BBC NEWS | Health | Smoking alters brain 'like drugs'

BBC NEWS | Health | Smoking alters brain 'like drugs': "Smoking alters brain 'like drugs'
Smoking cigarettes causes the same changes to the brain as using illicit drugs like cocaine, a study suggests.

US researchers compared post-mortem brain tissue samples from smokers, former smokers and non-smokers.

Their findings, published in Journal of Neuroscience, suggested smoking causes changes to the brain which are evident years after someone has quit.

A UK expert said the changes might explain why smokers found it hard to stop - and why they then relapsed.

The researchers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Nida) looked at samples of human brain tissue from the nucleus accumbens and the ventral midbrain - brain regions that play a part in controlling addictive behaviours.

Eight samples were taken from people who had smoked until their deaths, eight from people who had smoked for up to 25 years before their death and eight non-smokers.

All died of causes unrelated to smoking."