It was a really well done documentary and I enjoyed watching it. Thanks.
I was drawing a distinction between tobacco usage and nicotine. Too often I think it's easy to conflate nicotine and all of tobacco's properties; nicotine is seen as being the sole culprit of that "addictive power." I disagree.
For instance, in the documentary (@ 9:33) when Brian Cox met with Professor David Nutt, the Director of Brain Science at Imperial College, London, the professor showed a graph on his computer about nicotine consumption as it relates to highs and lows of dopamine. The professor pointed at the "nicotine and mood" graph and said, "...when people are smoking, the more happy they are--is associated with having more dopamine." In essence, smoking is nicotine and nicotine is smoking as it pertains to effects on mood. I don't know whether the graph was really about smoking or he was really talking about nicotine (the two were used synonymously). That kind of reductive, simplistic way of looking at nicotine, IMO, is part and parcel why we have people that think vaping is no different than smoking. After all, we vape nicotine, right?
Immediately after the "nicotine and mood" graph, the professor showed a computer graphic of brain imaging and said, "...and what smoking does is block one of the enzymes in the brain that some anti-depressants block." I don't know enough about monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOI), but I know that enough research has been done on tobacco and tobacco smoke to conclude that there are other alkaloids responsible for these MAOIs. I don't know, maybe nicotine does as well, but even still, one thing I know for certain is that nicotine in tobacco is not acting alone and that should be stated, and not as a simple aside. In tobacco, nicotine may be the mastermind, but it is rollin' with a crew.
Oh, and when Professor Nutt began his introduction to the interview, he said, "we inhale this burning leaf, which contains nicotine and other things." If you watch the video and listen closely, when he says "other things," it was basically a mumble.