48 Fun Facts About Nicotine

Nicotine is an alkaloid found mainly in which group of plants?

Nightshades are a family of chemical specialists: tobacco's relatives include deadly nightshade, which yields atropine, yet the same family also gives us the potato and the aubergine.

Besides tobacco, which common salad ingredient naturally contains trace amounts of nicotine?

Tomato plants are close cousins of tobacco, so they make a little nicotine too. The dose is tiny: a kilogram of fresh tomatoes holds only a few millionths of a gram.

Tobacco leaves are loaded with nicotine, but in which part of the plant is it actually made?

The roots make it and the sap carries it up to the leaves. Graft another plant's shoot onto tobacco roots and its leaves fill with nicotine, while a tobacco shoot on foreign roots gets none.

Smokers are markedly less likely to develop which brain disease, a puzzle some researchers credit to nicotine?

Parkinson's disease is rarer among smokers, and nicotine may shield the brain cells it destroys. A rival view is that people in its earliest, hidden stage simply find quitting easier.

In 1994, seven tobacco company chiefs told the US Congress under oath that they believed nicotine was what?

Not addictive, each of the seven said in turn. Four years later the four biggest firms agreed to pay 46 states some $206 billion towards the cost of treating sick smokers.

The body's 'nicotinic' receptors are named after nicotine, but which natural messenger are they built to detect?

Acetylcholine is the body's own key to these receptors. They took nicotine's name because it binds to them but not to the other acetylcholine receptors, which are named after a mushroom toxin, muscarine.

How quickly does inhaled nicotine reach the brain?

10-20 seconds is all it takes, which is faster than an injection into a vein. That speed is a big part of why a cigarette hooks people so much more readily than a slow-release patch.

About how long does the body take to clear half a dose of nicotine?

Around two hours is the usual figure, so blood levels sink quickly between cigarettes. The body turns most of the drug into a by-product that lingers for the best part of a day.

Which breakdown product of nicotine do blood, urine and saliva tests look for as proof of tobacco use?

Cotinine outlasts nicotine in the body by many hours, so it also shows up in non-smokers who have breathed other people's smoke. Its name is simply an anagram of 'nicotine'.

Which cigarette flavouring slows the body's breakdown of nicotine, keeping it in the blood longer?

Menthol partly blocks CYP2A6, the enzyme that clears most nicotine. In a crossover study the same smokers broke the drug down more slowly on menthol cigarettes than on plain ones.

Nicotine is a stimulant, yet smokers commonly say that a cigarette brings them which effect?

Relaxation and alertness from one drug is known as Nesbitt's paradox. One explanation is that the calm is mostly relief, as the cigarette ends the irritability that has built up since the last one.

Which B vitamin got a new name in the 1940s because 'nicotinic acid' sounded too much like nicotine?

Niacin was coined from the first syllables of 'nicotinic acid' after a scare that linked vitamin-enriched bread to tobacco. Chemists had originally made the vitamin by oxidising nicotine.

Nicotine's release of which neurotransmitter in the mesolimbic pathway drives its reinforcing effect?

Dopamine is the brain's reward signal. Paradoxically, nicotine is a weak reinforcer in animal tests next to other addictive drugs, and users feel little euphoria, yet the habit is famously hard to break.

A landmark 1988 US Surgeon General's report said nicotine addiction works like addiction to heroin and which other drug?

Cocaine was the other comparison. It was a sharp turn from the famous 1964 report on smoking, which had classed cigarettes as a habit and stopped short of calling them an addiction.

Nicotine hooks smokers, but which other part of cigarette smoke did researcher Michael Russell say they 'die from'?

Tar carries most of the cancer-causing chemicals in smoke. 'People smoke for nicotine, but they die from the tar,' Russell said, and nicotine itself is still not classed as a carcinogen.

Nicotine withdrawal symptoms typically peak within what period?

One to three days in is when the irritability, anxiety and cravings are usually at their worst. They then fade over a few weeks, a far shorter ordeal than withdrawal from some other drugs.

