Jump to full article: Public Radio International (PRI), 2009-09-08
Intro: new research says just how addictive smoking is for you depends on the color of your skin. "Living on Earth's" Ike Sriskandarajah filed this report.
Dr. Gary King from Pennsylvania State University studied nicotine -- the highly addictive stimulant that makes people crave cigarettes -- and melanin, a compound your body makes that determines how dark you are. And he found a connection.
According to Dr. King, the melanin is strongly attracted to nicotine, and the way it works is when you light up a cigarette, the tobacco and all the chemicals created when it burns into your mouth, into your lungs and the rest of your organs, including your biggest organ ... skin.
"Skin does react like every other organ in the body unto nicotine and the other 4,000 chemicals that are consumed when one actually smokes," said Dr. King. "And that binding process in and of itself may lead to greater dependence."
Inhaling thousands of chemicals is not a good idea. But it is especially bad for people with dark, melanin-rich skin. That's because melanin grabs and hangs onto the nicotine.
Greater dependence means it's much harder for darker skinned people to kick the habit. In fact white smokers on average are 15 percent better at quitting than blacks. . . .
Which is why Dr. King's next step is to survey dark and light skinned people all over the world. His findings are based on a pretty small sample -- 150 subjects, all of whom are African American.
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