The primary operative drug in tobacco is nicotine.
Nicotine is a primary agonist of one of the more common neurotransmitter chemicals: acetylcholine. That means that nicotine stimulates acetylcholine production in the brain.
People simply would not smoke if nicotine did not have this drug-effect.
Nicotine is
highly addictive, owing to the fact that the acetylcholine receptors in the brain are so
very plentiful.
Neurotransmitters can be in low supply in the brain, and acetylcholine deficiencies afflict millions of people.
Brain chemical imbalances are often due to unresolved damage inculcated in family-of-origin dysfunctional families.
When acetylcholine is one of the neurotransmitters in resultant low levels, depression is experienced.
People simply endure this depression, not realizing they suffer from it, thinking the way they feel is normal ... until they encounter their first cigarette ... and then they find the lift it gives them can sometimes be simply euphoric.
From then on, they're hooked.
The more severe the acetycholine deficiency, the stronger the addiction to cigarettes will become.
Unlike with pot, heroin, and other damaging and deadly drugs, with the very serious exception of cancer-causing
second-hand smoke, nicotine addicts aren't the same kind of threats to others that pot and heroin, etc., drug users are, and the fact that they get a "lift" from their nicotine addiction actually helps them "rise" from their depression for a bit and thus makes them more capable of relating well with others.
But, that's because the nicotine functions to give them a temporary lift from their actylcholine depression ... a lift that subsides not long after the cigaretter has been smoked.
So are cigarettes a drug that needs to be controlled?
Absolutely!
It's a self-medicating anti-depressant, and thus it really belongs under FDA control.
Indeed, the damage done from overdosing on nicotine is blood vessel constriction leading straightway to heart attack and stroke, and most pack-a-day smokers are indeed in overdose mode.
And, of course, the delivery system of nicotene includes tobacco tars that lead directly to lung cancer and brain tumors, as well as throat and mouth cancers for those who chew it.
Those suffering acetycholine depression will be much better served giving up their cancer-causing cigarettes and receiving a prescription and therapy for their depression to actually effect an end to the depression rather than just coping with it with cigarettes, such coping that really makes their depression worse as cigaretter tolerance builds.
The medical professional, including a psychiatrist, can examine the patient, including a bloodtest, and thereby determine the right anti-depressant to prescribe for the patient.
And, because all anti-depressants -- just like the tobacco kind -- have side-effects that require monitoring, the prescribing medical professional can monitor the patient on a regular basis to make sure no damage is done by the side-effects, side-effects which, nowadays in more modern medicines, have been greatly reduced anyway.
Yes, it's high time that tobacco was regulated -- indeed, unless there is some additional benefits to tobacco that offset its damaging and deadly side-effects to the user, it should indeed be pulled off the market entirely, and relegated to manufacturing uses to extract whatever is of value from it.
This will help protect our children from damaging and deadly cancers, heart attack and stroke that awaits them all too early in life after they've started smoking ... when they're eight years old.
Regulation of tobacco is a good thing.
That such regulation is now beginning, hopefully one day to end the existence of cigarettes, is evidence that society is truly progressing in a healthy manner.