Raina D Pang

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Southern California

Introduction Hormonal contraceptives (HCs), which contain synthetic forms of estrogen (ie, ethinyl estradiol) and/or progesterone (ie, progestin), are commonly used by women who smoke combustible cigarettes. Prior research has demonstrated that HCs containing ethinyl estradiol influence nicotine metabolism, though less is known about the role of pr...

Significance E-cigarettes with candy-themed marketing are implicated in decisions to first try e-cigarettes but have unknown effects on the experience of vaping. We compared adults’ perceived appeal and sensory attributes after self-administering flavoured e-cigarettes in experimentally manipulated packaging with candy-themed versus standard market...

E-cigarettes with ice flavors, which are products with a cooling agent added to a characterizing flavor (e.g., grape-ice), are widely sold. Whether ice flavors appeal to only those who already use them or a to wider population is not widely understood. This secondary analysis of a clinical laboratory experiment tested effects of experimental exposu...

Intranasal oxytocin (INOT) has received attention as a treatment for substance use disorders including tobacco dependence. However, it is unclear whether INOT-related effects differ by sex and social functioning traits. This study examined the influence of sex and two trait social functioning measures (hostility and rejection sensitivity) on INOT e...

Objective: Sexual and gender minority individuals are more likely to use tobacco and cannabis and have lower cigarette cessation. This study examined cannabis use associations with daily cigarettes smoked in sexual and gender minority individuals before and during a quit attempt. Method: Participants included dual smoking same-sex/gender couples fr...

Background: Postpartum depression (PPD) is a prevalent public health concern. Combustible cigarette use is associated with increased risk of PPD. While electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use during pregnancy is linked to increased risk of depressive symptoms during pregnancy, the relationship between e-cigarette use and PPD is not well understood....

Background This clinical experiment tested the effects of exposure to e-cigarettes with WS-23 or menthol cooling additives on user appeal and sensory attributes, and, secondarily, whether WS-23 effects generalised across base characterising flavour, nicotine concentration, or nicotine/tobacco product use status. Methods In this within-participant...

Background: Individuals with depression symptoms have a harder time quitting smoking. High negative affect and low positive affect are core depression symptoms and arise following cigarette abstinence. Investigating associations of biological markers with negative and positive affect may provide valuable information about factors relevant to smoki...

High smoking prevalence and low quit smoking rates among African American adults are well-documented, but poorly understood. We tested a transdisciplinary theoretical model of psychopharmacological–social mechanisms underlying smoking among African American adults. This model proposes that nicotine’s acute attention-filtering effects may enhance sm...

Though anxiety sensitivity (AS)—fear of anxiety-related experiences—is primarily tied to anxiety vulnerability, AS has also been prospectively associated with general negative affect and depression. Furthermore, depression has been longitudinally associated with different forms of substance use, and some AS subfactors (e.g., cognitive concerns) hav...

Objective: The daily biobehavioral factors that precipitate loss of control eating (LOCE) in adolescent girls are not well known. Ovarian hormone levels are key biological factors associated with the etiology of eating disorders in adolescent girls. Yet, models on how daily ovarian hormone exposure predicts LOCE in adolescent girls are underdevelo...

Tobacco use among cancer patients is associated with an increased mortality and poorer outcomes, yet two-thirds of patients continue using following diagnosis, with disproportionately higher use among racial/ethnic minority and low socioeconomic status patients. Tobacco treatment services that are effectively tailored and adapted to population char...

Significance: Cross-sectional studies have shown that greater cigarette smoking-related emotion regulation expectancies were associated with retrospectively reported withdrawal during prior quit attempts and greater barriers to cessation. Few studies have investigated the relationship of within-person daily emotion regulation expectancies to facto...

Background Females who misuse alcohol experience high rates of negative physical and mental health consequences. Existing findings are inconsistent but suggest a relationship between ovarian hormones and alcohol use. We aim to clarify how alcohol use and drinking motives vary across the menstrual cycle in female psychiatric outpatients using the lu...

