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CANADIAN LIVING MAGAZINE

Smoker's Aid By Hilary Davidson A traditional herbal remedy may make it easier to quit smoking for good. Health Canada recently approved Butt Out! for Life. It uses Lobelia inflata, better known as Indian tobacco, as its active ingredient. An alkaloid in the plant that is similar to nicotine but less potent and nonaddictive blocks nicotine from the nucleus accumbens – the brain’s pleasure centre. Users take a capsule three times daily. Butt Out! for Life, developed by Larry Kunkel of Garibaldi Highlands, B.C., is sold at drugstores and health-food stores nationwide for about $25 for a month’s supply. But prevention is still better than cure. “The vast majority of young smokers believe they will quit in the next few years,” says Les Hagen, executive director of Action on Smoking & Health in Edmonton. A 1996 Statistics Canada report found that 48 per cent of females aged 15 to 24 in Alberta (31 per cent across Canada) were lighting up. “About 80 per cent will go on to be long-term smokers. And one in two smokers dies of a smoking-related illness,” Hagen says. From the June 1998 issue of Canadian Living

MACLEANS MAGAZINE February 16/98