How is that bias? The data clearly backs up that teen rate of nicotine product use (for want of a better description) was on a dramatic decline until the advent of Juul.
All juuls have nicotine, which is decidedly NOT harmless. The best you can claim is that it is less harmful than cigarettes, which is a very very low bar.
"Nicotine, a substance frequently implicated in tobacco addiction, has been shown to have "relatively weak" addictive properties when administered alone. The addictive potential increases dramatically after co-administration of an MAOI, which specifically causes sensitization of the locomotor response in rats, a measure of addictive potential. This may be reflected in the difficulty of smoking cessation, as tobacco contains naturally-occurring MAOI compounds in addition to the nicotine." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_inhibitor#cit...
It contains nicotine, and nicotine is addictive. So health risks aside (not to say there aren't any, I guess we'll find out) you are being exposed to a product that will make you physically dependent on buying it again and again. That's not a good thing for anyone except the owner of the company selling it to you.
Most things humans like to do are addictive. Games are addictive. Gambling is addictive. Alcohol is addictive. Reading is addictive. Drinking coffee is addictive. Of course they all carry different kinds of risks but trying to make the point that every addiction is a problem to solve is a never ending issue. Humans love addictions and this is how we operate. there are just socially acceptable addictions and the rest.
Mostly true, but there's definitely vapes that contain the popcorn lung chemicals as well as who knows what yet. It's new, heated chemicals going into lungs. I imagine the jury is still out disregarding the combustion part
And yet this article says more than once that vaping has “wiped out” progress of getting teens to stop smoking. It only makes sense to say this if you think the two are basically the same from a public health standpoint. And I just don’t see how that could be true.
The panic over vaping strikes me as rather puritanical. Smoking is obviously terrible for one’s health, but decades of anti-smoking messaging seems to have warped people into thinking that anything even resembling it must be a personal moral failing.
This would be great...if all Juul users wee former smokers. I am sure that you are a smart person who knows otherwise, so why lead the discussion in an erroneous direction like that, buddy?
I'm not familiar with nicotine vaping. How is juul different from "traditional vape"? Not trying to degrade your post by use of quote marks, I'm just not sure what is meant by that term. Did people use to vape tobacco by by grinding leaves and using an oven vape - like vaping cannabis in, e.g. a PAX 3?
As far as I can tell they have 10x or 20x the nicotine strength of normal vapes, and a much harder hit. Juul seem to be 59mg/ml, most regular juice I've come across has been 12, 6 or 3. Highest I ever saw, online, was 18.
Highest I ever tried was 12, which was recommended to start when I switched from a 20 a day cigarette habit, in a simple pen vape. I couldn't tolerate it for longer than about a week before dropping down to the next juice down.
Traditional vapes break into 2 types. Pen vapes don't produce much heat so liquids tend to be a bit stronger. They'd use mostly 6, 12 or 18 strength liquids. Vape mods (silly name as they're not modified, so I don't know what the mod is meant to mean) have a larger battery pack with separate tank and lower resistance coil. They're usually a fair bit larger than any pen or cigarette. These produce much more vapour so usual strengths are 3 and 6. I would expect Juul to be at the lower end of vapour amount as the cartridges are so tiny.
I can't imagine the hit from Juul, and can't imagine ever trying one. It'd be like chain smoking 4 cigs. I quit vaping totally already anyway. :)
They haven't yet launched in the UK, but I'm doubtful they'd be allowed at that strength. (Israel banned them, having set max strength at 20mg/ml).
Juul seem around 10x the price too. I used to pay £1 - £2 for 10ml of juice that would last well over a week, often 2. Juul cartridges are tiny, $4 each but supposedly last about a day or two.
Last, but not least, they're 40% owned by Philip Morris (Marlboro).
Juul seems to have much smaller battery than vape "pens". It also does not produce nearly as much vapor. Their whole innovation is formaliting high concentration juice which would not make you barf (using a different nicotine-derived compound than the pure nicotine in the original e-juice) so it could be used in a low power device.
Wow. I had no idea that a single company had such an effect. I'll stick to my occasional pipe loaded with organic tobacco, and enjoy my continued lung health and lack of nicotine addiction.
