Health Mullahs everywhere have a brand new set of statistics to push when they lobby the government for more tobacco regulations. A new study in Revista Española de Cardiología suggests that active and former smokers are likely fatter than non-smokers.

The authors of the study say their results confirm that nicotine addiction is not an effective way of to prevent obesity.

Researchers followed 7565 college students over a four-year period. After adjusting for age, sex, initial BMI and lifestyle, weight gain in people who stopped smoking during the study was higher the more cigarettes they smoked a day when the investigation began. Those who continued smoking also gained more weight during this period than the non-smokers.

The association between being overweight and nicotine addiction is especially harmful for cardiovascular health, the researchers warn. Giving up cigarettes could greatly decrease smokers' risk for cardiovascular illnesses and cancer.

Gaining weight after quitting is, often, a reason for not quitting the nicotine addiction, especially among women. Most of the investigations that have studied this link have observed that, although there is an increase in weight after quitting, there are notable variations in weight gain.

"In Spain [where the study was done], there are very few studies on this link," the researcher conclude. "More extensive studies can confirm the results and extrapolate them to other sectors of the population."

Citation: Basterra-Gortari et al., 'Evolution of changes in body weight according to smoking status: longitudinal cohort analysis SUN', Epidemiology and prevention, 63(1), January 2010