Smoking behaviour and compensation: a review of the literature.

What It Covers

This review looks at Nicotinic Agonists.

The present review investigated whether and to what extend low yield cigarettes are smoked more intensively.

In addition, published data on whether nicotine, "tar", or any other smoke constituent or property influence compensational smoking are summarized.

Why It Was Studied

The issue of compensation is important because it bears on whether switching to "lighter" brands means lower overall smoke intake or not.

Who the Included Studies Covered

The studies on compensation were classified as follows: (1) studies on smoking behaviour in relation to cigarette yields (with and without brand switching); (2) studies on compensation for nicotine (switching between cigarettes which differ "only" in their nicotine yield, nicotine supplementation, manipulation of renal nicotine excretion, administration of nicotine agonists or antagonists); (3) studies on compensation for other factors (influence of tar, taste, irritation, draw resistance).

How the Review Was Done

In order to quantify the degree of compensation, an index is defined and applied to selected brand switching studies.

This compensation index determines, in relative units, the degree to which a smoker responds to a change in smoke yields with a change in smoke uptake measured by suitable biomarkers.

The role of vent blocking is also briefly discussed.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Behavior, Addictive, Biomarkers, Carbon Monoxide, Inhalation, Nicotine, Nicotinic Agonists and Smoking.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a review of Nicotinic Agonists.

Its findings take up roughly 17 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 1999 (Psychopharmacology), a journal based in Germany.

More context: all human trials.