EDIT: Yes, I know about mouth cancer risks, and I also know that occasional pipe smoking puts one at approximately the same risk for various cancers as drinking hard liquor does. If you don't mix the two activities, you aren't raising your risk of anything, and you are lowering your blood pressure and stress levels, so much so that pipe smokers are estimated to live about 3.8 years longer, on average.
>Wow. I had no idea that a single company had such an effect. I'll stick to my occasional pipe loaded with organic tobacco, and enjoy my continued lung health and lack of nicotine addiction.
I understand that, but what is the "strongest plausible interpretation" of this exactly? In what way is occasional pipe smoking a replacement for vaping? In what way does smoking a pipe ensure "continued lung health"? Is there no nicotine in organic tobacco? What is the intent of the comment to begin with?
All I see is an ignorant endorsement of tobacco smoking over vaping. What am I missing?
I tried pipe smoking over the summer - even found an amazing blend (Nightcap, RIP.) I found it's significantly harder to have a good smoke compared to a cigar. Sometimes the tobacco just refuses to stay or become lit (properly charred, tampered and everything) or once it does it just ends up tasting terrible...then it goes out, I end up frustrated. Any tips you might have?
Not an expert, but there's plenty of research that shows that vaping is indeed less harmful than traditional smoking.
E-cigarettes and vaping are endorsed and used as part of smoking cessation therapies.
However, regarding vaping itself, is still too early to tell if it is safe.
Safer than cigarettes? Yes. Chemical and toxicological studies show that vaping/e-cigs are far less harmful than traditional tobacco. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4110871/
Not harmful at all? Unlikely. It's hard to determine at this point the level of harm, but it's fair to say that any form of chemical inhalation is bad for you (including the simple act of breathing in a city or area with high air pollution).
That's a good overview of papers in favour of vaping -- but note there's some conflict of interest concerns:
> Conflict of interest statement: Riccardo Polosa... has served as a consultant for Pfizer and Arbi Group Srl (Milano, Italy), the distributor of Categoria™ e-Cigarettes.
> Konstantinos Farsalinos ... has received financial compensation from electronic cigarette companies for the studies’ cost.
And some bold statements like this point that seems to be strongly contradicted by the chart at the top of the OP:
> Regulatory authorities have expressed concern about EC use by youngsters or by never-smokers, with ECs becoming a gateway to smoking or becoming a new form of addiction. However, such concerns are unsubstantiated; research has shown that EC use by youngsters is virtually nonexistent unless they are smokers.
All that said, this review does provide some evidence that vaping is less harmful -- however I'd take it with a pinch of salt.
For example, these two papers on negative effects of vaping on gene expression in the immune system have since been published:
Normal cigarettes are orders of magnitude more harmful than vaping. Cigarettes are one of the most harmful nicotine delivery methods. Nicotine use itself has some negative effects such as cardiovascular problems.
Overall, while the uptick in vaping is concerning, it's worthwhile to point out that the cigarette use has dropped from 30% in 2000 to under 10% today. Vaping usage today is under cigarette usage in 2000. Who knows what those numbers would be without E-cigarettes, but if the drop in cigarette usage is due to vaping then I'd still consider it a win.
My younger son (high school freshman) would agree. He informed me that it is very addictive. Some kids try it out of curiosity and then become very addicted. It is easy to hide at school. He calls their bathroom the vape lounge. Kids can vape at home without their parents becoming aware if they have enough spending allowance. I thought E-cig was going to help people addicted to cigarettes quit smoking. I didn't imagine it may become a new plague itself.
I don't understand why people are anywhere near as worried about vaping as they are about cigarettes.
Yeah, it's addictive because of nicotine. But there's no evidence that nicotine is harmful, in fact it may be neuroprotective, and vaping simply does not produce the type and quantity of carcinogens that cigarette smoking does.
I think this amounts to hysteria because people associate nicotine with cancer. Not sure why the addiction is such a big deal.
Does the best available evidence support your claim?
I believe that vaping is likely to be healthier than smoking. I would need to see high quality evidence to believe that it’s harmless. If you can provide it in the form of published articles, I will read it and offer commentary.
Nicotine products have killed millions of people prematurely. These companies have stoked a resurgence in nicotine use among young people. This is concerning.