Many smokers gain weight after quitting, partly because nicotine had been suppressing what?

Their appetite: nicotine switches on neurons in the hypothalamus that tell the body it has eaten enough. It also makes the body burn slightly more energy, so quitting removes both brakes at once.

Which nicotine replacement product was the first to win US approval, in 1984?

Gum came first, in 1984, but only on prescription, and the patch followed in 1991. It took until 1996 for regulators to accept the makers' case that cigarettes, after all, needed no prescription.

Nicotine gum grew out of the observation that which workers swapped cigarettes for chewing tobacco on duty?

Submarine crews could not light up on patrol, and Swedish researchers noticed how easily they switched to chewing tobacco. That prompted the chemist Ove Fernö to put nicotine into a gum.

Unusually for a plant drug, nicotine contains no oxygen: it is built from carbon, hydrogen and which other element?

Nitrogen completes the formula, C10H14N2. In the body one of those nitrogen atoms picks up a positive charge, and that charged form is what lets nicotine grip the brain receptors behind addiction so tightly.

Nicotine gum is contraindicated for people with disease of which part of the body?

The temporomandibular joint is the hinge of the jaw, and the steady chewing can aggravate a disorder there. Users are told to chew slowly and then 'park' the gum against the cheek.

The quit-smoking drug varenicline was developed from analogues of which plant alkaloid?

Cytisine comes from laburnum seeds and has been sold in Bulgaria as the quit-smoking pill Tabex since 1964. Decades later, Pfizer's chemists took it as their starting point.

Under which brand name did Pfizer launch varenicline in the United States in 2006?

Chantix is the American name, while the same pill is Champix elsewhere. It only partly switches on the brain's nicotine receptors, easing cravings while blunting the reward from any cigarette smoked.

Nicotine is named after Nicotiana tabacum, which in turn honours a French ambassador to which country?

Portugal is where Jean Nicot met the plant, while serving in Lisbon around 1560. He is said to have recommended its powdered leaf to the queen mother, Catherine de' Medici, as a headache remedy.

Jean Nicot, who gave nicotine its name, also compiled one of the first French examples of which kind of book?

Dictionary: his Thresor de la langue françoyse, printed in 1606, is counted among the first dictionaries of French. He compiled it in retirement on the estate he was given for his service at court.

Smoking tobacco was once believed in Europe to ward off which disease in particular?

The plague was the great fear of the age. During London's epidemic of 1665 tobacco was taken as a preventive, and it was later said that not one of the city's tobacconists had died.

Which TV detective slaps on several nicotine patches to think and calls a hard case 'a three-patch problem'?

Sherlock Holmes, in the BBC's Sherlock, swapped Conan Doyle's 'three pipe problem' for patches. The original Holmes, facing one, asked Watson not to speak to him for fifty minutes while he smoked.

Which 1999 film stars Russell Crowe as Jeffrey Wigand, the tobacco scientist who went public about nicotine?

The Insider dramatises Wigand's interview with 60 Minutes. He said his old employer, Brown & Williamson, had added chemicals such as ammonia to cigarettes to boost the nicotine they delivered.

Which US vape brand, shaped like a USB stick, came to dominate the country's e-cigarette sales in 2017 and 2018?

Juul's edge was its liquid: by using nicotine salts it delivered a cigarette-sized dose without the harsh throat hit of earlier vapes. Its popularity with teenagers soon alarmed regulators.

Which Elizabethan courtier is often credited with making pipe smoking fashionable in England?

Walter Raleigh probably did not bring tobacco to England himself, whatever the legend says. What he did do, as a favourite at court, was play a large part in spreading the habit among the English.

Imidacloprid, the first commercial neonicotinoid insecticide, was developed by which German chemicals giant?

Bayer's chemists built on an earlier nicotine-like compound from the oil company Shell, which worked but broke down in sunlight. Their version became possibly the most widely used insecticide in the world.

In 2018 the EU banned the three main neonicotinoids for outdoor use mainly to protect what?

