Nicotine Salts for Vapers
What are nicotine salts?
Nicotine in Vape Liquid
Before diving into nicotine salts, it’s worth understanding where the nicotine in your e-liquid comes from. Nicotine is found in tobacco leaves.
It’s found elsewhere (including in some everyday vegetables!) but tobacco leaves are particularly high in the substance. In tobacco, it’s found in the form of salts. But the salts don’t just contain nicotine – they also contain other compounds and protons. To create the freebase nicotine found in most e-liquid and cigarettes, the salts need to be stripped of these protons. To do so, they are soaked in ammonia, which frees the nicotine from its protons. Once freed of its protons, the nicotine turns into a gas-phase form more easily.
Gas phase nicotine is more easily deposited in the lungs and crosses membranes more easily. That means it’s going to reach the brain more quickly and more effectively deliver a nicotine hit. The pharma grade nicotine used in quality e-liquid is pure nicotine (usually 99.9% pure or higher.)The result is a nicotine which is more volatile and more satisfying. In fact, when Marlboro discovered the process in the 1960’s, they found that it kept smokers satisfied even when they were using lower strength nicotine cigarettes
Nicotine Salts
In contrast, nicotine salts are the natural form nicotine occurs in. Originally it was thought that nicotine salts would not be effective in e-liquid. However, US manufacturer Juul claims that certain types of nicotine salts actually worked better than freebase nicotine.
One key element to successfully using nicotine salts is the addition of Benzoic acid. Benzoic acid:
- allows nicotine to be vapourised at a lower temperature
- lowers the ph level of the nicotine
- makes the nicotine more absorbable
Why use nicotine salts?
1. Stronger nicotine hit. Nicotine salts are for people who can’t get the hit they need from regular e-liquid. Because it delivers nicotine to the body faster than vaping, it should be a more effective alternative for smoking.
2. More nicotine with less vaping. It’s also a good idea to use nicotine salts if you want to reduce the amount you vape, as the nicotine hit is more satisfying.
3. Smoother throat hit. Finally, nicotine salts are smoother on the throat than e-liquid with freebase nicotine. So if you find your regular vape harsh on the throat, or are not keen on throat hits, nicotine salts could be the option for you.
How do you use nicotine salts?
Simple! Just buy e-liquid with nicotine salts.
Why type of vapes are suitable for use with nicotine salts?
The Aspire Gusto is specifically designed for nicotine salts, but any low powered tank system should be able to handle nicotine salts. The key is low power, though, and around 10-14 watts should be fine.
Hybrid E-Liquid
One interesting approach that that pod system manufacturer HEXA 2 has taken is to combine nicotine salts with regular e-liquid. The result is stupendous – at the time of this update (June 2019) I’d say the HEXA 2 is the best closed pod system we have tried so far.
Are nicotine salts more addictive?
Some data shows that nicotine salts lead to sharper spikes in nicotine in the blood than the freebase nicotine in other e-liquids. We speculated that this could mean that nicotine salts are more addictive. Nicotine is nicotine, being in base form or salt form. Salts are just the result of the reaction of nicotine base with an acid, it is in a way a sort of reverse engineering as in the tobacco plants nicotine is present as salts.”
Are nicotine salts safe?
Nothing is safe, but the UK government’s public health arm estimates vaping is 95% safer than smoking. Much of that is based on research done on e-liquid with free base nicotine, but so far there don’t seem to be any concerns in regard to using nicotine salts.
ALSO READ :
UNDERSTANDING NICOTINE AND NICOTINE STRENGTH IN E-LIQUID
5 SURPRISING BENEFITS OF NICOTINE
Comments
Post a Comment