In what is sure to send a new surge of smokers to drug stores for the nicotine patch, Scottish researchers have shown that smoking reduces people's ability to solve thinking problems.

In the past forty years, smoking has been tied to lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, damage to capillaries, sexual impotence, and now a loss of brain power. In its next Saturday issue, the British magazine New Scientist reports that 'Smokers performed significantly worse in five different cognitive tests than did both former smokers and those who had never smoked... When social and health factors such as education, occupation and alcohol consumption were taken into account, smoking still appeared to contribute to a drop in cognitive function of just under one percent.'

The study was led by Lawrence Whally of the University of Aberdeen. http://www.abdn.ac.uk/