Bees were the worry: the EU's food-safety agency confirmed that most outdoor uses put wild bees and honeybees at risk. The chemicals spread through the whole plant and turn up in its pollen and nectar.

Green tobacco sickness, which strikes farm workers, is nicotine poisoning caused by what?

Skin contact with wet leaves is the route: rain or dew draws nicotine out of the leaf and it soaks through the skin. Harvesters are told to wait until the crop is dry or to wear a rain suit.

Smokers break down which everyday drug much faster than non-smokers, an effect that fades within days of quitting?

Caffeine is cleared quickly in smokers because chemicals in the smoke rev up the enzyme that handles it. After quitting, the same cups of coffee leave more caffeine in the blood than before.

Which organ does most of the work of breaking nicotine down?

The liver clears it so efficiently that swallowed nicotine is largely destroyed before it reaches the rest of the body. That is why oral nicotine medicines are made to be absorbed through the lining of the mouth, not swallowed.

Death from severe nicotine poisoning is believed to result from what?

Respiratory paralysis stops the muscles of breathing. Poisoning first speeds the body up, with a racing heart, raised blood pressure and fast breathing, and then throws it into reverse as pulse and breathing slow.

What is the most common symptom reported to US poison centres after exposure to e-cigarette liquid?

Vomiting tops the list. Calls about ordinary cigarettes tell a different story: about 95% concern children under six who have eaten one, and most of those callers report no symptoms at all.

Which thick, sweet-tasting liquid is one of the two main carriers for nicotine in e-cigarette liquid?

Glycerine and propylene glycol make up the bulk of a typical e-liquid. Heating them is what creates the visible cloud, so the 'vapour' a user breathes out is mostly a mist of these two carriers.

The modern e-cigarette was invented in 2003 by a pharmacist working in which country?

China is where Hon Lik, a pharmacist and heavy smoker, built the device to help himself quit. It did not work for its inventor: he has said he still smokes as well as vapes.

How are the "salts" used in pod-style vapes made?

By adding acids to free-base nicotine, such as benzoic acid, makers turn a harsh vapour into a smooth one. That lets small pod devices deliver far stronger doses without making users cough.

Most oral tobacco is fermented, but Swedish snus is instead treated in which way?

Steam-pasteurised tobacco stays low in nitrosamines, because the heat kills the bacteria that help form these cancer-causing compounds when leaf is left to ferment.

Where does a snus user typically place the pouch or pinch?

Under the upper lip is where the pouch sits, often for half an hour or more. Unlike American dipping tobacco, which makes its users spit, snus needs no spitting at all.

Which brand dominated the booming nicotine pouch market in 2023, taking well over half of all sales?

Zyn was created by Swedish Match, an old snus maker, and took off in the United States. Philip Morris International bought the company in 2022.

Which US agency proposed in January 2025 to cap the nicotine in cigarettes at minimally addictive levels?

The FDA proposed a cap of 0.7 milligrams of nicotine per gram of tobacco, a small fraction of current levels. The idea is that cigarettes too weak to sustain addiction would let smokers quit when they choose.

Which country in 2012 became the first to require cigarettes to be sold in plain, logo-free packs?

Australia put every brand in the same drab olive pack, its name in plain type beside a large health warning. The aim was to strip cigarette packs of their last space for advertising.

Which comic-book hero fought the cartoon villain Nick O'Teen in 1980s British anti-smoking adverts?

Superman foiled Nick O'Teen, who lurked in alleys tempting children with cigarettes, in adverts made for Britain's Health Education Council. In one, he simply hurls the villain into the sky.

Which arrow poison works by blocking the nicotinic receptors on its victims' muscles?

Curare, made from rainforest vines, relaxes muscles so completely that from the 1940s doctors adopted it to keep patients still during surgery. Synthetic relatives have since taken its place.

WHO estimated what share of the world's adults used tobacco in 2024?

One in five: the WHO counted 1.2 billion tobacco users in 2024, down from 1.38 billion in 2000. Women have led the decline, reaching the global target for 2025 five years early.