Smoking News

One of the difficulties tobacco addicts have in California is that while there are statewide regulations about who can smoke and where, local communities also have the power to customize laws. Local ordinances vary tremendously across the State.

For example, in Berkley, smoking isn’t allowed on any sidewalk in a commercial district or within 20 feet of a bus stop. In Loma Linda, you can’t smoke on any sidewalk, street, or common areas in shopping centers. Also off limits are bus stops, parks, and 80% of motel rooms and apartment units. In El Cajon, anyone caught smoking in public areas faces a fine of up to $500. Serious business.

So why are smokers risking it? Most will tell you that nicotine lessens anxiety and relaxes them. This is thought to be the source of the addiction, and new research supports this mechanism. It was done with smoking rats (OK, maybe not, the study says they got nicotine, not that they smoked) who had a protein that nicotine binds to removed from their brain. The July issue of the Journal of Neuroscience outlines the experiment.

Essentially, this protein locks nicotine and released dopamine. Those involved in addiction will notice dopamine reward pathways are common in other drugs as well – notably cocaine and methamphetamine. The protein is distinct for nicotine however and it would be possible to knock it out with targeted drugs. The rats that had this site blocked didn’t show a response to nicotine.

What’s new about this study (nicotinic receptors were known previously) is that there is a single cell involved and a single receptor – instead of the broad range where nicotine can bind in tissue. Only one really matters. That makes a nice target for therapies. The report comes out of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Conveniently, this is located north of San Diego near the University of San Diego. San Diego banned smoking at all City of San Diego beaches and parks, including all beaches from La Jolla to Sunset Cliffs in 2006.