Jim,
Your concern is a valid one. Cyrus also makes a good point. WTA isn't cheap.
That being said, my vision for WTA was as a lifeboat for those vapers who could not give up cigarettes. (For those of you unfamiliar with the background, I theorized the concept of WTA back in 2009 and produced the first WTA in the fall of that year). The inspiration for WTA came from Swedish snus. Back then, there was a community of snus users on ECF who weren't all too thrilled with the effectiveness of nicotine eliquids in knocking out their cigarette cravings. They found Swedish snus to be very effective, and many of them combined vaping with Snus and they found their cigarettes cravings were gone. Some of them even quit vaping entirely, relying only on snus.
As a chemist, I found these observations about snus quite interesting. I asked myself, "What is it about snus that is different from nicotine only eliquids?". Obviously, snus is a whole tobacco product and nicotine eliquid is not. So, I refined the question, "What is it about tobacco that is different from nicotine?". I knew the effectiveness of snus was independent of burning and inhaling the tobacco. Snus worked and you didn't have to light up to get the benefit. It took me awhile, but my attention turned to the alkaloid profile of tobacco. Nicotine is generally viewed by the medical community as the addictive component of tobacco. As such, it gets all the attention. Nicotine, like many alkaloids, is psychoactive. But nicotine is not the only alkaloid present in tobacco. So, in a nutshell, the theory behind WTA is that tobacco addiction is not nicotine addiction, it is tobacco alkaloid addiction. This includes nicotine and all the other alkaloids occurring in tobacco in lesser amounts.
To put it quite another way, let's talk about pizza. If you just eat the pepperonis off the pizza, it might taste pretty good, but it just ain't pizza. Add some cheese, sauce, crust, etc... now that's pizza. But let's not push the analogy too far.
Some folks who've tried WTA find that it really doesn't do anything for them. Generally speaking, these folks really weren't having any trouble with cigarette cravings in the first place, and the old adage probably holds true for them that you don't need to fix what isn't broken.
When I first made WTA, I sent it to several people for testing. These weren't just random schmoes... these were individuals who couldn't find satisfaction from any amount of vaping. TWISTED VICTOR, for example would frequently vape up to 75 mg. Even with insane nicotine levels like this, he felt like, as he put it, a depressed shell of a person. TropicalBob (the man, the myth, the legend) could and did consume about any tobacco product you could imagine in a daily struggle to stay away from cigarettes. Finally, there was olderthandirt who found good relief from snus. Each of them found relief from their cravings with WTA. None was more dramatic than Victor who was thrilled to feel, as he put it, "Just normal again and actually motivated to do things". Of the three, only olderthandirt is still active on ECF (as far as I know).
So what are some things to know about WTA?
1. It's expensive. It's expensive because it's exceedingly difficult to produce. Many hours of hard work go into producing WTA. It's nothing like producing a nicotine eliquid. With nicotine liquid, you get nicotine and you get PG or VG and mix them together with some flavorings and you've got eliquid. With WTA, you've got to extract the alkaloids out of the tobacco. Then you've got to separate the alkaloids from all the other tobacco material that gets extracted as well. Alkaloids represent maybe one or two percent of tobacco. The WTA extraction process must remove this tiny percentage from the tobacco, capture only this tiny percentage, and eliminate all traces of the remaining 99% or so of the tobacco.
2. It's effective. This is, of course, no medical claim. People wouldn't pay a premium unless it really did something for them. Again, some folks who try WTA don't really see what the big deal is. As a rule, these folks will report that nicotine eliquid works pretty well for them.
3. It's probably not as safe as nicotine only eliquid but far safer than cigarettes. I've said it many times, if you're truly concerned about safety and want to minimize risk, breath good clean air. As the chemical complexity of a material increases, so does the possibility that something in that material will be bad for you. Like nicotine liquid and snus, WTA is immensely less complex than burning and inhaling tobacco. The principle behind any of these products is tobacco harm reduction.
4. As an eliquid, it stands on it's own. The term "unflavored WTA" is a bit of a misnomer. WTA does have a flavor, and if made correctly, it's a very subtle and satisfying flavor. Mr.Mann probably won't mind me quoting him as saying that he's tried hundreds of eliquids, and good WTA, even without any added flavor, beats them all (That being said, one should give consideration to whether they want to use WTA based on taste alone. It is intended for those who feel they need it, and is likely more addictive than nicotine only eliquid. Again, no need to fix what isn't broken if nicotine liquid works for you).
5. It's subjective. Currently two vendors sell WTA: AromaEJuice and WholeCig. Some folks swear by one or the other. With apologies to WholeCig, I find that AromaEJuice is the way to go. I'll admit considerable bias here since I created the WTA process used by AromaEJuice. Your mileage may vary.
6. It's still fairly unknown. Even though WTA has been around for several years now, the ECF community is largely unaware or only vaguely aware of WTA.
7. It's controversial. But so is vaping as a whole. This is quite convincingly evidenced by the FDA's outright hostility toward ecigarettes. There are movements afoot worldwide to squash vaping because "we don't know enough about it and bla bla bla". Disingenuous crap, all of it. We know plenty about cigarettes and their future is assured. .......s, the whole stinking lot of them.