Smokers experiencing greater financial strain are less likely to successfully quit smoking, possibly due to greater severity of tobacco withdrawal. However, limited research has explored whether individual-level psychological factors (i.e., distress tolerance) may buffer the deleterious effects of financial strain on withdrawal. This study examined...

Background Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned characterizing flavors in cigarettes in 2009, this initial ban exempted menthol. After examining numerous reports on the adverse health effects of menthol cigarettes, the FDA proposed a menthol ban in April 2022. This study analyzed Twitter data to describe public reaction to th...

Background: While most individuals who smoke cigarettes desire to quit, quit motivation can change daily and sustained abstinence is rarely achieved in quit attempts. Assessment of psychosocial factors that moderate associations between daily abstinence intentions and smoking behavior is necessary to inform effective cessation efforts. Methods:...

Smoking-related weight control expectancies are a motivational factor for maintaining cigarette use, particularly among women. Yet, less research has investigated the physiological and behavioral daily life weight-related experiences of women with smoking-related weight control expectancies. Increased research could contribute to understanding of m...

Scientists and regulators need parsimonious methods of characterizing flavored e-cigarettes which may vary widely in both chemical flavoring constituents and marketing descriptors. This laboratory experiment characterized user-reported appeal and experience of five cross-cutting sensory attributes (sweetness, bitterness, smoothness, harshness, cool...

Background High negative affect and low positive affect are key depression-related states that may be greater following acute tobacco abstinence. This study aimed to test associations between depression symptom levels and acute tobacco abstinence with negative affect and positive affect. Methods Following a baseline session, participants attended...

Background Cigarette smoking urges, withdrawal, and smoking reinstatement may be especially relevant to people with elevated depression symptoms who smoke. This laboratory study aimed to assess relations between depression symptom level and smoking urges for reward and relief, cigarette withdrawal, and smoking reinstatement in people who smoke ciga...

Introduction Perceived sensory attributes of e-cigarettes may associate with their appeal. However, limited studies have accounted for individuals’ variability in sensory attributes or have addressed how associations of sensory attributes with appeal may differ by gender. Methods Individuals (n = 119, 32.8% female) who currently used combustible c...

Background As war and famine are population level stressors that have been historically linked to menstrual cycle abnormalities, we hypothesized that the COVID-19 pandemic could similarly affect ovulation and menstruation among women. Methodology We conducted a retrospective cohort study examining changes in ovulation and menstruation among women...

This paper reports on topics discussed at a Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) pre-conference workshop at the 2019 annual SRNT meeting. The goal of the preconference workshop was to help develop a shared understanding of the importance of several tobacco-related priority groups in tobacco use disorder treatment research and to high...

Purpose of Review This review examines Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS) use behavior during pregnancy, including the prevalence of and transitions in use during pregnancy. Recent Findings Twenty-two papers addressed the prevalence of and/or transitions in ENDS use during pregnancy. Findings show a complex landscape of ENDS use. A minori...

Purpose of Review This review examines the risk of adverse perinatal outcomes following electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) use during pregnancy, and considers whether there are sufficient data to support ENDS as a harm reduction approach during pregnancy. Recent Findings Seven papers assessed perinatal outcomes following ENDS use during p...

Objective: Self-control is a key factor in quitting cigarettes and practicing general self-control tasks may strengthen self-control. This study examined the feasibility and acceptability of a novel smoking-related self-control task. Method: Seventy-five adults with current cigarette smoking (Mage = 44.8, 74.7% male, 63.5% Black, 74.3% non-Latinx)...

Enhancing motivation to quit among smokers who are not ready for cessation is a key component of several interventions. However, there is a dearth of empirical data about motivational factors and smoking behavior among pre-quit smokers. Here, we examined interactions between approach/avoidance goal motivations and daily abstinence plan (i.e., plans...

Objective: High negative affect, low positive affect, and low cognitive functioning are depression-related states that may be particularly relevant to females who smoke cigarettes and may be more prominent following overnight tobacco abstinence. This study aimed to assess relations between depression symptom levels and negative affect, positive aff...

Background: The prevalence of cannabis use has increased among U.S. pregnant women. Given this increase, and rapidly changing cannabis policies, it may be important to harness digital data sources to help capture trends and perceptions of cannabis use during pregnancy and postpartum. The objective of this study was to examine cannabis and pregnanc...

