Daily Doc: Lorillard, Jan, 1975: Smoking: Self-treatment for Aggression?
Daily Doc: Smoking: Self-treatment for Aggression?
Title: Proposal for a Scientific Conference on the Effects of Smoking on Aggression
Lorillard, Jan, 1975
Bates #: 01240646/0653
January 30, 2001
The tobacco industry took note of a number of studies that showed that nicotine reduces aggressive behavior in humans and animals. Hardly daring to consider the notion that their industry could be contributing to society by reducing crime and aggression in the general population, the writer speculates about this "benefit" of cigarettes:
"No one would be so imprudent as to confer some beneficent role upon the cigarette industry in reducing crime or in quieting the raging beast in man, but the persistence with which the suggestion on an inverse relationship between smoking and aggression has laced the literature is such as to call for a concerted examination of the facts..."The paper calls for a conference to discuss nicotine's role in the reduction of aggression.
CITATION
Title: A Proposal for a Scientific Conference on the Effects of Smoking on Aggression
Type of Document: Research proposal
Author: N/A [found in the files of "A.J. Stevens" at the Lorillard Tobacco Company]
Recipient: N/A
Date: 19750100/E
Site: http://www.tobaccodocuments.org/
Page Count 8
Bates No. 01240646/0653
URL: http://www.tobaccodocuments.org/view.cfm?docid=1771&source=ROSWELL&ShowImages=yes
Litigation Usage: None yet
Found using search criteria: "Aggression" on the Tobacco Documents Online.
QUOTES
Twenty-two scientists gathered on the Island of St. Martin in 1972 to discuss the reflect upon that motivation of cigarette smokers which induces them to repeatedly inhale smoke day in day out over many years. The pharmacologists and psychologists were faced with reconciling the paradoxical evidence that one effect of smoke is to arouse the neurological system while at the same time seemingly calming the organism at the emotional and behavioral levels...
There was, however, a recurring observation among the paper suggesting that smoke may have an inhibitory effect upon aggressive behavior or its emotional correlate, anger. Ronald Hutchinson reported diminished "jaw clenching" among those who smoked compared to those abstaining. Barbara Brown recorded a higher incidence of aggressiveness among very heavy smokers, suggesting that smoking may be particularly rewarding to these individuals in assisting them in controlling such tendencies. Carolyn Thomas suggested that among adolescents, cigarettes were "used in large part from the inner need to cope with negative affect." Heimstra made the same suggestion with reference to mood changes noted among smokers versus derived smokers in performing fatiguing tasks. Neal Miller commented that in his earlier research he and his colleagues had deprived smokers of their cigarettes as a favored means of arousing aggression...
...Supportive findings are being reported at the animal level. Nicotine injected mice show reduced aggression...Chemically induced attack behavior in cats is markedly reduced with injected nicotine...Squirrel monkeys display less aggressive (biting) responsibity when injected with nicotine. Silverman (1969) concluded that the principle effect of nicotine upon his rats was to reduce aggression....
Is coincidence that so many investigators should independently make the same inference from humans and animals exposed to nicotine or whole smoke?
No one would be so imprudent as to confer some beneficent role upon the cigarette industry in reducing crime or in quieting the raging beast in man, but the persistence with which the suggestion on an inverse relationship between smoking and aggression has laced the literature is such as to call for a concerted examination of the facts...
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