Testing a Full Substitution Therapy Approach As Treatment of Tobacco Dependence

This study will test a new medication strategy designed to help smokers quit. It will combine selegiline, a drug currently approved and available for the treatment of Parkinson's disease, with a nicotine skin patch. Forty nicotine-dependent smokers will enrolled in this study. Twenty will receive placebo (inactive pill) plus nicotine patch, and twenty will receive selegiline plus nicotine patch. Once enrolled in the study, subjects will visit the Nicotine Dependence Clinic at CAMH on a weekly basis for assessment of smoking behavior, a brief health check, collection of breath and urine samples (necessary to drug levels and nicotine levels), and receive brief individual counseling designed to help them stop smoking. The medication phase of this study lasts 9 weeks. A follow-up visit will be conducted six months after trial completion. At that point, health and behavioral measures will be re-assessed.