Do you always demand that every person who comments on a subject compile a meta-study for your perusal?
From what I’ve read, most of the damage from cigarettes comes not from nicotine but other carcinogens present along with the combustion. Of course more research needs to be done on nicotine itself as well as the other compounds present in vaping liquids.. but nothing I’ve read has indicated that nicotine is even close to being as dangerous on its own. It’s probably not harmless, but then again, many things people consume on a daily basis, like coffee, probably aren’t either.
Yes, for people making bold claims about a major public health threat, I don’t see why I shouldn’t. The subtext is that this is a field that I’m very familiar with, but I’m willing to have someone show me evidence that I have missed. It’s hard to keep up with it all.
Do you assume that every substance you're unfamiliar with is a poison?
You're going on about a "public health threat" but the only evidence you have for your hysteria is a circumstantial link between nicotine and carcinogens in cigarettes?
What proof do you have that nicotine itself is harmful? The other components to vape juice are safe for consumption. Sure, that doesn't mean they're safe to inhale, but you're talking about 1-3 total substances, which are not known carcinogens, versus what, 100s of carcinogenic compounds in cigs?
You're biased by an emotional association between the words nicotine and cigarettes.
This is a rude response to someone who is, believe it or not, something close to an actual domain expert on the topic we're discussing. Even if he wasn't, the way you're responding to him wouldn't be acceptable on HN, but making personal attacks to try to chase an expert out of a thread is even worse. Please don't comment on HN like this.
"insufficient data" isn't the same as "totally harmless"
Until now, nicotine was used exclusively by smokers and ex-smokers. Reducing smoking was the goal, and anything less harmful than smoking was considered a win.
> Until now, nicotine was used exclusively by smokers and ex-smokers.
You're forgetting chewing tobacco.
Also, I hardly think we have insufficient data on nicotine itself, with all the people using and the testing done on nicotine patches. Those had to go through FDA approval.
I've heard that certain compounds in tobacco act as MAOIs that synergize with nicotine, creating a more rewarding experience.
People that would have never smoked before they were introduced to vaping might be more likely to try and enjoy tobacco products because they feel better than nicotine does on its own.
> Although an LD50 of 0.8 mg/kg would implicate that the toxicity of nicotine is similar to or even higher than that of cyanide, fatal nicotine intoxications are relatively rare, and there are countless records of subjects who survived consumption of nicotine in amounts far higher than 60 mg (Larson et al. 1961). The most drastic example is probably survival of a suicide attempt with 4 g of pure nicotine (Schmidt 1931). While this is certainly an exceptional case, in which the amount of bioavailable nicotine was markedly reduced by vomiting, ingestion of tobacco or nicotine gums at doses up to 6 mg/kg nicotine was reported to evoke symptoms of intoxication without causing death (Malizia et al. 1983; Smolinske et al. 1988). These and many other literature reports on nonfatal nicotine intoxications are hardly compatible with a lethal dose of 60 mg or less.
> Several detailed reviews are available on fatal nicotine intoxications caused by either suicidal intent or accidents, latter mainly resulting from misusage of nicotine-containing solutions marketed as pesticides (Esser and Kühn 1933; Larson et al. 1961; Maehly and Bonnichsen 1963; Tiess and Nagel 1966; Hayes 1982; Corkery et al. 2010; Solarino et al. 2010). The postmortem data reviewed by Maehly and Bonnichsen (1963) and more recently by Corkery et al. (2010) and Solarino et al. (2010) revealed minimal nicotine blood levels of 2 mg/L, but rapid decline of blood nicotine after death (Sanchez et al. 1996) may have led to underestimation of the actual lethal concentration in delayed autopsies.