RationaleLaboratory research in adults indicates that alcohol-related subjective effects are enhanced under some social conditions. However, it is unknown whether this “social facilitation” of alcohol effects occurs in adolescents and is associated with alcohol use in the natural ecology.Objectives We examined associations of social facilitation of...

Background To improve cessation interventions, it is necessary to understand the factors associated with daily motivation to not smoke. One hypothesized factor is self-efficacy; however, there has been a lack of evidence investigating self-efficacy as a dynamic construct. Methods This study examined the influence of baseline and daily self-efficac...

Purpose Sexual minority young adults report greater cigarette and cannabis use. Emerging evidence suggests this trend may extend to e-cigarettes. The current study evaluated the relationship between sexual identity and prevalence of e-cigarette, cigarette, and cannabis use and whether such associations differ by gender. Methods: Cross-sectional, re...

Introduction Cigarette smoking prevalences are very high in persons living with HIV (PLWH). Identifying variables among PLWH that are linked to smoking in community samples (e.g., self-control) can inform smoking treatments for PLWH. The current study examined the association of self-reported self-control and smoking (e.g., smoking status, cigarett...

Purpose of Review The goal was to review recent (1/2015–2/2020) evidence of impulsivity as a feature of substance use disorders or use of substances (alcohol, cannabis, nicotine, opioids, stimulants) in males compared with females in terms of the following: (a) impulsivity in substance-using groups (or substance-using compared with control groups),...

Electronic cigarettes are the tobacco products most commonly used by youths in the United States. The use of e-cigarettes, also known as vaping or JUULing, is a public health epidemic. This collection offers reviews and research to assist pediatric health care providers in identifying and treating adolescent use and exposure to e-cigarettes. https:...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Frequent experiences of discrimination could increase vulnerability to tobacco withdrawal and smoking lapse in populations subject to tobacco‐related health disparities. This laboratory study (2013‐2017) examined whether individual differences in perceived exposure to discrimination in one's daily life predicted tobacco withdraw...

RationaleNicotine patches may be less effective in female compared with male smokers. However, it is unknown if negative affect and physical symptoms influence transdermal nicotine patch–related effects on smoking behaviors.Methods Eighty-one acutely tobacco-abstinent premenopausal female smokers attended three counter-balanced experimental session...

Aims To identify prototypical developmental patterns of tobacco product and cannabis use and co‐use initiation during adolescence, and determine risk factors for and consequences of these initiation patterns. Design Prospective repeated‐measures cohort with eight semiannual assessments during high school. Multiple Event Process Survival Mixture mo...

Objective The present study aimed to determine whether the momentary severity of women's somatic symptoms was concurrently and prospectively associated with their engagement in binge eating in naturalistic settings. Method Thirty women (Mage = 34.13, SD = 13.92) who had engaged in binge eating at least once over the month prior to study entry comp...

Theoretically, anxiety sensitivity—fear of anxiety symptoms—enhances perception of and emotional reactivity to autonomic arousal and mental distress, thereby increasing negative affect and motivation to use substances for negative reinforcement. Because no prior study of adolescents has tested if anxiety sensitivity is indirectly associated with su...

Anxiety sensitivity (AS)—fearfulness of anxiety symptoms—has been implicated in the etiology of emotional disorders (e.g., depressive and anxiety disorders) and linked to cigarette smoking and other substance use (SU). However, studies examining AS in relation to SU primarily have been conducted with racially/ethnically heterogeneous or mostly Euro...

Experimental evidence suggests that females (vs. males) may be more sensitive to and derive greater reinforcement from the sensory aspects of combustible cigarette smoking (e.g., flavor, taste). However, it is unknown if there are similar sex differences in the appeal of flavored e-cigarettes. Young adult male (N = 65) and female (N = 35) e-cigaret...

A massive portion of cancer burden is accounted for by a small collection of highly prevalent cancer risk behaviors (e.g., low physical activity, unhealthy diet, tobacco use). Why people engage in numerous types of cancer risk behaviors and fail to adopt various cancer prevention behaviors has been poorly understood. In this commentary, we propose...

