The New Era of Nicotine
invariant.substack.com
invariant.substack.com
Not sure how safe it is. At most I was doing 1-2 times per week, now more like 1-2 every couple of months. So I imagine at that level it is statistically negligible. But from what I ready there aren't any known long term risks.
Anyways, on the topic of the article. I mostly agree, as long as people know the risks, then we should let them do what they want. With that said, Juul was particularly scummy and deserved to get banned by the FDA.
Vast majority of ADHD people that it is prescribed to (like %99+) do not get addicted to the medication, and often forget to take it. It's the people just trying to get 'high' in general with doses way beyond the medical cases where it leads to addiction.
So yes, it's probably pretty addictive if your using it in a way thatleads people to get addicted to it, and not if your not using it in a way that tends to not lead to addiction.
The average methhead doesn’t take a micro dose just so they’re able to stay motivated and focused at work. If they did their wouldn’t be such a stigma. As an example the popular image of cocaine is a working man’s drug despite the fact it’s just as bad as meth when abused in large doses (induces psychosis, etc)
I've tried to quit a few times, and haven't done so yet. And it is harmful in large doses, the few times I gone more than a couple days without it, I get a tingling sensation in my hands and feet as my circulation improves, since nicotine in large doses is bad for your circulation.
I feel like in every HN thread about smoking, vaping, and nicotine these talking points about "nicotine not being that addictive" and "nicotine is in lots of foods" etc get trotted out. It's all wrong.
However, Nicotine itself is not addictive, it's habit-forming. Those are completely different neural pathways at work and completely different forms of interaction.
I can't find it right now, but there was a great paper where they gave non-smokers -- i.e. people who had never smoked, 24mg patches for a month or two, then did follow-up at 6 months. Now, 24mg is around 12 - 24 cigarettes. That's way above the amount for addiction, actually the amount is so extreme you would expect them to have had extreme difficulty with getting off them, and yet at 6 months none of them reported using pure nicotine -- also termed under "nicotine-replacement therapy" -- afterwards.
Your article from 1995 is not representative of newer research on the topic with respect to pure nicotine, versus cigarettes. In addition, nicotine outside of cigarettes is a newer distinction to be made, most pre-2000s papers do not make that distinction.
There's some confusion on this point. There is a paper that shows this, but mostly the mechanism people are referring to is MAO A and B reuptake seems to be inhibited while smoking, but not after just using nicotine, which makes smoking more addictive than just nicotine. I don't dispute this; the evidence seems clear. I think that not very many people were/are on MAOIs, therefore it doesn't explain smoking addiction, and people confuse this mechanism with antidepressants. Nicotine is more addictive when you smoke tobacco to get it, or if you're on MAOIs, but it's addictive all on its own. We'll use vaping as an example for this:
A third of users vaped within 5 minutes of waking in this study [0]. Subjects in this study [1] vaped consistently despite not wanting to. Here are some cool statements they copped to:
“I hide in the bathroom to vape in secret.”
“I look forward to times that I can stay in and vape all night.”
“I love vaping, though I wish I did not.”
Here are some things that happened to them when they didn't vape:
“I cannot relax without my vape/e-cigarette.”
“My hands and arms start trembling if I have not vaped in a while.”
This study [2] compares users of Juul vapes w/ non-Juul vapes (Juul vapes deliver more nicotine), finding that "JUUL users were 1.77 (95% CI: 1.36-2.31) times as likely to report symptoms of nicotine dependence and 1.43 (95% CI: 1.02-2.01) time as likely to report using e-cigarettes on 20-30 days, compared to 1-5 days, relative to non-JUUL users".
> Nicotine itself is not addictive, it's habit-forming. Those are completely different neural pathways at work and completely different forms of interaction.
Even if this is true (I can't find any basis for it), it's at best a distinction without a difference. Here's nicotine's pharmacology:
---
Stimulation of central nAChRs by nicotine results in the release of a variety of neurotransmitters in the brain, most importantly dopamine. Nicotine causes the release of dopamine in the mesolimbic area, the corpus striatum, and the frontal cortex. Of particular importance are the dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area of the midbrain, and the release of dopamine in the shell of the nucleus accumbens, as this pathway appears to be critical in drug-induced reward (12, 13). Other neurotransmitters, including norepinephrine, acetylcholine, serotonin, γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), glutamate, and endorphins, are released as well, mediating various behaviors of nicotine.
---
> In addition, nicotine outside of cigarettes is a newer distinction to be made, most pre-2000s papers do not make that distinction.
This is generally because there's consensus that nicotine is addictive and there's no need to do further research on it. They're not ruling out that there are chemicals besides nicotine that inhibit MAO A and B reuptake, thereby enhancing addiction to smoking (not nicotine), but there are no studies I've seen that demonstrate consistent vaping without nicotine dependency.
It's also worth saying that in young adults, vaping tends to lead to smoking [4], which is super bad.
[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7668279/
[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7330178/
[2]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34614433/
I smoked for about 2 years in grad school but had no problem quiting. One day I just stopped and like you I had no desire after the initial urge was gone. Maybe I was not fully addicted yet.
As an aside, I highly recommend the Audible book "Caffeine" by Michael Pollan if you haven't already heard it. It's quite brilliant.
I tried limiting it to just once a week to see if I could capture the magic, but my discipline was lacking a bit, and even when I was able to stay on that schedule, it still felt like my tolerance was building.
These compounds are arguably partially responsible for the issue of colony collapse disorder.
I don’t think the avoid investments you don’t believe in changes anything except making others money.
Wouldn’t it be more apt to compare it to not voting? If morally principled people opt not to vote then the leader is chosen by those who are not morally principled, and the parent comment argues that if morally principled people opt to divest from tobacco then only the morally unprincipled remain as the shareholders in the industry.
Instead passive and voluntary actions like simply not investing in companies and not buying their products - possibly framed as something more principled like divestment - is our default setting.
It’s gross but it’s the world we live in and the culture we’ve largely cultivated.
I do not though and will not invest in tobacco companies for this reason.
If you look at history, nicotine has been nearly unstoppable. If one cigarette company stops selling them, they will simply cede market share to another. If all stop selling, it would inevitably create a massive black market - there are specific markets that attempt prohibition, you can see what happened historically.
Instead, isn't it rational to be realistic and aim for harm reduction? If Consumers can receive a satisfactory nicotine experience from a product that is going to be far less harmful, isn't that still a net positive?
I’m not saying they won’t exist, I am choosing to not support them though. I am realistic. But I’m not going to compromise what I believe in to ride on the back of their success in hurting millions of people on the plant, many of whom are not making an informed choice. Every child in a smoking household did not get a choice. Pets too.
You make your choices and I’ll make mine.
It’s a moral stance and those are personal, not societal.
This is about nicotine so these examples strike me as off topic.
> It’s a moral stance and those are personal, not societal.
Society level, moral choices are made all the time. Just ask some Supreme Court justices. And governments profit from nicotine consumption through sin taxes. Whose taxes should be solely devoted to paying for the externalities consumption causes.