> Despite these uncertainties and the complex pharmacokinetics of nicotine (Hukkanen et al. 2005), a rough estimate of the amount of ingested nicotine from postmortem analyses of blood levels appears feasible. Smoking a cigarette results in uptake of approximately 2 mg of nicotine and gives rise to mean arterial plasma concentrations of about 0.03 mg/L (30 ng/ml) (Gourlay and Benowitz 1997). Based on 20 % oral bioavailability of nicotine (Hukkanen et al. 2005) and assuming linear kinetics, an oral dose of 60 mg would give rise to a plasma concentration of about 0.18 mg/L. The literature reports on fatal nicotine intoxications suggest that the lower limit of lethal nicotine blood concentrations is about 2 mg/L, corresponding to 4 mg/L plasma, a concentration that is around 20-fold higher than that caused by intake of 60 mg nicotine. Thus, a careful estimate suggests that the lower limit causing fatal outcomes is 0.5–1 g of ingested nicotine, corresponding to an oral LD50 of 6.5–13 mg/kg. This dose agrees well with nicotine toxicity in dogs, which exhibit responses to nicotine similar to humans (Matsushima et al. 1995).
So, in reality the LD50 is much more likely to be an order of magnitude higher than the number you provided from Wikipedia. This however agrees with the former number you provided, and I guess this is the study where it came from.
> LD50 of nicotine in humans is 6.5–13 mg/kg orally.
I think the intention was about normal usage of nicotine.
Nobody would deny that nicotine poisoning is a thing which is why we get nice things like child-proof caps on e-liquid bottles now.
--edit--
Also pretty efficient at getting through the skin so nicotine poisoning also happens when people using higher concentrations (the DIYers mixing their own) have a spill.
Quote "I knew that the Juul fad had practically taken over American high schools recently...". After looking at pictures of their products I think I understand why [1]. I have the impression that some of these products are tailored to sell to teenagers. Last time I meet my younger brother, he couldn't go for more than a few hours without becoming agitated or vaping. Way to go and make that money
I was a nic addict for several years. Most of the time it was spliffs (weed mixed with nicotine) but my consumption rate was probably the equivalent of 4-5 cigs a day (8 king size spliffs per day). I also smoked here and there but I didn’t like the taste or throat hit as much.
After having a prolonged cough, I switched to juuling. I loved it - tasted great, nice buzz, amazing (AMAZING) throat hit. I stopped smoking spliffs (positive was I was no longer high 24-7), my lungs felt better, I overall felt better.
However, the issue with these things is it is so available. You can take tiny rips anywhere. And there is no quantized amount. You just take a few puffs but you have no idea how much that is, unlike a discrete cig. So my 4-5 cig a day habit turned into the equivalent of a pack a day habit. I found myself ‘going to the bathroom’ all the time at work to sneak a quick hit. I think my base level anxiety went up.
So I quit the juul (quitting wasn’t as hard as I thought despite using a pod a day for 6 months, the anxiety of what would happen when I quit was really the big thing. In terms of withdrawals all I had was a desire to consume nic on my mind all the time for a few days).
Really what I want to say is that the juul is a better cig. You can use it anywhere. You feel much less terrible and sickly (when your smoking you couch all the time). It tastes much better. However all of this makes it much more addicting than the traditional cigarette
The science is out on how bad for you vaping is. Many point to the fact that nicotine by itself is really only bad for your heart - the extra stuff is more from smoke / chemicals in cigarettes. However nicotine addiction kinda sucks
Quitting caffeine cold-turkey is worse than quitting cigarettes cold turkey IMO - the headaches are awful. But aside from that, nicotine addiction is way worse. Even when I drank ~20 "cups" of coffee a day, I didn't have cravings or headaches unless I somehow managed to go several hours after waking up without having any at all. Nicotine cravings are frequent and sporadic and prevent you from focusing on anything else for more than a few seconds at a time.
With cigarettes, there's also the fact that you actually have to, well, smoke cigarettes. Sometimes that's great (if you're used to it), but when you have a sore throat, forcing yourself to smoke a cigarette one painful drag at a time is a horrible experience. Juul is a huge step up this way, though it comes with other issues.
The litter is arguably worse. Instead of biodegradable cotton, these plastic things are all over the place. It took me about a year before I even realized what they were. Plus, now these damn, dirty apes will live longer and therefore litter even more!
My grandmother had nine sisters. All nine of them died in their 60’s from emphysema and lung cancer. All told fifteen people in my family died from smoking related illness. These early deaths were absolutely devastating to us kids as they happened in rapid succession.
Vaping saves lives. Vaping saves lungs. Let’s just continue to get people off of burning cigarettes and we can tackle nicotine addiction once cigarettes are a bad memory.
