For those who don't wanna go to totallywicked-eliquid.com

The Nicotine that we use for vaping comes from tobacco plants. Nicotine is an alkaloid and is made in the roots of the tobacco plant, but accumulates and is stored in the leaves. It is both a stimulant and a relaxant and is pretty unique in this manner.

It’s the substance that many in tobacco control say we crave and is more addictive than heroin, but let’s peel back a few layers of myths and misinformation regarding tobacco, and nicotine and see if any of this is really true.

Firstly, nicotine is extracted from the tobacco leaves in several ways, some use chemical extraction, others use water in a process called hydrodistilation.

But did you know that it was only last year, April 16, 2015 to be exact, that child labor was banned in tobacco fields here in the USA?

That’s right, while the anti-tobacco industry was persecuting you to stop vaping, children as young as 8 (in some reports) were working up to 12 hours a day in tobacco fields, staving off heatstroke and tobacco poisoning. It was the Human rights guys that won that battle for them, not the anti-tobacco industry, but it is only a partial victory as 16-17yr olds are still allowed to work the fields.

Reading some of the stories it is incredible that this went on; http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/04/child-labour-on-u-s-tobacco-farms-a-stubborn-problem-in-a-billion-dollar-industry/

But back to the nicotine.

Nicotine is classed as a poison, and as such the storage and use of pure nicotine involves having to abide by a host of guidelines and regulations, and quite rightly so.

But as with all poison, the poison is in the dose. E-liquid is heavily diluted nicotine, but one still needs to be careful and responsible.

Which leads us onto the lethal dose (LD), and how the LD was discovered.

The current LD is said to be 50 mg/kg for rats and 3 mg/kg for mice. 30–60 mg (0.5–1.0 mg/kg) can be a lethal dosage for adult humans.

However, according to some researchers, it was a couple of Austrian guys back in the 1800’s that decided to see who could knock themselves out first with nicotine without dying, that decided the LD. Not exactly cutting edge science, but this ‘experiment’ has been the accepted LD ever since.

A scientist called Bernd Mayer brought this to light in 2013 (read more about his study here).

Certainly e-cigarettes are doing far more than being a disruptive technology for the Pharma and Tobacco industries, they are also forcing people to go back and re look at all they know about nicotine, as nicotine has very rarely been studied outside of tobacco.

Jacque Le Houzec, another scientist wrote, quoting the article above, believes the actual lethal dose could be “up to 1500 mg, (as in a recent suicide case report), contrary to the assumptions often reported in many publications, that 30-60 mg of nicotine is a lethal dose in adults.”

So far then, we know the dubious unethical practices of some tobacco farmers, that nicotine is classed as a poison, and the current LD is of questionable origins.

But just how addictive is it? Is it as they say ‘as addictive as heroin’?

Well, anecdotally, the evidence is coming in from vapers that it isn’t. It’s the rest of the 4000 - 7000 chemicals they add to tobacco cigarettes that seem to be the addictive part or enhance the nicotine alkaloids. We all know vapers that have forgotten to vape and NOT been stressed about it.

The addictiveness of nicotine alone has been investigated both here in the USA and in France, but not to a large degree, by studying animals and the researchers found it was very hard to get the animals addicted, if not impossible.

And there is this: “One of the most respected researchers in the field, Dr. Paul Newhouse, Director of Vanderbilt University’s Center for Cognitive Medicine, argues that nicotine “seems very safe even in nonsmokers. In our studies we find it actually reduces blood pressure chronically. And there were no addiction or withdrawal problems, and nobody started smoking cigarettes. The risk of addiction to nicotine alone is virtually nil.” Tobacco has also been considered harmful because it is highly addictive, but whether nicotine has the same addictive potential remains unclear according to Dr. Newhouse, “nicotine by itself isn’t very addictive at all… [it] seems to require assistance from other substances found in tobacco to get people hooked.”

http://themindunleashed.org/2014/10/nicotine-are-we-wrong.html

Could it be that as Kevin Crowly wrote in blasting news.com that calling nicotine addictive is a bit of a con? “This tactic has a term called "proof by assertion." Wikipedia's definition of proof by assertion is "an informal fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly re-stated regardless of contradiction."

Because how can a highly addictive substance - nicotine – be used in NRT to wean you off the very substance you are allegedly highly addicted to?

What about the positives to nicotine? Are there any?

Nicotine is part of the Nightshade family, or in botanical circles the Solanaceae family. This also includes tomatoes, potatoes and eggplants. They too contain nicotine, and that is why some measurements of cotinine (very simply put this is a blood test that shows the exposure to nicotine) can be deceptive, because we all have nicotine in our diet, especially so if you had a large moussaka the night before!

Nicotine receptors are all over the body, not simply in the brain. And going back a bit to.

Jacque Le Houezec, he explains why nicotine can help different diseases. “Nicotinic receptors that bind nicotine and produce its effects are present in almost all parts of the body, and there are several forms of nicotinic receptors, each with specific localization and function, hence the complexity of the effects that nicotine has on different neurotransmitters in the brain. Consequently, nicotine has been shown to have positive effects on some medical conditions”

Researchers have been looking at positive effects on human memory, namely in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients, on blood vessel growth, (they wanted to prove nicotine damages peripheral blood vessels but actually found the opposite)

http://www.wired.com/2007/06/nicotine/

...and nicotine is said to have some antidepressant properties. This may be why many with mental health issues find relief smoking. However, many of these studies were done a while ago.

But here’s one final ‘did you know?’

Nicotine has been found to be a pain reliever, “In terms of pain relief, the results are a little bit more concrete. Nicotine increases the number of neurotransmitters available in the brain, and so in response to nicotine, your brain increases the number of endorphins it produces. Endorphins are described as the body’s “natural pain killer” and they actually have a very similar chemical structure to the hardcore opioid painkillers like morphine.”

Maybe that’s why all the cowboys smoke when they are dying or have been seriously wounded in the movies…

In part 2 we’ll look at how best to store your nicotine e-liquid and why some of them turn a brownish color…