Objective To estimate the extent to which specific sensory attributes, for example, smoothness, mediate differences in electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) appeal between products in non-tobacco versus tobacco flavours and varying nicotine content in young adults. Method E-cigarette users (n=100; aged 18–34 years) administered standardised two-puff...

Background: Data from controlled laboratory experiments in adults indicate that the subjective effects of cannabis vary by administration method (e.g., combustible, vaporized). Whether the subjective effects of cannabis experienced in the natural ecology and among adolescents differ by cannabis administration method is unknown. In this observation...

Objectives: Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are available in nontraditional flavors (eg, fruit and candy) that are banned in combustible cigarettes in the United States. Whether adolescent use of e-cigarettes in nontraditional flavors prospectively predicts continuation of vaping and progression to more frequent vaping is unknown. Methods:...

Background: E-cigarette regulations targeting products that disproportionately appeal to never-smokers may optimize population health. This laboratory study of young adults tested whether differences in appeal between e-cigarettes with non-tobacco-flavored (vs. tobacco-flavored) and nicotine-containing (vs. nicotine-free) solutions varied by smoki...

The 1st cigarette of the day is strongly tied to tobacco dependence. However, prior research has not investigated whether within-subject (WS) day-to-day fluctuations in prefirst-cigarette affect are associated with the subjective effects from the 1st cigarette of the day or whether these associations differ by smokers' average prefirst-cigarette af...

Introduction: Reports in relatively healthy smokers suggest men are more sensitive than women to the subjective effects of reduced nicotine content cigarettes (RNCCs). We know of no reports examining sex differences in the relative reinforcing effects of RNCCs, an important outcome in assessing smoking's addiction potential. The aim of the present...

Introduction: Prior studies have found heightened negative affect following tobacco abstinence in women compared to men. However, experimental work addressing whether these findings generalize across racial groups is scarce. The current study investigated whether race (Non-Hispanic White vs. Non-Hispanic African American) moderated gender differen...

Maladaptive emotional traits (anxiety sensitivity [AS], fear of anxiety-related sensations and consequences) and symptoms (major depressive disorder [MDD] and generalized anxiety disorder [GAD] symptoms) could play a role in altering sensitivity to the subjective effects of drugs of abuse in adolescents. Data were drawn from a longitudinal study of...

Introduction: African-American (AA) smokers are at disproportionate risk of tobacco dependence, utilizing smoking to regulate stress, and poor cessation outcomes. Positive emotional traits may function as coping factors that buffer the extent to which dependence increases vulnerability to adverse responses to acute tobacco abstinence (i.e., tobacc...

Modeling intra-individual fluctuations in estradiol and progesterone may provide unique insight into the effects of ovarian hormones on the etiology and treatment of nicotine dependence. This randomized placebo-controlled laboratory study tested the independent and interactive effects of intra-individual ovarian hormone variation and nicotine on su...

Drug use outcome expectancies are a central construct to psychosocial theories of addictive disorders. In tobacco literature, the Smoking Consequences Questionnaire (SCQ; Brandon & Baker, 1991) is a tool used to assess this construct. Despite its common use, the SCQ has received little psychometric evaluation. In the current report, samples from 2...

Premenstrual symptoms (PMS) may reduce smoking cessation success. Yet, little is known about the factors that may impact smoking cessation among women with elevated PMS, leaving little data to guide smoking cessation science and practice for this population. This cross-sectional study is a secondary analysis of data from laboratory studies focused...

Introduction: Anhedonia-diminished interest or pleasure in response to rewards-is a dimension implicated in several psychiatric disorders linked to smoking. This laboratory study sought to identify motivational mechanisms linking anhedonia and tobacco addiction by testing the hypothesis that anhedonia, abstinence, and their interaction would predic...

Background: Previous literature suggests that trait impulsivity and engagement in non-drug-related behavioral addictions (e.g., Internet addiction, food addiction) are two risk factors for drug use. Here we further investigated the potential impact of having one or both of these risk factors on drug use in Los Angeles area adolescents. Method: H...