You might be right for smokers who transition to vaping. I would bet money that you are right. When my patients ask me, I tell them my guess, and I am emphatic that it is a guess. We will know the right answer at some point.
However, the concern is that nicotine use is on the upswing among young people (edit: previous nonsmokers) for the first time in many years. If vaping is anything short of harmless, which I think we must presume it is, then this is a brewing problem.
One thing that’s overlooked is that half of smokers die from heart disease, not lung disease. It also causes strokes. Nicotine is terrible for your heart and vaping is as bad or possibly even worse in that respect.
Ignoring the fact the the science is still out on vaping (though I agree that it's likely safer), if you look the graph in the article, vaping doesn't seem to be a substitute for cigarettes among 12th graders. The decline in smoking is unaffected. To say "vaping saves lives" isn't backed up by the data for 12th graders.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threadIf people were swapping cigarettes for Juul I'd see your point, but as the article states, they is not.
Vaping in general, and Juul in particular, have wiped out years of hard work to get teens off of cigarettes
but if you're going to inhale anything, is it better that it is juul rather than tobacco?
And yet this article says more than once that vaping has “wiped out” progress of getting teens to stop smoking. It only makes sense to say this if you think the two are basically the same from a public health standpoint. And I just don’t see how that could be true.
The panic over vaping strikes me as rather puritanical. Smoking is obviously terrible for one’s health, but decades of anti-smoking messaging seems to have warped people into thinking that anything even resembling it must be a personal moral failing.
Highest I ever tried was 12, which was recommended to start when I switched from a 20 a day cigarette habit, in a simple pen vape. I couldn't tolerate it for longer than about a week before dropping down to the next juice down.
Traditional vapes break into 2 types. Pen vapes don't produce much heat so liquids tend to be a bit stronger. They'd use mostly 6, 12 or 18 strength liquids. Vape mods (silly name as they're not modified, so I don't know what the mod is meant to mean) have a larger battery pack with separate tank and lower resistance coil. They're usually a fair bit larger than any pen or cigarette. These produce much more vapour so usual strengths are 3 and 6. I would expect Juul to be at the lower end of vapour amount as the cartridges are so tiny.
I can't imagine the hit from Juul, and can't imagine ever trying one. It'd be like chain smoking 4 cigs. I quit vaping totally already anyway. :)
They haven't yet launched in the UK, but I'm doubtful they'd be allowed at that strength. (Israel banned them, having set max strength at 20mg/ml).
Juul seem around 10x the price too. I used to pay £1 - £2 for 10ml of juice that would last well over a week, often 2. Juul cartridges are tiny, $4 each but supposedly last about a day or two.
Last, but not least, they're 40% owned by Philip Morris (Marlboro).
EDIT: Yes, I know about mouth cancer risks, and I also know that occasional pipe smoking puts one at approximately the same risk for various cancers as drinking hard liquor does. If you don't mix the two activities, you aren't raising your risk of anything, and you are lowering your blood pressure and stress levels, so much so that pipe smokers are estimated to live about 3.8 years longer, on average.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I understand that, but what is the "strongest plausible interpretation" of this exactly? In what way is occasional pipe smoking a replacement for vaping? In what way does smoking a pipe ensure "continued lung health"? Is there no nicotine in organic tobacco? What is the intent of the comment to begin with?
All I see is an ignorant endorsement of tobacco smoking over vaping. What am I missing?
Curious to hear an opinion if any expert is reading this.
E-cigarettes and vaping are endorsed and used as part of smoking cessation therapies.
However, regarding vaping itself, is still too early to tell if it is safe. Safer than cigarettes? Yes. Chemical and toxicological studies show that vaping/e-cigs are far less harmful than traditional tobacco. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4110871/
Not harmful at all? Unlikely. It's hard to determine at this point the level of harm, but it's fair to say that any form of chemical inhalation is bad for you (including the simple act of breathing in a city or area with high air pollution).
> Conflict of interest statement: Riccardo Polosa... has served as a consultant for Pfizer and Arbi Group Srl (Milano, Italy), the distributor of Categoria™ e-Cigarettes.
> Konstantinos Farsalinos ... has received financial compensation from electronic cigarette companies for the studies’ cost.
