According to the article Nicotine: Harder to Kick than Heroine, which was published in “The New York Times” on March 29, 1987, despite the numerous evidence that proves that tobacco is destroying people lives, more than 53million Americans continue to smoke. Sandra Blakeslee largely reports on a nicotine experiment that was carried out by Dr. Henningfield in 1985, whereby he was experimenting the euphoric qualities of nicotine. In this study, Sandra reports that, Dr. Henningfield used a total of 8 (eight) drug users in his experiment. She further reports that, given intravenously in gradually larger doses, Dr. Henningfield discovered that nicotine was indeed rated as being highly euphoric, where the users rated it with dose responses similar to those of cocaine and morphine (Blakeslee, 1987). In addition, the article also reports that Dr. Henningfield took a survey of 741 active smokers, who were all about the age of 35 years and who used to smoke more than 3 packets of cigarettes a day over a period of 8 years. This article clearly reported the conclusions of the report that, in all the respondents, an observation of a rapid increase in the first few months followed by gradual levelling off was reported.
After reading this article, it became imperative to find the original peer-reviewed article which was authored by Dr. Henningfield and published on July 1985. In the original nicotine experiment which is titled Abuse liability and pharmacodynamics characteristics of interventions and inhaled nicotine, a more detailed and scientific explanation of the same study is given as compared to Sandra Blakeslee’s article in “The New York Times”. Some of the most notable differences between the mass-media article and the scholarly article is that, the mass media article has left out many scientific explanations and figures that were reported in the peer-reviewed article. Dr Henningfield clearly shows how the 8 participants underwent the test; each subject was tested using three doses of IV Nicotine i.e. 0.75, 3.0, 1.5mg/10 sec infusion, and also involved a placebo (sham-smoking). This highly scientific explanation is excluded in Sandra’s article. Dr, Henningfield, reported that, each of the eight experiment participants was tested for four consecutive days based on certain identical experimental protocols. Numerous conclusions and correlations were deduced from this study. Ratings of the drug dose based on strength and liking were reported to be directly related to the dose level (Henningfield, Miyasato, & Jasinski, 1985). In addition, Unlike in Sandra’s article, the physiologic, observer and subjective data were also collected based on intervals of 15 seconds to 10n minutes. In general, the mass media article authored by Sandra Blakeslee was more explanatory rather than scientific when being compared to the original article authored by Dr. Henningfield.
Nonetheless, it is understandable why Sandra Blakeslee omits a large portion of the main article when writing her article in the mass media journal. The basic explanation for this is because, Unlike Dr. Henningfield, Sandra Blakeslee’s audience is the general populace who may not be able to comprehend the highly technical language that has been adopted by Dr. Henningfield. These are the average readers of the New York Times, who may not be possessing the technical know-how in regard to scientific concepts and figures. On the other hand, Dr. Henningfield’s article has been designed for the scholars who are highly knowledgeable in this particular field of study and may even find the need to advance Henningfields study if they read and discover that his research study is wanting.
References
Blakeslee, S. (1987) Nicotine: Harder to Kick than Heroine. The New York Times. Web.
Retrieved March 27, 2014.
Henningfield, J. E., Miyasato, K., & Jasinski, D. R. (1985). Abuse liability and
pharmacodynamic characteristics of intravenous and inhaled nicotine. Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, 234(1), 1-12.
