What is nicotine?

The definition

Nicotine is a substance that occurs naturally in the tobacco plant. It is the component that makes tobacco addictive, and the reason quitting is as hard as it is.

Nicotine is not smoke

This is the easiest thing to confuse, and the easiest thing to exploit in marketing.

Smoke is a mixture of thousands of substances produced when tobacco burns. Nicotine is one of them. Most of the documented harm from cigarettes is attached to combustion rather than to nicotine on its own.

That does not make any nicotine product safe. It means the two are different things and have to be discussed separately.

Dependence

Nicotine is addictive in every form: cigarettes, water pipe tobacco, e-cigarettes, pouches, gum. Dependence does not care about the delivery route.

For anyone who has never used nicotine, starting with any form is starting a dependency. There is no reason to start.

Nicotine in cessation medicine

Nicotine replacement therapy uses this same substance, at a controlled dose, to reduce withdrawal while someone breaks the habit of smoking. That product group is licensed as cessation medicine and comes with a tapering plan.

That is the difference from ordinary nicotine products, which have no course and no end point.

If you want to stop altogether

The quitline is 1800 6606, free, 08:00 to 22:00 daily. We receive nothing from that call.