COFACTORS FOR SMOKING AND EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOBIOLOGY

Smoking is becoming increasingly concentrated in people with co-factor s such as depression, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, anxiet y disorders, and bulimia/bingeing. These behavioral or cognitive patte rns may be adaptive or neutral in the conditions under which we evolve d but maladaptive in environments requiring alertness for extended per iods, where a fully mobilized fight-or-flight response is inappropriat e, and where food availability makes lack of an ''appestat'' a liabili ty. Such conditions are amenable to management by nicotine because of its ability to produce small but reliable adjustments in relevant cogn itive and behavioral functions. Moreover, symptomatology may be unmask ed or exacerbated by nicotine abstinence, persisting beyond the usual time-course for nicotine withdrawal, which may explain the particular attraction of smoking and the difficulty these individuals experience in quitting without necessarily requiring that they be more nicotine-d ependent. The implications are: (1) a better understanding of the evol utionary psychobiology of smoking may promote development of tailored interventions for smokers with co-factors; (2) nicotine may have thera peutic applications for non-smokers with co-factors; (3) because smoki ng has a fairly high heritability index, and because of evidence of as sortative mating, special prevention efforts targeting children of smo kers with co-factors, as well as early identification of the co-factor itself, may be needed.