Nicotine gets a bad rap - Learn about Nictone

Nicotine Molecule

Nicotine gets a bad rap.  Thought to be extremely addictive due to its mind-altering properties, it has been blamed for everything from heart disease to cancer.

Known as the main psychoactive ingredient in tobacco, public health experts have been warning for years that even one nicotine-laced puff of a cigarette can leave one hopelessly addicted for life.  Many also warn that nicotine itself is very dangerous – it is extremely toxic, even used as an insecticide, and has no benefit whatsoever other than to provide relief from the insufferable withdrawal that results from addiction.

No benefits at all??

Yet, now nicotine is being offered as a medication, used to help ease people off of cigarette addiction.  It is widely available over the counter at pharmacies everywhere and is one of the most highly recommended medications for smoking cessation.

If nicotine is so dangerous, then why would it be freely offered as a medical treatment to millions of people?

Also, if nicotine is the main psychoactive ingredient in tobacco, yet has no benefits at all, then why would nearly 20% of the population smoke daily?  If it really does nothing but feed the addiction, then they should all be able to just quit smoking and never touch it again.  Right?

What are the real effects of nicotine, apart from cigarette smoke?

The truth is, nicotine isn’t nearly as dangerous, or as addictive, as we’ve all been led to believe.

So how dangerous is nicotine?

Toxicity

It is true that nicotine is an effective insecticide, and that it is toxic in high doses.  However, just about everything is toxic in high doses.  People can die from drinking too much water in one sitting, but you don’t hear doctors telling people to stay away from water.

How much nicotine is deadly?  It has been long believed that only 60 mg is required to kill an adult human when ingested (to put that in perspective, that is less than 3 ml of 24 mg/ml e-liquid).  This figure has recently been contested however, and traced back to faulty experiments conducted in the 19th century.

The true lethal dose has since been estimated to be at least 500 mg for an adult, or no less than 6.5 mg per kg of body weight.  Unfortunately many health experts and researchers continue to tout the false lethal dose of 60 mg, thereby misleading the public into believing that e-liquid is extremely dangerous.

Reportedly, calls to poison control centers over ingestion of e-liquid have been increasing in recent years.  However, there has not been a single reported death or serious injury from nicotine ingestion in the last few years, which is consistent with our current understanding of what the lethal dose of nicotine actually is.  In the majority of cases the most severe side effect reported from nicotine ingestion is vomiting.

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