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Test case over Rampton smoking ban 

Two patients at Rampton high security psychiatric hospital have won the right to bring a test case over the smoking ban imposed on such institutions.

The two inmates - who can only be identified as G and N - are appealing against a High Court decision that Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which relates to respect for a private life, was not engaged in the case and, even if it was, the interference was justified.

The hearing, which is due to last two days, is likely to take place in London before Christmas.

Granting permission, Lord Justice Tuckey, sitting with Lady Justice Smith in the Court of Appeal, said that the Article 8 point - and the related questions of discrimination under Article 14 - was sufficiently arguable and should be considered.

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Nottinghamshire | Patients win smoking ban appeal 

Two patients at a high security mental hospital in Nottinghamshire have won the right to appeal against a smoking ban on the premises.

An Appeal Court judge gave the Rampton hospital patients the right to bring a test case over the ban which was imposed in March 2007.

In May a High Court judge upheld the hospital's no-smoking policy for patients.

But the patients - known as G and N - argued it violated their human rights.

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Chatological Humor: Welcome Back: Palin Reax; Left Behind Poll (UPDATED 9.3.08)  

I've read that your sense of smell is more closely linked to memory than any of your other senses. For example, even today, when I smell of the kind of vinyl used in my dentist's office during 2+ years of regular, painful orthodontic adjustments, it causes my palms to sweat. On the flip side, however, some of the best times of my youth were spent playing baseball. During our games, many parents would sit in the bleachers and smoke (this was the mid-1970's), which would drift onto the field, albeit in diluted form. Perhaps as a result, when I get a furtive whiff of cigarette smoke under the right circumstances (usually outdoors), it takes me back to those days playing in the scorching Arizona sun, with "Yankees" emblazoned on my green shirt and my dad cheering me on, and puts me in my happy place for just a moment. Not that I would ever seek it out to get my "memory fix", but the associations will probably always be there for me. Kinda strange, huh?

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• Smoke ban in your home? 

The Lake County Housing Authority is considering banning smoking in public housing units, an unprecedented move in Illinois.

"We try to be ahead of the curve," said David Northern, Lake County Housing Authority executive director. "We have a high population of persons with disabilities, senior citizens and lower income individuals who have health problems without the health care to treat those problems. It's not right for them to have to deal with secondhand smoke."

Roughly 80 public housing authorities in 15 states from California to Maine have adopted smoke-free policies, said Jim Bergman, director of the Smoke-free Environments Law Project based in Ann Arbor, Mich. The group works with local health departments on smoke-free issues largely focusing on apartments and condominiums. . . .

Any policy change has to be approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the housing authority's board of commissioners.

Officials started discussing the idea two years ago, spurred by a few residents' complaints about secondhand smoke, concerns about health and fire safety, and the costs of rehabbing apartments with smoking damage. . . .

Smokers' rights activist Garnet Dawn Scheuer of Lake Bluff, Midwest regional director for The Smoker's Club Inc., said banning smoking in peoples' homes is an invasion of privacy and goes against constitutionally protected rights.

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We have a high population of persons with disabilities, senior citizens and lower income individuals who have health problems without the health care to treat those problems. It's not right for them to have to deal with secondhand smoke.
David Northern, Lake County (IL) Housing Authority executive director.

Lake County considering public housing smoking ban  

the Lake County Housing Authority is considering pushing the smoking ban even further.

It is discussing banning smoking in all of its public housing units, which would be an unprecedented move in Illinois.

David Northern, the Lake County Housing Authority executive director, notes that the agency has a high population of persons with disabilities, senior citizens and lower income individuals who have health problems and no available care. He says it is not right for such people to have to have to deal with secondhand smoke.

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• Nicotine Replacement Drug's Bad Trip 

Abbott Laboratories, Targacept and AstraZeneca have nicotinic receptor drugs in clinical trials for memory impairment, adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and pain. The National Institute on Drug Abuse is testing varenicline itself as a treatment for cocaine and alcohol dependence. Preclinical studies are looking at other new nicotinic receptor compounds for Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, ulcerative colitis and inflammation as well, attesting to the broad influence of this receptor family.

