Talk:Smoking cessation medications

Unremarked yet Consequential Fact: The pharmaceutical companies that developed these medications have disclosed little or no data about possible undesirable side-effects from long-term use of, or reliance on, these products. The notion that combustion products of burning cigarette tobacco — either as first-hand or even second hand smoke — are the only, or the most significant, health hazard from this habit may have created a serious barrier, unconsciously or otherwise, to investigating the consequences of long-term ingestion of synthesised nicotine.

The WSJ article is entitled: "NICOTINE FIX: Behind Antismoking Policy, Influence of Drug Industry Government Guidelines Don't Push Cold Turkey; Advisers' Company Ties". (For subscribers to the WSJ Online there is a URL at [1])

There is a comment on some other implications of this article at: [2]. This commentary positions the spin around this subject-area in the historical context of how the U.S. was waging the Cold War. This had undoubted — yet largely undiscussed — consequences on public health in the United States. The almost-paralysing fear of annihilation in a thermonuclear holocaust, played a large role in raising the generalised level of anxiety in societies of the Western alliance led by the United States. These conditions energised massive investment in the research and development of tranquilising substances. Big Tobacco had interest in raising the nicotine content of its products during the 1950s and since. This interest is now documented and even somewhat acknowledged in Hollywood — a long time ally and beneficiary of Big Tobacco — through such quasi-documentary movies as The Insider (1999). The intriguing yet little-discussed question remains: was Big Tobacco's conversion of the cigarette into a "nicotine-delivery system" a Cold War public-tranquilising scheme, no less than a profit-raising one?