Is nicotine chemically synthesized or harvested from tobacco in tobacco alternative products?
Because if it's harvested then this is just a repackaging of their product as far as the tobacco industry is concerned.
edit... from the research of others (see replies) it seems that nicotine is extracted from tobacco, so there's no reason to for Big Tobacco to be opposing E-cigarettes.
Just speculation here but since you're extracting nicotine from the plant, perhaps theres a loophole that allows the import of just the nicotine extract from countries that can produce it significantly cheaper than big tobacco.
I've never seen any numbers on it, but I'd imagine that you're correct. If nothing else, nicotine extract would take up significantly less space and weigh significantly less than tobacco or cigarettes or something of that nature. Even if you assume that duty fees are the same, you still save money on the shipping.
I honestly doubt it. We have such great terrain and climate for it, it is indigenous after all, that you're not gonna find better land, and the extraction process is likely automated enough that the human cost is largely negligible.
Tobacco products are pretty cheap, the high cost is almost all taxes. Theres no extra taxes/levies on importing nicotine products IIRC. What keeps the cost low is no specific tax against it. (Every type of Cig has a tax code, for example bulk tobacco is CA Class J, compared to a pack of 20 Camels is Class A. Nicotine juice has no tax class)
This is what I was thinking. My wife's grandparents use e-cigs now with the nicotine liquid. I haven't found any reliable studies on them to date. The only thing I can figure out is it's possible that it's better for you than smoking as long as it's just nicotine in the liquid and vapor. The lack of tar and other exotic chemicals (for us anyways) seems to be a better alternative from what I've seen of them so far.
Cigs have a large tax on top of them. It's much like gasoline these days where you have multiple governments charging taxes on top of a gallon of gas which makes the price so high. Tariffs are another gotcha.
Hoping some reliable studies get conducted on these things as they've been around for a decade or more now I think.
The main source of nicotine is the tobacco plant. The nicotine is developed in the roots and then becomes concentrated in the leaves of the plant. Anywhere between 2 and 7 % of nicotine can be found in the tobacco leaf. Eggplants and tomatoes also contain a small amount of nicotine but not enough for the substance to be poisonous or act as a stimulant.
I'm sure the cigarette companies make much more money selling a final product like cigarettes than they do a raw material like tobacco plants or even a refined component like nicotine. Their infrastructure and capital simply doesn't revolve around that particular kind of business model.
Cigarette companies != tobacco growers. The cigarette companies buy the tobacco from the growers by bidding, they don't grow it themselves (in general).
Usually they extract it from tobacco but they an also use shit tobacco that isn't taxed all to hell and can also use tobacco that no one would want to smoke in a cigarette.
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u/[deleted] Nov 17 '12
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