The effects of nicotinic receptors are so pervasive, in fact, that some of the mechanisms involved are not completely understood. “It’s a story that’s still evolving, and it’s very complicated, so going in with a drug like varenicline, I’m not surprised that there are side effects,” says Lorna Role, who studies the receptors’ biology at Columbia University and Stony Brook University. This type of acetylcholine receptor, which also responds to nicotine, acts as “a volume control” for other neurotransmitters, according to Role. “A little nicotine turns up transmitter release,” she explains. “It’s been shown to increase the release of dopa­mine, glutamate, GABA—every major neurotransmitter.” . . .

“It’s just like the SSRIs,” Role agrees. “I think refining the compounds in terms of the balance of their activities is really key, but that’s not to say that’s trivial. It’ll take time.” Targeting nicotinic receptors “has enormous therapeutic potential,” she says, adding that the biggest joke on the tobacco industry may be that they missed seeing it.

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Sail crew stub out cigarette habit 

Service users at Norcare's Sail project, run in the North East of England, are taking advantage of a health improvement programme to tackle the addictive problem.

Norcare runs the project for people with mental health issues, based at the Eco Centre in Jarrow, to provide a range of support to people in the locality.

These services include helping them cope with everyday tasks such as paying bills and eating healthily, encouraging them to socialise and to become more active in the local community.

Vicky Richardson, Norcare health improvement officer, is running the 12-week Stop Smoking course to help them kick their nicotine habit.

She said: "A lot of people within the group use cigarettes as a psychological support. It helps them to cope with the stressful situations they deal with on a daily basis.

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Cigarette Smoking and Health-Related Quality of Life in Medicare Beneficiaries  

This study examined associations between cigarette smoking, cancer, and self-reported physical (SF-36(R) Physical Component Summary Score, [PCS]) and mental health (SF-36(R) Mental Component Summary Score, [MCS]) among 123,567 Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in managed care plans. As expected for a sample of older individuals, the SF-36(R) PCS mean (42.6) was lower than the U.S. general population mean of 50. The SF-36(R) MCS mean (51.7) for the sample was higher than the general population mean. In addition, least squares means revealed significantly poorer health for current smokers and those who recently quit, regardless of their cancer status. Although statistically significant, the differences between current smokers and never smokers were small among those with or without cancer. Encouraging smokers to quit and providing abstinence support to persons who have recently quit may help reduce health- related impacts of cigarette use. . . .

Physical and mental health for those who recently quit smoking was similar to current smokers. The majority of the recent quitters in this study had quit smoking within the last 6 months. Medicare managed care programs that sponsor smoking cessation programs need to address the physical and psychological features of withdrawal to help recent quitters continue to refrain from smoking tobacco

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• Trouble Quitting? New Smoking Study May Reveal Why 

A new study from researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University sheds light on why smokers' intentions to quit "cold turkey" often fizzle out within days or even hours.

If a smoker isn't yearning for a cigarette when he makes the decision to kick the habit-and most aren't-he isn't able to foresee how he will feel when he's in need of a nicotine buzz. The new study bolsters the theory that smokers not in a state of craving a cigarette will underestimate and underpredict the intensity of their future urge to smoke.

"We have observed previously that the idea of smoking a cigarette becomes increasingly attractive to smokers while they are craving," said the study's lead investigator and University of Pittsburgh professor of psychology Michael Sayette. "This study suggests that when smokers are not craving, they fail to appreciate just how powerful their cravings will be. This lack of insight while not craving may lead them to make decisions-such as choosing to attend a party where there will be lots of smoking-that they may come to regret." . . .

"The research not only has implications for helping smokers quit, but it also enlightens us on how nonsmokers may pick up the habit. If smokers can't appreciate the intensity of their need to smoke when they aren't currently craving, what's the likelihood that people who have never smoked can do so," said Loewenstein. . . .

-- * . Exploring the Cold-to-Hot Empathy Gap in Smokers. Psychological Science, September 2008

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• Lawsuits link stop-smoking drug to suicides  

David Collins, a 59-year-old Indiana man, began taking Chantix in October 2007 after his doctor prescribed it to help him stop smoking. . . .

Linda Collins is suing Pfizer, the manufacturer of Chantix, alleging that the company failed to warn consumers that the popular smoking-cessation prescription medication may cause serious psychiatric symptoms, including erratic behavior and suicidal thoughts.

The lawsuit, filed in July in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, is the first of what may be a torrent of claims.

Kristian Rasmussen, a pharmaceutical plaintiffs' attorney who is representing Linda Collins, said his firm, Cory Watson Crowder & Degaris in Birmingham, Ala., has received more than 1,400 inquiries from Chantix users and their families.

