Does Smoking Tobacco Fulfill A Nutritional Need?
As counter-intuitive as this question might seem, nicotine is actually a nutrient source. It is one form in which we can obtain a vital nutrient: vitamin B3, also called niacin or nicotinic acid.
A cursory study into tobacco use by teenagers appears to have discovered a new door into the causes of teenage smoking. Nicotine has long been accepted as the addictive portion of tobacco products, but what is apparently little known is that nicotine and niacin (vitamin B3) are analogues. An examination into this previously untrod avenue may yield significant new data into the treatment of teenage tobacco use.
Much research has been done establishing that teenagers do use tobacco, but very little has looked into the actual causes and none could be found on E.R.I.C. that has been done from the aspect that tobacco may fulfill a nutritional need.
As a parent of six children and a non-traditional graduate student, adolescent smoking is something I have had to deal with at least six times. As a graduate student with a grounding in communication, it is of primary concern to me, with all the information targeting teen smoking, that there has not been a more significant effect on the target audience — adolescents.
The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (1998) shows a steady increase in smoking in that while 9% of the children in the 8th grade surveyed admitted to smoking every day, 24.6% of the 12th graders smoke daily. The Federal Interagency Forum offered no answers but did recommend more study.
The statistics would seem to show that Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger, L. 1957) does not apply to smoking. Applying Festinger’s theory, a greater amount of resources dedicated to preventing teen smoking should have led to a greater decrease in teen smoking, but that does not seem to be the case. In fact, the opposite seems to have occurred. The teenagers exposed to the larger amount of anti-smoking information (the 12th Graders) were almost 3 times as likely to be smokers. This led me to ask whether the addictiveness of nicotine might have some influence on why a theory like Festinger’s, so well grounded in other areas, did not seem to work here.
Teenagers use tobacco. That is an established fact. What is up for contention is why do teenagers use tobacco, in spite of all the propaganda cultural pressure aimed at telling them not to. Many court cases have been fought on this issue but there is still little current information due to the mutability of the subject matter, children.
If teenagers’ diets are niacin deficient and their bodies know what their minds don’t ( and their teachers won’t tell them), that niacin and nicotine are the same thing, their bodies would make them crave tobacco as the source of a necessary nutrient, but being a matter of taste, they would not be able to describe it scientifically. An anecdotal reply might be — “I don’t know why I like it; I just do,” with no understanding that it’s fulfilling necessary needs of the nervous system, like orange juice provides antioxidants for the body.. B Complex vitamins are just as important as vitamin C. A lack of vitamin C compromises the immune system; a lack of B vitamins compromises the nervous system.
Another example is Iodine. Iodine is a poison but it is also a necessary nutrient. The body only needs a thimble full of Iodine for a lifetime but without that thimble full a lifetime is only a few years. The endocrine system self destructs without it. A smoker may only get a thimble full of Niacin from a lifetime of smoking (10-20mcg per cigarette), but at least they have that lifetime to discover and correct the problem (poor diet, alcoholism or malabsorptive bowel), which is how to get the Niacin without the other 43 carcinogenic substances the American Cancer Society has identified in Tobacco smoke.
The intention of this study is to discover if teenage tobacco use, smoking and other, may be the result of a niacin deficient diet, not tobacco advertising. There may appear to have been an intentional deception in hiding the fact that niacin and nicotine are basically the same thing, but simply put, it’s because until now there has been no funding to look at tobacco from the point of view of a nutritional function. Tobacco has been used for a wide range of other maladies from Asthma ( Niacin prevents Histamine release Robert Thompson Cybervitamins.com) to Bowel obstruction (A Modern Herbal guide 1931).
My argument is that the real cause has been overlooked in the “rush to judgment” and nutritional deficiencies have been misdiagnosed as mere addictions, subject to whim and will. The body needs niacin and it knows nicotine will work if niacin isn’t available. This is not a conscious function.
The objective is to decrease adolescent smoking by removing the dietary deficiency, hence the body’s need for the nicotine. The U.S. RDA for niacin ranges from about 15mg to about 20mg per day, but to get that much a person needs to eat a serving of chicken, a serving of turkey, a serving of Spinach and a bowl of fortified cereal each day or smoke 2 packs of cigarettes.
This shed an entirely new light on the problem of teen smoking. It meant that teens might not be smoking because it was “cool” or because the nicotine was addictive; it might be because tobacco was fulfilling a nutritional deficiency in their diets. Niacin deficiency is common outside the United States and, in its severest form, Pellagra, it can kill. It is rare in this country because since Dr Goldberger discovered niacin as a nutrient in 1895, corn meal and wheat flour have been fortified much the same way as salt is fortified with iodine.