And some bold statements like this point that seems to be strongly contradicted by the chart at the top of the OP:
> Regulatory authorities have expressed concern about EC use by youngsters or by never-smokers, with ECs becoming a gateway to smoking or becoming a new form of addiction. However, such concerns are unsubstantiated; research has shown that EC use by youngsters is virtually nonexistent unless they are smokers.
All that said, this review does provide some evidence that vaping is less harmful -- however I'd take it with a pinch of salt.
For example, these two papers on negative effects of vaping on gene expression in the immune system have since been published:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4819171/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5436899/
(Reported in the popular science press e.g. here: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160620141317.h...)
Overall, while the uptick in vaping is concerning, it's worthwhile to point out that the cigarette use has dropped from 30% in 2000 to under 10% today. Vaping usage today is under cigarette usage in 2000. Who knows what those numbers would be without E-cigarettes, but if the drop in cigarette usage is due to vaping then I'd still consider it a win.
Yeah, it's addictive because of nicotine. But there's no evidence that nicotine is harmful, in fact it may be neuroprotective, and vaping simply does not produce the type and quantity of carcinogens that cigarette smoking does.
I think this amounts to hysteria because people associate nicotine with cancer. Not sure why the addiction is such a big deal.
I believe that vaping is likely to be healthier than smoking. I would need to see high quality evidence to believe that it’s harmless. If you can provide it in the form of published articles, I will read it and offer commentary.
Nicotine products have killed millions of people prematurely. These companies have stoked a resurgence in nicotine use among young people. This is concerning.
Sure the level of use is a bit concerning, but I don’t think it’s going to be the health epidemic that the media is making it out to be.
From what I’ve read, most of the damage from cigarettes comes not from nicotine but other carcinogens present along with the combustion. Of course more research needs to be done on nicotine itself as well as the other compounds present in vaping liquids.. but nothing I’ve read has indicated that nicotine is even close to being as dangerous on its own. It’s probably not harmless, but then again, many things people consume on a daily basis, like coffee, probably aren’t either.
You're going on about a "public health threat" but the only evidence you have for your hysteria is a circumstantial link between nicotine and carcinogens in cigarettes?
What proof do you have that nicotine itself is harmful? The other components to vape juice are safe for consumption. Sure, that doesn't mean they're safe to inhale, but you're talking about 1-3 total substances, which are not known carcinogens, versus what, 100s of carcinogenic compounds in cigs?
You're biased by an emotional association between the words nicotine and cigarettes.
Until now, nicotine was used exclusively by smokers and ex-smokers. Reducing smoking was the goal, and anything less harmful than smoking was considered a win.
You're forgetting chewing tobacco.
Also, I hardly think we have insufficient data on nicotine itself, with all the people using and the testing done on nicotine patches. Those had to go through FDA approval.
No, there have been people who dip without smoking.
But that doesn't really change the equation much.
People that would have never smoked before they were introduced to vaping might be more likely to try and enjoy tobacco products because they feel better than nicotine does on its own.
LD50 of nicotine in humans is 6.5–13 mg/kg orally.
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/54115.html
Note that rats have a LD50 at 50 so the measureyou gave for LD50 in humans seems very, very conservative.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3880486/
> Although an LD50 of 0.8 mg/kg would implicate that the toxicity of nicotine is similar to or even higher than that of cyanide, fatal nicotine intoxications are relatively rare, and there are countless records of subjects who survived consumption of nicotine in amounts far higher than 60 mg (Larson et al. 1961). The most drastic example is probably survival of a suicide attempt with 4 g of pure nicotine (Schmidt 1931). While this is certainly an exceptional case, in which the amount of bioavailable nicotine was markedly reduced by vomiting, ingestion of tobacco or nicotine gums at doses up to 6 mg/kg nicotine was reported to evoke symptoms of intoxication without causing death (Malizia et al. 1983; Smolinske et al. 1988). These and many other literature reports on nonfatal nicotine intoxications are hardly compatible with a lethal dose of 60 mg or less.
