How Dangerous is Nicotine, Specifically?

We're going to do something a little differently today. Today, we want to breakdown the facts and separate it from the myths surrounding nicotine. Electronic cigarette companies, such as BLVK E-Liquid, which at this point, has been around for nearly a decade, sell one thing: an alternative assortment of products to traditional cigarettes. And all of these products contain one particular substance that we all crave: NICOTINE.

Now, to be clear, nicotine is a substance that is highly addictive and despite its addictiveness, delivers several benefits that ultimately help people not only achieve that all-too-familiar fix achieved from smoking cigarettes, but also an assortment of other therapeutic uses. However, thanks to a decades-long campaign against smoking, nicotine and tobacco have been used synonymously to effectively scare away any would-be smoker. Today, we'll be debunking fact from fiction as we explore exactly how dangerous nicotine can be.

The Facts: Nicotine is the Perfect Psychotropic Drug

Meet Dr. Paul Newhouse, Director of the Center for Cognitive Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN, that has been researching nicotine for over 30 years. He's been at the forefront of nicotine research well before the addictive substance became one of the most controversial and feared substances on the planet. And despite all this negative backlash courtesy of tobacco control groups and anti-vaping activists, he continues to shed light on what he calls, "...the perfect psychotropic drug."

Yes, Nicotine is Still One of the Most Addictive Substances in the World

Despite Newhouse's research assessing the benefits nicotine may possess, the fact of the matter remains is that nicotine is still one of the most addictive substances in the world. By 1988, the U.S. Surgeon General designated smoking as an addiction that was primarily driven by nicotine. Nicotine was deemed to have addictive properties based on three fundamental features: (1) the initial stages of use, more of it is required to produce the same effect in the user, otherwise known as tolerance; (2) it is "reinforcing," meaning that it is sufficiently rewarding to spur self-administration; and (3) abrupt cessation can lead to powerful cravings and  recognizable withdrawal syndrome.

While the Surgeon General effectively villainized nicotine because of its association to cigarettes, the substance itself still did not pose a significant health risk other than by being highly addictive. In fact, the mild simulant is well known to enhance the performance several tasks including but not limited to: enhancing vigilance, rapid visual cue processing, sharpening memory, and increasing concentration and attention in the short term. On a more-long term basis, nicotine has been known to increase mood, level of arousal, and managing symptoms of anxiety and stress.

Since nicotine can create several benefits for a user, with the only drawback being addictiveness, one can reasonably remove more of the carcinogenic risk by simply separating the substance from smoking tobacco, right? Enter the role of e-cigarettes in the mid-2000s.

E-cigarettes deliver less nicotine per puff and generally produce lower blood nicotine levels than cigarettes do. This means it takes longer for vaporized nicotine to reach its peak level than combusted tobacco would. These two variables - how high the level of nicotine is in the bloodstream and how fast that level is achieved are important in determining in how a drug would be abused.

Any would-be believer in harm reduction see the proof is in the pudding. The fact that nicotine itself is not a dangerous substance helps to change the narrative that nicotine and tobacco should no longer be used synonymously as a dangerous compound. Now that you know the facts, let's all work together to translate the facts into government rules that enable users to access nicotine that is not included in cigarettes, but rather, as other harm reduction tools that continue to provide that lower continuum of risk for users. After all, nicotine, is in fact, not as dangerous as we've come to believe.