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Excerpts from: A Stop-Smoking Pill?  For more information, click here: A Stop-Smoking Pill?

By Edward Edelson, HealthSCOUT [07/27/00]

                    WEDNESDAY, July 26 (HealthSCOUT) -- Canadian researchers say they
                    may have found a magic potion sought by millions: a pill that can make
                    smokers glad to give up cigarettes.

                    The potion is a medication called methoxsalen, now marketed for skin conditions such as psoriasis. A group led
                    by Dr. Edward Sellers at the University of Toronto says the drug also has the interesting ability to strengthen the
                    activity of nicotine in the body.

                    That's good for smokers, says Sellers, because it means that smokers who take methoxsalen will get the same
                    nicotine jolt from many fewer cigarettes. It's now accepted that cigarette smoking is an addiction caused by the
                    body's craving for nicotine. Given with oral nicotine, methoxsalen helps keep the blood levels of nicotine up and
                    could eliminate the desire to smoke.

                    "We think the strategy could help people cut down and make it easier to stop," says Sellers, who is professor
                    of pharmacology, medicine and psychiatry at Toronto.

                    "It actually affects people's motivation to smoke. They will buy fewer cigarettes and smoke fewer of them,"says
                    Jaylan Turkkan, chief of behavioral science research at the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA),
                    which helped finance the Canadian work.

                    Tobacco use is still the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, killing more than 400,000
                    people each year.