Introduction: Product characteristics that impact e-cigarette appeal by altering the sensory experience of vaping need to be identified to formulate evidence-based regulatory policies. While products that contain sweet flavorings and produce a "throat hit" (i.e., desirable airway irritation putatively caused by nicotine) are anecdotally cited as d...

The association between obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptomatology and smoking is poorly understood, particularly in African Americans—a group subject to smoking- and OC-related health disparities. In a non-clinical sample of 253 African American smokers, we tested the negative reinforcement model of OC-smoking comorbidity, purporting that smokers wi...

Objective: Negative urgency-the tendency to act rashly during negative affective states-is a risk factor for regular cigarette smoking. This human laboratory study tested a novel theoretical model of the underlying mechanisms linking negative urgency and smoking motivation, which purports that smokers with high negative urgency are at increased sus...

Aims: Anxiety sensitivity (AS)—fearfulness of anxiety symptoms and their consequences—has been tied to indicators of smoking motivation and maintenance. Most prior experimental work has associated AS with negative reinforcement processes (e.g., withdrawal symptoms and negative affect), though a few experimental studies have related AS to positive r...

Objective: Identifying factors that moderate subjective response to stimulants is important for understanding individuals at risk for abusing these drugs. Some research suggests that Asians may respond differently to stimulants than other races, but controlled human laboratory research of stimulant administration effects in Asians is scant. Metho...

The social self-control scale (SSCS), which taps provocative behavior in social situations, was compared with five potentially overlapping measures (i.e., temperament-related impulsivity, psychomotor agitation-related self-control, perceived social competence, and rash action in response to negative and positive affectively charged states) as corre...

Background and objectives: Smoking outcome expectancies for positive reinforcement (PR: beliefs that smoking produces desirable outcomes) and negative reinforcement (NR: beliefs that smoking alleviates negative affect) are modifiable cognitive manifestations of affect-mediated smoking motivation. Based on prior data and theory, we hypothesized tha...

Given that prior research implicates smoking abstinence in increased premenstrual symptoms, tobacco withdrawal, and smoking behaviors, it is possible that women with more severe premenstrual symptoms have stronger expectancies about the effects of smoking and abstaining from smoking on mood and withdrawal. However, such relations have not been prev...

Introduction: Persistent tobacco use among racial and ethnic minority populations in the United States is a critical public health concern. Yet, potential sources of racial/ethnic disparities in tobacco use remain unclear. The present study examined racial/ethnic differences in tobacco withdrawal-a clinically-relevant underpinning of tobacco use t...

The current study utilized the intersectionality framework to explore whether smoking outcome expectancies (i.e., cognitions about the anticipated effects of smoking) were predicted by gender and ethnicity, and the gender-by-ethnicity interaction. In a cross-sectional design, daily smokers from the general community (32.2% women; non-Hispanic Afric...

Trait novelty seeking has been consistently implicated in substance use, yet the origins and mechanisms of novelty seeking in substance use proneness are unclear. We aimed to characterize novelty seeking as a phenotypic marker of substance use proneness in adolescence, a critical period for drug use experimentation. To this end, we parsed novelty s...

Aims: Anxiety sensitivity—fear of anxiety symptoms and their consequences—has been tied to substance use mostly in adults. Theoretically, anxiety sensitivity heightens negative affect, thereby increasing motivation to use substances for negative reinforcement, which is a risk pathway that may begin in adolescence. To the best of our knowledge, howe...

Aims: Prior studies suggest that sex differences in d-amphetamine response are related to hormonal fluctuations that occur during the luteal phase. Thus, studies control for sex differences by running females during the follicular phase when hormones are relatively low. However, studies showing no sex differences under these conditions have relativ...

Background: Multiple forms of anxiety psychopathology are associated with alcohol use problems in adolescents. Yet, the mechanisms underlying this association are unclear. Anxiety sensitivity (AS) and distress tolerance (DT) represent 2 distinct, conceptually relevant transdiagnostic constructs implicated in multiple manifestations of anxiety that...

Background: Previous research suggests that females may be more motivated to smoke for negative reinforcement (NR) than males. However, it remains unclear whether gender differences in smoking outcome expectancies for negative smoking reinforcement-an important theoretical and clinical target defined as beliefs that smoking alleviates negative aff...

