While public and private groups, along with researchers and a few drug companies, have been making serious efforts to help smokers quit smoking cigarettes, the tobacco industry has been spiking the level of nicotine in cigarettes, according to a study by the Department of Public Health. Between the years 1998 to 2004, the amount of nicotine in cigarettes has risen by ten percent.

According to Lois Keithly , director of the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program, "We in public health have tried to spend a lot of time figuring out why people don't stop smoking."

Full withdrawal will be felt after the first day of not smoking. But symptoms from nicotine withdrawal are felt within the first 30 minutes after the last cigarette, with smokers reporting cravings within the first hour after the last cigarette. In one hour, smokers reported anger. In three hours of smoking cessation, smokers reported heightened levels of anxiety, sadness and difficulty concentrating. Nicotine is what makes cigarettes so addictive.

The Boston Globe reports when contacted, representatives of the three major tobacco makers in the US declined to comment on the study and would not answer questions about the nicotine content of their products.

Last month, we posted information about NicVAX -- an experimental nicotine quit smoking vaccine and more recently we posted information about Chantix -- a drug that might quadruple success for smokers who want to quit. So this post is not about information we have already posted, but about a few interesting facts I came across while reading a Washington Post news feature Doctors Test Anti-Smoking Vaccine.

The reporter mentions a study participant in the anti-smoking vaccine trial currently underway, and said that he has smoked nearly half a million cigarettes in half a century. That is an astonding number of cigarettes, and I don't know that many smokers actually stop to do the math. The news story also quotes Dr. J. Taylor Hays, a smoking cessation expert at the Mayo Clinic, who helped test Chantix, as saying, "The typical patient is a 30-year-old woman who says, 'If I gain 5 pounds, I'm going back,'" referring to women who try quit smoking programs and nicotine replacement aids. There might be safer weight-loss programs out there that do not run the risk of cancer outcome. Just a suggestion.

The article goes on the state that of the more than 48 million smokers in the United States, 40 percent each year make a serious attempt to quit, but fewer than five percent succeed long-term. Two-thirds go back to smoking within a month.

Addiction to cigarettes has been compared to the power of heroin addiction, but it is not impossible to stop and if the researchers keep focusing on better ways to help people quit smoking, everybody wins. Well -- except for the tobacco industry -- but who cares about companies in the business of doing harm.

The Washington Post had done a nice feature on the anti-smoking vaccines being tested with Doctors Test Anti-Smoking Vaccine. I recommend the read.