As Tobacco Observer mentioned, some activities are more addictive than others. Nicotine and the act of smoking are addictive by virtually any accepted medical and/or psychological definition. Unless you reject the entire notion of addiction, cigarettes are addictive.

The next tier of the discussion is the all important question, “So what?” So what if nicotine and cigarettes are addictive? The “so what” is in the detrimental health effects of inhaling smoke, and the resulting death, disease, and health care costs. It’s that simple. Coffee and its addition doesn’t kill a third to a half of coffee drinkers. Just doesn’t happen.

Finally, the “moral equivalency” argument of the Tobacco Industry to the government, scientific, and medical communities is simplistic at best in light of these two facts. When the tobacco industry discovered its product was addictive, they hid the facts. When they learned of the health impacts, they hid, and actively tried to undermine belief in the facts. When the government, scientific, and medical communities discovered the same, they began the modern era of increased regulation and taxation to address the health and economic costs. The Tobacco Industry lied and covered up. The government, scientific, and medical communities continue to lead the effort to prevent the death, disease, and health care costs caused by smoking despite political and economic pressures from the Tobacco Industry. There is no equivalency here.

Finally, there’s a lot of road between treating cigarettes like heroine and a reasonable approach to regulation. FDA regulation, no advertising, not selling tobacco in the same places we buy milk, bread, and gas, and having access to affordable and evidence-based tobacco addiction treatment are reasonable alternatives to 15-year prison terms.

Philip Morris is not Starbucks. Maybe if people were smoking coffee beans, you’d have an argument. Or maybe Starbucks can come up with drinkable tobacco. That would solve a lot of problems…

Why don’t most people drink decaf coffee? Same thing. Believe it or not, there are people so desperate for caffiene at times that they will suck on (or chew) roast coffee beans! The drug is what the users are after, but that doesn’t by itself mean that the substance is “addictive”.

I think what has become clear here is that ultimately the concept of “addiction” really does come down to a semantic argument. You can invoke dopamine levels, loss of “control”, self-administration in lab animals, “liking” (a la Dr. Henningfield), tolerance, mood-alteration, or multiple other concepts. Some apply to tobacco well, some don’t, and the same thing applies to coffee, marijuana, and a number of other pharmacologic agents. Some substances are clearly more “addictive” than others. Where do you draw the line?

If you want to invoke “loss of control” or “dopamine stimulation” then gambling, overeating, and many other non-drug related behaviors are also “addictive”. I think in the end the word “addiction” is still emotionally loaded, and there is no universally accepted definition.

I think the real question for trial isn’t so much whether or not tobacco falls under one or the other definition of “addiction”. Certainly its a habituating phamacologic agent, and certainly it does fit under some of the definitions if not others. The question is, what (if anything) did the tobacco companies know about this that wasn’t known to the scientific community and to the general public? Was there really a conspiracy that hid the “truth”? Were the tobacco companies really the only ones who knew that tobacco was “habit-forming”? I think there is abundant evidence that the scientific and medical community was aware of the habit-forming properties of tobacco decades before any of the defendants in this suit even existed.

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–the discussion about how 90% of heroin-addicted Vietnam veterans quit once back in the US , Mr. Bernick’s equivocations about this established fact, and Dr. Rowell’s medical service in Vietnam, and his personal acquaintance with the issue.
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That’s interesting, but somewhat of a red-herring. When people are in high stress situations, risking their lives constantly, and heroin is ubiquitous, unsupervised, costs negligible amounts of money, lots of people are going to use it. Conversely when heroin is illegal, carries severe criminal penalties to possess buy or sell, is extremely expensive, and relatively difficult to acquire, and when the stressful stimuli are removed, people formerly using it will quit. That doesn’t make heroin either non-addictive or addictive, again, that’s a semantic issue.

Conversely, if you were to ban cigarettes, give people 15 year jail terms for possessing or selling them, force them to go into dank ghettoes to buy it, and charge $4 per cigarette, miraculously, most of the “addicted” smokers would quit too! But there would still be a few hardcore smokers who wouldn’t. The exact same thing could probably be said about coffee beans.

The point is, there is a lot more to use patterns than simple pharmacology. Go to any busy metropolitan hospital and watch the employee “addicts” lining up patiently every morning in long queues to shell out $4 a cup for Starbucks coffee (which contain *outrageous* doses of caffiene), and your feelings about “addiction” might change a bit.