Everything About The Synthetic Nicotine. Could it Conserve Vaping?
The FDA's destructive deeming guidance for e-cigarettes is all based around the legal outline of "tobacco product".
"Any product created or originated from tobacco that's designed for human consumption, including any component, part, or accessory of a tobacco product."
This means that e-juice is a "tobacco product" since the nicotine used is "made or derived from tobacco." Devices and other vaping products are classed as elements, parts, or accessories.
This all recommends one intriguing approach for companies wishing to dodge the expensive and hard business of trying to get their liquids FDA-approved: Imagine if the nicotine in your e-juice isn't made or derived from tobacco?
- Could synthetic nicotine discover its way onto the market by a loophole?
- Are there any advantages to using it anyway?
- And what does synthetic nicotine even suggest?
What's Synthetic Nicotine?
Nicotine has the chemical formula C10 H14 N2. This indicates that it is a compound formed of ten carbon atoms, 14 hydrogen atoms, and two nitrogen atoms approximately arranged into two connected rings.
Irrespective of how these atoms are in this arrangement, the result is nicotine.
If you'd one nicotine molecule extracted out of a tobacco plant and another at which the constituent parts had come from everywhere but then were united to form the identical arrangement, there would be no way to tell the variation between them. They would be identical.
The distinction between artificial and synthetic nicotine therefore doesn’t mean too much. Despite where nicotine comes from, it has the same chemical formation and is imperceptible from nicotine created any other way.
Nevertheless, "natural" nicotine is what is taken straight from a tobacco plant. Other plants in precisely the same family - including tomato, potato, and aubergine - additionally contain naturally-occurring nicotine, but in lower quantities.
Synthetic nicotine is the term used when that same chemical was produced from other sources. This may be completed in many different ways, for example, utilizing niacin, ethanol, sulphuric acid, and some other compounds, or by starting with a nicotinate ester and generating nicotine after a few intermediate steps. It doesn't matter how it's done; the key point is that it is the same compound, just delivered in a different way with a different source and some smart chemistry.
The Chirality of Nicotine - Another Challenge for Synthetic nicotine Generation
Even though the above discussion gives a simple definition of synthetic nicotine, there is one additional issue that should be mentioned.
Nicotine is a "chiral" particle, which suggests it exists in two forms that can’t be superimposed on each other.
It’s usually characterized as "handedness" for chemicals: in the same way that your right hand is a mirror image of your left, (S)-nicotine is a mirror image of (R)-nicotine.
Despite the fact your left-hand gets all of the same components as your right, the design of the fingers and thumb means you can't possibly bend, flip, or otherwise reorient your right hands to allow it to be indistinguishable from the left.
The same goes for (S) and (R)-nicotine.
The problem for manufacturers of synthetic nicotine is that (S)-nicotine is the kind created by tobacco and the kind that has the desired effect on consumers. This means it is the only type vapers might want.
In practice, however, a mix of both variations of the compounds is the easiest to make, and then it might need to be further processed to generate a usable sample of (S)-nicotine. If this last step was not completed and a mix of both kinds was used, the final e-liquid would just have half of the strength advertised.
Is Anybody Making Synthetic Nicotine?
The most famous Labs is, create "tobacco-free nicotine" with a particular focus on the vaping business. Their process is described in one printed patent, with others pending about which fewer details are understood. The outcome is a non-tobacco-derived nicotine solution that is over 99.5% pure, surpassing the need for pharmaceutical-grade nicotine.
Their nicotine is presently used by many e-juice brands, such as NKTR, Cypher, Origins, Defiant, and Klir. It's only used by a very small number of brands when you consider how many distinct mixers you will find available on the current market, but things can change in the long run.
How Much Does Synthetic Nicotine Cost?
The most apparent problem with synthetic nicotine is that it isn't as easy to obtain as natural nicotine.
For artificial nicotine, you need to acquire the raw materials then undergo a multi-step procedure to turn them into the finished product. This is more labor-intensive, more time-consuming, and more expensive.
The Advantages of Synthetic Nicotine E-Juice
Apart from the potential benefits associated with regulation - which we'll come to soon - with the added cost, the instant question is why would firms trouble using synthetic nicotine?
When you extract nicotine from a cigarette, you consistently take some tobacco-derived impurities to the mix also. All these may be kept to very low levels, but may still be present. These impurities can be harmful, and reportedly have a little effect on the flavor of the completed e-juice.
When nicotine is generated synthetically, there are not any tobacco-derived impurities ruining the mixture. This means that a cleaner flavor, together with the nicotine being efficiently odorless and tasteless. With no plant-like taste from the impurities creeping into the flavor, there isn't as much need to use a lot of flavorings to generate a palatable e-juice. Besides, with no impurities, any possible threat posed by minuscule quantities of things such as tobacco-specific nitrosamines is avoided.
Could Synthetic Nicotine Save Vaping?
It should not come as a surprise that synthetic nicotine is not likely to conserve vaping. Even though synthetic nicotine could be made cheaply enough to be a commercially-viable alternative to tobacco-derived smoking, it would not take much tweaking for the FDA to gain control over it too.
But, that does not mean it's completely useless as an approach. It may not appear likely that the FDA will roll over and accept synthetic nicotine e-juices as non-tobacco products, but it may easily introduce a legal roadblock that will slow down the process.
Synthetic Nicotine: The Fantasy vs. Reality
The upshot is that artificial nicotine is a wonderful idea but one which can't save vaping from unnecessarily burdensome regulation.
If you'd like nicotine completely free of tobacco-derived impurities and with a cleaner flavor profile and if you do not mind spending a little more - than synthetic nicotine is something you may want to consider.
However, if like most vapers your interest in synthetic nicotine depends largely on its ability to generate e-juice that may evade regulations, you are destined to end up very disappointed.
