web site features information, quizzes, comics, and other resources to help teens understand the decisions they make and to take control of their health.
Smokefree Teen also offers a free smartphone app, QuitSTART—an interactive guide that provides mood management tips, tracks cravings, and monitors quit attempts.
You can find Smokefree Teen on several social media pages to connect other teens with tools to help them quit. Think about “liking” Smokefree Teen on Facebook, even if you don’t smoke, to show support for your friends or family who are trying to quit.
Is 2012 the year of texting for healthy living? Let us know if you think campaigns like these can help you stay committed to your resolutions.
Smoking: How It Primes the Brain for Addiction
More people understand now the harmful effects that smoking has on the body as well as the addictive effects of nicotine. The good news is that teens seem to be getting the message—SBB recently reported that smoking rates among 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-graders are at an all-time low.
But many teens are still smoking—according to the 2011 Monitoring the Future Study, 19 percent of high school seniors reported smoking in the past month.
New NIDA research gives yet another reason for teens to avoid lighting that first cigarette—nicotine may “prime” the brain to enhance cocaine’s effects, making it a very dangerous “gateway drug.” That means it could open the door to other drug use.
Science Suggests that Nicotine Changes the Brain
Evidence shows that most people who tried drugs like cocaine were first tobacco or alcohol users. This concept of “gateway drugs” has been controversial, mostly because people question whether prior use of drugs like nicotine, alcohol, or marijuana actually leads to later drug use. Before now, studies have not been able to show a biological reason why smoking or other nicotine use could increase a person’s chances of using illegal street drugs.
That changed when NIDA researchers found that mice exposed to nicotine in their drinking water for at least 7 days showed an increased response to cocaine.
Why did this happen? Researchers recognized that nicotine actually changes the structure of your DNA, it reprograms how certain genes are expressed—in particular a gene that has been related to addiction—and ultimately, it enhances the response to cocaine.
Moving on from mice, researchers looked at statistics in humans—in particular at when people began nicotine use and their degree of cocaine dependence: Among cocaine users who smoked cigarettes before starting cocaine, the rate of cocaine dependence was higher compared with those who tried cocaine first (before smoking cigarettes).
The study doesn’t mean that every person who smokes cigarettes will eventually become addicted to cocaine. But it does suggest that if a person who smokes cigarettes tries cocaine, their brains may have been changed by nicotine to make it more likely that they will become addicted to cocaine.
Need help quitting smoking? Take a look at these resources from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
With Announcement on Giving Up “Dip,” Washington Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg’s Pitches Hit Home
After major league Hall of Famer Tony Gwynne of the San Diego Padres was diagnosed with parotid cancer, or cancer of the salivary gland, Washington Nationals’ pitcher Stephen Strasburg announced his decision to give up smokeless tobacco, or “dip.” Gwynne was Strasburg’s hero growing up—and he made a conscious decision to copy his hero’s every move as an aspiring professional baseball player, even the “dip” habit.
Just like cigarettes, smokeless tobacco contains nicotine, a highly addictive substance. Whether you smoke or chew it, tobacco has been proven to cause cancer.
Use of dip can lead to mouth cancer affecting the lips and gums, along with glands called the parotid glands, which pump saliva into your mouth. Juices produced from the dip contain heavy metals that, with repeated use, may lead to esophageal and pancreatic cancer—two very aggressive forms of the disease. Treatment can require several surgeries that leave the face and jaw disfigured, and in the most serious cases, it may even require removal of the jaw.
Sounds pretty scary, but not everyone is thinking of the consequences. The biggest appeal for young people to take up the habit is often through sports, kind of ironic since dip is definitely not healthy or good for athletic performance.
Strasburg’s announcement that he wants to give quit the habit may help change this unhealthy part of baseball culture. He doesn’t want young people who may admire his playing skills to think that this addictive habit has anything to do with his game. Strasburg admits that quitting is tough, and is taking things one step at a time. Now it’s Major League Baseball’s turn. Despite the fact that chewing tobacco has already been banned in Little League, high school and college play, the MLB isn’t banning use of dip, yet.
Sometimes, it takes a hero to throw the first pitch and help people understand that winners don’t dip.
Snus-You?
Smokeless tobacco is the latest nicotine-based product to drift into the marketplace and try to catch the attention of young people.
Snus pouches are a new version of snuff, or chewing tobacco laced with nicotine. Instead of putting a loose wad of tobacco inside the upper lip or between the cheek and gums, snus pouches look like small tea bags. These products are “spitless”, making their use easy to hide. Some tobacco companies even add flavors – like vanilla, peppermint, or spearmint – along with a sweetener.
These flavors are more likely to make the product appeal to young people.
Isn’t snus safer than cigarettes?
Snus has a similar effect on your brain, acting as a stimulant. Although it is marketed as an alternative to cigarettes, the little packets of wet tobacco are just as addictive. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health agencies have determined that smokeless tobacco products:
- Cause serious diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other diseases of the mouth, gums, and teeth;
- May increase the risk of serious diseases when used in combination with smoking;
- Cause adverse reproductive effects and should not be used during pregnancy; and
- Are not a safe alternative to smoking.
So don’t let a clever name, fun packaging, or candy flavors fool you. By the way, here’s the un-fun part of the package, but that’s because it’s required by law:
Warning: This product is not a safe alternative to cigarettes.
Who’s using snus?
According to NIDA’s 2009 Monitoring the Future survey of teens (PDF, 1.34 MB), the use of smokeless tobacco is increasing significantly among 10th and 12th graders. The percentage of 12th graders reporting past-month smokeless tobacco use increased from 6.1 percent in 2006 to 8.4 percent in 2009, a 38 percent increase, while the percentage of 10th graders reporting smokeless tobacco use increased from 4.9 percent in 2004 to 6.5 percent in 2009, a 33 percent increase.
Small Matter with Big Potential for Smokers Trying to Quit
There’s been a lot of talk about nanotechnology lately—like what does it take to be able to control things as small as atoms or molecules. Now, scientists funded by NIDA are trying to use nanotechnology to help people quit smoking. How, you ask? By delivering small amounts of nicotine via skin patches into a smoker’s body to help with cravings. That should be a lot safer for people than inhaling it into their lungs!
Patches are good ways to deliver some medicines to the body, but they do have limitations. For example, everyone who wears these patches receives exactly the same dosage of medicine. That dosage may not be right for everyone. For instance, when doctors prescribes a medication for a patient, they adjust the dosage depending on your age, size and weight, for starters. Now, NIDA scientists are discovering how to use nanotechnology to do something similar. The key components are carbon nanotubes—tiny “tubes” bonded together chemically, also known as “buckyballs” (weird). They are about 1/50,000th of the width of a human hair!
Scientists can put tiny nets made of carbon nanotubes onto the skin patch, and actually program it to deliver nicotine at the right dose for the person trying to kick the habit. Pretty cool.
So size can matter…and sometimes super small is best!
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National Institute on Drug Abuse | National Institutes of Health | U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