Background: Studies show depressive symptoms are associated with substance use in adolescents, but the mechanism underlying this association is still unclear. This study investigated negative urgency - the disposition to rash action during emotional states - as a factor explaining relations between depressive symptoms and use of several substances...

Objective: Smoking reinforcement expectancies-expectations that smoking modulates mood-can be powerful motivators to smoke, resulting in increased nicotine dependence. The impact of smoking reinforcement expectancies on nicotine dependence may be particularly strong in individuals with increased mood or anxiety symptoms because they may be more lik...

Rodent cortical midline structures (CMS) are involved in emotional, cognitive and attentional processes. Tract tracing has revealed complex patterns of structural connectivity demonstrating connectivity-based integration and segregation for the prelimbic, cingulate area 1, retrosplenial dysgranular cortices dorsally, and infralimbic, cingulate area...

Objectives: Anxiety sensitivity--fear of anxiety symptoms--may increase motivation to smoke by influencing the development of cognitive expectations regarding smoking's negative reinforcing effects; yet, the nature and mechanisms of this pathway are unclear. We hypothesized that relations between anxiety sensitivity and negative reinforcement-relat...

Urgency (i.e. the tendency to act rashly during negative/positive affect) may increase vulnerability to a variety of risky behaviors. This cross-sectional study of non-treatment-seeking smokers examined the relationship between urgency, level of nicotine dependence, and smoking reinforcement expectancies. Both positive and negative urgency were ass...

Exercise training is widely used for neurorehabilitation of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, little is known about the functional reorganization of the injured brain after long-term aerobic exercise. We examined the effects of 4 weeks of forced running wheel exercise in a rat model of dopaminergic deafferentation (bilateral, dorsal striatal 6-hyd...

Hostility-a personality trait reflective of cynical attitudes and a general mistrust of others-is associated with smoking status and relapse risk. Yet, the mechanisms linking hostility and smoking are not entirely clear. In this lab study, we tested a socioaffective model that purports that high-hostility individuals smoke to cope with maladaptive...

Heightened negative affect during acute tobacco abstinence in women relative to men could be an important factor underlying sex differences in smoking motivation. However, little controlled experimental work addresses this hypothesis. The current study investigated sex differences in withdrawal-related negative affect, time to start smoking on a la...

Repeated water avoidance stress (WAS) induces sustained visceral hyperalgesia (VH) in rats measured as enhanced visceromotor response to colorectal distension (CRD). This model incorporates two characteristic features of human irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), VH and a prominent role of stress in the onset and exacerbation of IBS symptoms. Little is...

Elucidating interrelations between prior affective experience, current affective state, and acute urge to smoke could inform affective models of addiction motivation and smoking cessation treatment development. This study tested the hypothesis that prior levels of positive (PA) and negative (NA) affect predict current smoking urge via a mediational...

Serotonin transporter knockout (5-HTT KO) mice exhibit elevated basal extracellular serotonin, increased depressive-like behaviors and increased rapid eye movement sleep. Because abnormalities of circadian rhythms are associated with mood disorders, we tested the hypothesis that 5-HTT KO mice would have altered circadian rhythmicity. Homecage locom...

Clinical and preclinical evidence suggests anxiolytic-like efficacy of pregabalin (PGB, Lyrica). However, its mechanism of action remains under investigation. The current study applied [(14)C]-iodoantipyrine cerebral blood flow (CBF) mapping to examine the effect of PGB on neural substrates underlying unconditioned fear in a rat model of footshock-...

This study assessed functional brain activation in rats during expectation of visceral pain. Male rats were trained in step-down passive avoidance (PA) for 2 days. Upon stepping down from a platform, conditioned animals received noxious colorectal distension delivered through a colorectal balloon, whereas the balloon in control rats remained uninfl...

Serotonin transporter knockout mice have been a powerful tool in understanding the role played by the serotonin transporter in modulating physiological function and behavior. However, little work has examined brain function in this mouse model. We tested the hypothesis that male knockout mice show exaggerated limbic activation during exposure to an...