> Several detailed reviews are available on fatal nicotine intoxications caused by either suicidal intent or accidents, latter mainly resulting from misusage of nicotine-containing solutions marketed as pesticides (Esser and Kühn 1933; Larson et al. 1961; Maehly and Bonnichsen 1963; Tiess and Nagel 1966; Hayes 1982; Corkery et al. 2010; Solarino et al. 2010). The postmortem data reviewed by Maehly and Bonnichsen (1963) and more recently by Corkery et al. (2010) and Solarino et al. (2010) revealed minimal nicotine blood levels of 2 mg/L, but rapid decline of blood nicotine after death (Sanchez et al. 1996) may have led to underestimation of the actual lethal concentration in delayed autopsies.
> Despite these uncertainties and the complex pharmacokinetics of nicotine (Hukkanen et al. 2005), a rough estimate of the amount of ingested nicotine from postmortem analyses of blood levels appears feasible. Smoking a cigarette results in uptake of approximately 2 mg of nicotine and gives rise to mean arterial plasma concentrations of about 0.03 mg/L (30 ng/ml) (Gourlay and Benowitz 1997). Based on 20 % oral bioavailability of nicotine (Hukkanen et al. 2005) and assuming linear kinetics, an oral dose of 60 mg would give rise to a plasma concentration of about 0.18 mg/L. The literature reports on fatal nicotine intoxications suggest that the lower limit of lethal nicotine blood concentrations is about 2 mg/L, corresponding to 4 mg/L plasma, a concentration that is around 20-fold higher than that caused by intake of 60 mg nicotine. Thus, a careful estimate suggests that the lower limit causing fatal outcomes is 0.5–1 g of ingested nicotine, corresponding to an oral LD50 of 6.5–13 mg/kg. This dose agrees well with nicotine toxicity in dogs, which exhibit responses to nicotine similar to humans (Matsushima et al. 1995).
So, in reality the LD50 is much more likely to be an order of magnitude higher than the number you provided from Wikipedia. This however agrees with the former number you provided, and I guess this is the study where it came from.
I think the intention was about normal usage of nicotine.
Nobody would deny that nicotine poisoning is a thing which is why we get nice things like child-proof caps on e-liquid bottles now.
--edit--
Also pretty efficient at getting through the skin so nicotine poisoning also happens when people using higher concentrations (the DIYers mixing their own) have a spill.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JUUL#/media/File:Juul_with_pod...
After having a prolonged cough, I switched to juuling. I loved it - tasted great, nice buzz, amazing (AMAZING) throat hit. I stopped smoking spliffs (positive was I was no longer high 24-7), my lungs felt better, I overall felt better.
However, the issue with these things is it is so available. You can take tiny rips anywhere. And there is no quantized amount. You just take a few puffs but you have no idea how much that is, unlike a discrete cig. So my 4-5 cig a day habit turned into the equivalent of a pack a day habit. I found myself ‘going to the bathroom’ all the time at work to sneak a quick hit. I think my base level anxiety went up.
So I quit the juul (quitting wasn’t as hard as I thought despite using a pod a day for 6 months, the anxiety of what would happen when I quit was really the big thing. In terms of withdrawals all I had was a desire to consume nic on my mind all the time for a few days).
Really what I want to say is that the juul is a better cig. You can use it anywhere. You feel much less terrible and sickly (when your smoking you couch all the time). It tastes much better. However all of this makes it much more addicting than the traditional cigarette
The science is out on how bad for you vaping is. Many point to the fact that nicotine by itself is really only bad for your heart - the extra stuff is more from smoke / chemicals in cigarettes. However nicotine addiction kinda sucks
Sucks more than caffeine addiction?
With cigarettes, there's also the fact that you actually have to, well, smoke cigarettes. Sometimes that's great (if you're used to it), but when you have a sore throat, forcing yourself to smoke a cigarette one painful drag at a time is a horrible experience. Juul is a huge step up this way, though it comes with other issues.
What did you replace your juul addiction with ?
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/fad
Vaping saves lives. Vaping saves lungs. Let’s just continue to get people off of burning cigarettes and we can tackle nicotine addiction once cigarettes are a bad memory.
However, the concern is that nicotine use is on the upswing among young people (edit: previous nonsmokers) for the first time in many years. If vaping is anything short of harmless, which I think we must presume it is, then this is a brewing problem.
[0]. https://youtube.com/watch?v=AFOpoKBUyok