In addition to the Collins case, the firm has filed suits in state courts in Louisiana and New York. It has 200 cases, all involving suicides or suicide attempts by Chantix users.

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Mental hospital bans smoking long condoned for its patients 

As smoking was banned in more public places over the past decade, one of the state's most vulnerable populations was permitted to puff away: psychiatric patients at the Arizona State Hospital.

Exempted from ever-widening smoking bans, the hospital practically encouraged people with serious mental illnesses who live at the hospital to smoke. Up to 20 cigarette breaks a day were written into some patients' daily schedules.

That changed on July 1 when the entire campus of the hospital on Van Buren Street went tobacco-free. Residents, staff, visitors, vendors and all others who set foot on the Phoenix property are forbidden from lighting up.

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Gene Variant May Decide Who Smokes and for How Long  

A gene variant that may influence a person's initial response to smoking and lifetime smoking habits has been identified by a team of researchers.

The finding about the variant in the CHRNA5 nicotine receptor gene may help explain how someone goes from trying their first cigarette to becoming a long-term smoker.

Previous studies have inked variations in the same genetic region to a smoker's level of nicotine dependence, to the number of cigarettes smoker per day, and to an increased risk of lung cancer.

This new University of Michigan-led study examined genetic and smoking data from 435 people, including never-smokers -- who tried at least one cigarette but no more than 100 cigarettes in their lives -- and regular smokers who'd smoked at least five cigarettes a day for at least the past five years.

The regular smokers were far more likely than never-smokers to have less common form of the CHRNA5 gene in which just one base pair in the gene sequence is different from the more common form of the gene.

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Association of a single nucleotide polymorphism in neuronal acetylcholine receptor subunit alpha 5 (CHRNA5) with smoking status and with 'pleasurable buzz'during early experimentation with smoking 

Conclusions We replicated the observation that the minor allele of rs16969968 affects smoking behavior, and extended these findings to sensitivity to smoking effects upon experimentation. While the ability to test genetic associations was limited by sample size, the polymorphism in the CHRNA5 subunit was shown to be associated significantly with enhanced pleasurable responses to initial cigarettes in regular smokers in an a priori test. The findings suggest that phenotypes related to subjective experiences upon smoking experimentation may mediate the development of nicotine dependence.

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Dopamine Signaling through D1-Like versus D2-Like Receptors in the Nucleus Accumbens Core versus Shell Differentially Modulates Nicotine Reward Sensitivity  

Considerable evidence implicates the mesolimbic dopamine (DA) system in the processing of nicotine's reinforcing properties, specifically the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and the terminal fields of VTA DAergic projections to the "core" (NAcore) and "shell" (NAshell) subdivisions of the nucleus accumbens (NAc). However, the specific roles of DA D1-like and D2-like receptor subtypes in nicotine reward processing within these NAc subregions have not been elucidated. We report that microinfusions of DA D1-like or D2-like receptor-specific antagonists into NAcore or NAshell double dissociate the rewarding and aversive properties of systemic or intra-VTA nicotine, and differentially regulate sensitivity to the rewarding properties as well as the motivational valence of either intra-VTA or systemic nicotine administration. Using a place conditioning procedure, NAshell infusions of a D2-like receptor antagonist switched the motivational valence of intra-VTA nicotine from aversive to rewarding and potentiated nicotine reward sensitivity to sub-reward threshold intra-VTA nicotine doses. In contrast, NAcore infusions of a D1-like receptor antagonist switched intra-VTA nicotine aversion to reward, and potentiated reward sensitivity to sub-reward threshold nicotine doses. Thus, D1-like versus D2-like receptors in NAcore versus NAshell subdivisions play functionally dissociable roles in modulating systemic or intra-VTA nicotine motivational processing.

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One cigarette can get some people hooked: study 

It may take just one tobacco cigarette for some people to get addicted to nicotine because of how their brains are wired, a Canadian study suggests.

By manipulating receptors in the brains of rats, the researchers were able to control whether the first exposure to nicotine was enjoyable or repulsive. The study appears in the Aug. 6 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

"During the early phase of tobacco exposure, many individuals find nicotine highly unpleasant and aversive, whereas others may become rapidly dependent on nicotine and find it highly rewarding," said Steven Laviolette, a professor of anatomy and cell biology at the University of Western Ontario.

"We wanted to explore that difference," he added in a release.

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