Nicotine--Where It Comes From, Where It Goes

Did you ever wonder why cigarettes have nicotine? Did you ever wonder what nicotine is?

Nicotine is a chemical compound. A chemical compound is simply a bonded collection of atoms. The atoms are bonded, or held together, mainly by electrostatic forces: positive and negative charges associated with the atoms attracting each other. A single unit of a chemical compound is a molecule. If you have a bottle of the same molecules, like nicotine molecules, you have a chemical substance. Bottles of nicotine are fairly common in chemistry laboratories. Retail price for about a pint of the stuff is around $800. The discounted price is probably around half or less.

Nicotine is in the class of alkaloids. Simply stated, alkaloids are molecules that contain the element nitrogen. In the good, old days, when our analytical methods were crude, chemists would identify alkaloids by tasting them. If they were bitter tasting, we had an alkaloid. Quinine, the stuff in the tonic water you flavor your drinks with, is an alkaloid, one of the most bitter-tasting alkaloids known. For some reason, alkaloids tend to have powerful biological effects, besides bitter taste. Some of the better-known alkaloids, such as cocaine, morphine, and ephedrine are examples. Most alkaloid names have the suffix “-ine.” When I see a chemical name ending with “-ine,” I know it’s an alkaloid.

So, why is there so much nicotine in tobacco? Is it there to get us addicted? Probably not! Nicotine is one in a class of defense chemicals. It's a poison. It's poisonous to humans, and, to a lot of insects. Consider, if the tobacco plant leaves a bad taste in an insect's mouth, or makes it sick, the insect will look for something more palatable. Thus, the tobacco plant survives because insects avoid it. If only humans were as intelligent as insects sometimes. Why are humans so attracted to poisons like nicotine or alcohol (yes, alcohol is a poison, my friends, stay tuned for a blog on that)? So, even though insects are smart enough to avoid the toxic effects of nicotine, smokers aren’t. But, before it poisons us, it addicts us.

The nicotine in tobacco is a natural component of the plant, just like the fragrance of a rose is a natural component for the rose plant. Nobody has to add nicotine to tobacco leaves, it's already there. Your average tobacco leaves have about 3% nicotine. That means, if you have 100 pounds of tobacco leaves, you have 3 pounds of nicotine spread out in the leaves.

Our good friends at the Brown & Williamson, a major tobacco company, decided that 3% nicotine was not enough in their tobacco leaves. So, in the 1970s, they cultivated a special variety of tobacco called Y1, which contains up to 6% nicotine. No wonder the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started an investigation to see if Brown & Williamson was manipulating nicotine levels to addict even more smokers. The tobacco companies also tried the other direction by making the “Lights” line, with reduced nicotine. The nicotine can be extracted away from tobacco using a process called supercritical carbon dioxide extraction.” Yes, that’s the same carbon dioxide at the center of the greenhouse gas/global warming discussion. Anyway, after the tobacco is extracted and has reduced nicotine content, the cigarette companies make their “Lights” line. And, of course, they have a whole bunch of nicotine from all that tobacco they extracted.

Did you ever wonder what the tobacco companies do with all that nicotine they extract from tobacco when they make those low-nicotine cigarettes? They sell it as an insecticide. The boll weevil that attacks cotton cannot survive exposure to nicotine. So, the cotton is saved. It is harvested and converted into all sorts of fabrics, like the fabric used for shirts. The fabric goes to a garment manufacturer to make shirts for you to buy.

So, you have your cotton shirts and smokers have their low-tar, low-nicotine smokes. Next time you see somebody ask for a carton of Marlboro Lights at the open-all-night convenience store, thank them for your shirt.

Chemistry, chemicals, molecules, nicotine, extractions are not easy concepts. I know I dumped a lot of technical stuff on you. If you want to know more about this fascinating area, please Google the terms on your browser. There is a lot of information out there, the more you read, the better your comprehension.