FDA to regulate e-cig as tobacco

[Cee_Jay]

Stocked up on nic for the year. Expect to be 100% free by then. A year's supply of everything else is less than $100.

 

[Kurt]

I know for a fact that with the exception of their tobacco Pure juice, Volcano uses synthetic nicotine in all their other USA blend juices. Given that, I doubt that they're the only ones, and if so, maybe they shouldn't be - it's a loophole worth looking into, at the very least.

Not a chance this is true, unless you are paying orders of magnitude more for this juice. As Roly said, ask them and you will be met with silence. Extracted nicotine is just as pure, far cheaper, and more effective. I am repeating what has been said, but it should be mentioned that I am a 30 year veteran of academic chemistry. No way Volcano's is synthetic nic!

 

[Kurt]

I don't really have a link, but from what I understand, (which of course is not proof) eXtremeVaping uses synthetic nic, and what I've heard on the chat with Volcano is that other than the Tobacco Pure, the rest of their USA juices are synthetic.

Levy may use pharm grade nic, but not synthetic, even if that is what he is saying. You would not be able to sell synth nic juice for the prices Levy has. And it would be 50:50 l-nic:d-nic, and d-nic is not as active as l-nic, so it would not be as good. Synth l-nic would be several orders of magnitude more expensive than extracted and purified pharm-grade nic.

And text typed into a chat does not equal chemical fact.

To be fair, I think some vendors may not know the difference between pharm-grade nic and synthetic, and think they are the same thing. As long as it is l-nic, they are the same chemically, but the production costs to make the two differ dramatically, indeed prohibitively. You really do need a pretty strong background in synthetic organic chemistry to understand why the costs are so different.

Nothing against you, as you are just relating what you have read/seen/heard to the discussion. This is a very central and important matter however, and I think it is important to not let info like this propagate, since the vast majority of people have little to no education in chemistry, and I have already seen info like this used to fool customers into thinking they are getting something special when they are not.

Many Chinese juices use grades cheaper than pharm-grade, and so many other tobacco compounds come along for the ride from extraction. You can taste them. Pharm grade nic is the same thing, just with more purification steps, and it essentially pure l-nic. That all said, I think Levy's nic juice is about as good as can be obtained, but it is almost certainly not synth nic, nor does it need to be to be so good.

 

[Kenom]

I work at a cigarette and cigar shop, and we sell a FLAVORED dropper that you can use to drip drops onto ANY tobacco product and flavor it. Since it is a flavoring only and contains no nicotine, there is no taxes or regulations on the product. It's another one of those gray areas that allows them to distribute the product for adding to tobacco, without actually being a tobacco product. They come in a multitude of flavors ranging from mango, to menthol and pretty much every flavor under the sun. These are nothing more than some flavoring IN a PG suspension.

I am particularly concerned about the taxes associated with the E-cig and all PV related products. I've been looking at manufacturing and selling PV related equipment locally and the addition of taxes on these products concerns me a lot, especially when it concerns having to register with the FDA, State, and local governments to sell said products.

 

[Gracchus Grey]

I work at a cigarette and cigar shop, and we sell a FLAVORED dropper that you can use to drip drops onto ANY tobacco product and flavor it. Since it is a flavoring only and contains no nicotine, there is no taxes or regulations on the product. It's another one of those gray areas that allows them to distribute the product for adding to tobacco, without actually being a tobacco product. They come in a multitude of flavors ranging from mango, to menthol and pretty much every flavor under the sun. These are nothing more than some flavoring IN a PG suspension.

I am particularly concerned about the taxes associated with the E-cig and all PV related products. I've been looking at manufacturing and selling PV related equipment locally and the addition of taxes on these products concerns me a lot, especially when it concerns having to register with the FDA, State, and local governments to sell said products.

yeah... PG and battery tubes and atties can't be regulated. But nicotine...

 

[Old Chemist]

That all said, I think Levy's nic juice is about as good as can be obtained, but it is almost certainly not synth nic, nor does it need to be to be so good.

Being a chemist I'd even remove the word "almost". Only a few people could afford e-liquid containing synthetic nicotine. Also - synthetic nic could contain some more dangerous impurities than that extracted from tobacco leaves.

 

[Alžběta Madragana]

Well, I don't know where we're going with this taxing bit, but I am very willing to bet that there are already folks here at ECF who are looking into extracting nicotine from tobacco... I did a bit of research on it and it sounds like soaking the leaves in water overnight will get you a dark brown slurry with the soluable (spelling?) nicotine oil in it. From there, you boil it till you get a syrupy liquid and then you have to refine it till it's clear.
Folks, I'm definitely going to give it a shot if it comes down to Big Tobacco getting into this game. I despise the tobacco companies who continue to sell tobacco products (not e-cigs) that they KNOW will kill their customers and also knowing their customers will become addicts to their products.
And that is my 2 cents worth...