An upcoming report by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop will declare that nicotine is an addictive drug, the head of the federal Office of Smoking and Health said Sunday. Dr. Ronald M. Davis said he hopes the report will spur the public to understand that cigarette smoking ``is more than just a simple habit.'' ``We have to at least give it the serious attention that we do for the illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine, etc.,'' Davis said on CBS-TV's ``Face the Nation.'' Government officials have been saying for years that nicotine is an addictive drug ``just like cocaine, just like heroin and other drugs that people commonly accept as addicting,'' he said. ``But this report, which will be released in a few weeks, looks at the evidence in far greater detail than we've ever looked at before. It compares this drug nicotine versus other drugs,'' he said. The report would be the first by a federal official with as high a rank as the surgeon general to declare nicotine addictive. Davis noted that the 1986 surgeon general's report on smoking, which documented the health hazards of passive smoking, accelerated the trend toward restricting or banning smoking in public places and in the work place. Among the changes triggered by that report is the recently inaugurated ban on smoking on commercial airplane flights that last two hours or less. Although Davis did not say exactly what steps should be taken once the surgeon general issues his report, he questioned some current ways that cigarettes are distributed. ``Why ... do we sell tobacco products in vending machines?'' he asked. ``We don't allow other addicting drugs to be sold in vending machines. Why do we allow free samples of the product to be sent through the mail? Or to be passed out on public property where kids and others have free access to them? When we call this drug an addicting drug, we have to take it more seriously than we currently do.'' Attempts to reach tobacco industry officials for comment on the upcoming Koop report were unsuccessful. A spokeswoman for the Tobacco Institute and a spokesman for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. did not answer phone calls made to numbers listed for their homes on Sunday afternoon. Davis attributed the lack of federal regulations on cigarettes to the historical social acceptability of smoking ``and probably the political influence of the tobacco industry.'' But Davis said he believes that as fewer people smoke, as it becomes a less socially acceptable activity and as people become more aware of the hazards of smoking, ``we'll begin to take actions that we've taken long ago for most other consumer products.'' He said lower tar, lower nicotine cigarettes are not the answer because some people smoking such cigarettes ``actually start to smoke more cigarettes per day, or inhale more deeply, or puff more frequently.'' Davis noted that overall, only 27 percent of the adult population currently smokes cigarettes, compared with 42 percent of adults in 1964 when the first surgeon general's report documenting some health risks of smoking was released. But he said higher smoking rates are occurring in certain population groups, specifically blue collar workers, the unemployed, certain racial and ethnic minority groups and young women. ``Young women smoke at a higher rate than young men, which is the only age group at which we see women smoking more than men,'' he said, attributing that in part to advertising ploys indicating that cigarette smoking is a form of women's liberation.
