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Comment by 013a | Hacker News Reader

Just to be very clear on your use of language: Vaping has nothing to do with tobacco. Period. Calling "vape" a tobacco product is equivalent to calling coca-cola a "coffee product". They essentially share a single active chemical (nicotine), and even then many vapers elect to vape nicotine-free liquid.

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I get your point but as I understand it, the source of the nicotine for those liquids is tobacco.

That is generally true; the nicotine in e-liquid is commonly extracted from tobacco. But at the point it is mixed into an e-liquid, assuming we're talking about a reputable organization, it is a completely pure nicotine solution. The only thing it shares with the tobacco it came from is the nicotine itself.

To his point, the source of the caffeine in coke is coffee.

The caffeine is coke is synthetic. Using synthetic caffeine is cheaper than extracting it from coffee.

To the best of my knowledge, the only place where they still use caffeine from coffee is Japan.

Ah, didn't realize this. I used to work at a coffee roaster and at the time was told the caffeine removed from decaf beans via the swiss water method was then sold to soda companies.

Caffeine is cheaply synthesized, and that’s almost certainly what soda manufacturers use in their products.

Not all e-juice nicotine is sourced from tobacco. Some are synthesized: https://www.elementvape.com/tobacco-free-nicotine-e-juice-co...

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