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Excerpts from: Cigarettes More Lethal Than Alcohol:
Alcoholics should use nicotine gums or patches, say researchers

 By Anne Haddad,  HealthScout [11/30/00] HealthScout.com: Your Trusted Guide to a Lifetime of Health

 THURSDAY, Nov. 30 (HealthScout) -- A drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Which is more lethal?

 Experts say the cigarette. Even alcoholic smokers are more likely to die from problems caused by smoking than by drinking, they
 say.

 Though research is just beginning into links between smoking and alcoholism, a new study says smokers with a history of
 alcoholism may benefit from nicotine gum, patches and other substitutes for smoking.

 "The next step I would find interesting would be to look at the idea of how to tackle both addictions -- sequentially or at the same
 time? And if you do it sequentially, which one makes the most sense to do first?" asks Gail L. Rose, research associate at the
 University of Vermont. She was project manager for the study led by Professor of Psychiatry John R. Hughes.

 The study, reported in this month's issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, looked at 20 smokers with a
 history of alcoholism and 10 smokers who were not alcoholics. All volunteered to abstain from cigarettes for four days.

 "If they tell us how they feel, they feel no different," she says. "But if we look at what they chose, they chose more nicotine.
 They don't really know why they prefer it. A lot of smokers don't really understand why they smoke, but they feel they have to."

 The scientists tried to determine how much they wanted the gum by asking how much they would pay for a piece of gum on a
 day they couldn't smoke?

 Those with a history of alcohol problems were willing to pay more than their counterparts, Rose says.

 "That indicates to us how valuable this gum is to them," she says.

 Statistics show a strong link between alcoholism and smoking. About 90 percent of alcoholics smoke, compared with 24 percent
 of the general adult population, according to Rose and figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.