Righty, seems they can't be seen to tax it (taxing a medical product = bad ? right?) they don't want to condone it (publicly they must say they do) what about all the lost revenue? So they kick it into touch by requiring that it become a licensed medical product - goodbye dilemma hello $$ hurrah.
I looked into sourcing nicotine, and, yes you can grow tobacco in the UK... but as of 2001 NOT FOR PERSONAL CONSUMPTION unless, you guessed it, you pay duty!
Weeeell, I've been thinkin' (and I have been told before that this is dangerous) and here's what I come up with. Extract from a letter from customs and excise to a tobacco growers forum (25th Oct 2001) :-
"...You may also find it useful to know that we apply a risk-based approach to compliance and law enforcement to protect all the individual taxes and duties for which we are responsible, including tobacco products duty. There is not a great deal of home-grown tobacco smoked in the UK and we will certainly not be targeting potential domestic tobacco producers. Nor do we wish to devote a disproportionate amount of resource to the control of hobby growers and manufacturers.You may wish to point out to your customers that duty only becomes due once the tobacco can be smoked i.e. when the cured tobacco leaves have been shredded. There is no duty on tobacco seeds, which are quite legal to buy, or on the tobacco plants themselves."
And now here is a very handy extract from my Prescott and Ridge :-
It may be extracted by boiling the tobacco leaves with water, making alkaline with lime and distilling, the distillate is acidified with oxalic acid (rhubarb!) to fix the volatile nicotine and concentrated by evaporation. The residue made alkaline with caustic soda and the free alkaloid extracted with ether (diesel engine starting stuff), which is distilled off.
So, I don't know about you but I'm off to the alottment.
Cheers
I looked into sourcing nicotine, and, yes you can grow tobacco in the UK... but as of 2001 NOT FOR PERSONAL CONSUMPTION unless, you guessed it, you pay duty!
Weeeell, I've been thinkin' (and I have been told before that this is dangerous) and here's what I come up with. Extract from a letter from customs and excise to a tobacco growers forum (25th Oct 2001) :-
"...You may also find it useful to know that we apply a risk-based approach to compliance and law enforcement to protect all the individual taxes and duties for which we are responsible, including tobacco products duty. There is not a great deal of home-grown tobacco smoked in the UK and we will certainly not be targeting potential domestic tobacco producers. Nor do we wish to devote a disproportionate amount of resource to the control of hobby growers and manufacturers.You may wish to point out to your customers that duty only becomes due once the tobacco can be smoked i.e. when the cured tobacco leaves have been shredded. There is no duty on tobacco seeds, which are quite legal to buy, or on the tobacco plants themselves."
And now here is a very handy extract from my Prescott and Ridge :-
It may be extracted by boiling the tobacco leaves with water, making alkaline with lime and distilling, the distillate is acidified with oxalic acid (rhubarb!) to fix the volatile nicotine and concentrated by evaporation. The residue made alkaline with caustic soda and the free alkaloid extracted with ether (diesel engine starting stuff), which is distilled off.
So, I don't know about you but I'm off to the alottment.
Cheers
