That's just ducky!
So did you have something else to add to the discussion?
C.B.
LOL, thats classic
WTA is the future
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LOL, thats classic
Take Glen Moray vs. Talisker and its like a zero difference. If your comparing Bourbon Whiskey JD vs. Talisker there is a world of difference. From what I have seen Ethan's is better, Ethans= Talisker and Jerry's = JD end of point. Both are great but to each his/her own. Yes I like whiskey but beer is always better
Thanks. Great to know. Have you tried different levels of WTA in Ethan's? Curious to know if Aromas are like medium or extra strong strength?Take Glen Moray vs. Talisker and its like a zero difference. If your comparing Bourbon Whiskey JD vs. Talisker there is a world of difference. From what I have seen Ethan's is better, Ethans= Talisker and Jerry's = JD end of point. Both are great but to each his/her own. Yes I like whiskey but beer is always better
You would need to ask Jerry specifically for that information.
His WTA levels are not printed on his labels. For me the satiation was the same though.
For the record I prefer Vapelicious's WTA over Aroma's for the simple fact that is almost always readily available and I can get the level of WTA I need and the flavors that I want which goes into my preferences.
You may or may not be looking for the same thing.
C.B.
The idea of different WTA levels is confusing at best and very misleading as to what is going on. First off you have to define what WTA is. There was just a discussion about this with Jerry so check that out at the Aroma part of the forum.
First off WTA is not something separate from nicotine. WTA means Whole Tobacco Alkaloids. Nicotine makes up about 95% of what is in WTA and the other 5% is the minor alkaloids found in tobacco. Adding WTA to nicotine, or having different strengths of WTA doesn't make any sense. The only way that could be done is if you separated the minor alkaloids from the nicotine in the extraction process. It's very doubtful if that is how it's done (though I'm not a chemist from what I understand it is very unlikely).
As stated, the natural balance for WTA is about 95% nicotine and 5% minor alkaloids. That's what you get when you extract the alkaloids from tobacco. That would be the same balance you get when using snus or any other whole tobacco product. I don't have a clue as to what Ethan is doing with the WTA medium, strong, extra strong WTA. It really doesn't make any sense and he has never explained how he is pulling off that little miracle of chemistry.
Where would "the Aroma part of the forum" be?
Are you talking about at ecf? Aroma's home site what?
You aren't giving us or me enough information to check anything.
Truthfully you don't know what Ethan's chemist is doing so why cast aspersions on his product
which I'm going to guess you haven't tried is that correct?
If we want to believe that he has done exactly what you claim isn't normally done it is our right and our money plus you don't hear any of us complaining about the fact.
Leave the nastiness for Jerry and Ethan to sort out if they choose to do so.
Perhaps you could take that up with Ethan at his site since he cannot post here and ask him about that.
Preferably ask his brother who is the chemist.
I don't care either way it works and it works well for me.
Is it fair to denigrate the product when he cannot respond?
I think not.
C.B.
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Vapelicious | Whole Tobacco Alkaloid Liquid for Electronic Cigarettes To ask Ethan questions please refer to his site!
Where would "the Aroma part of the forum" be?
Are you talking about at ecf? Aroma's home site what?
You aren't giving us or me enough information to check anything.
Truthfully you don't know what Ethan's chemist is doing so why cast aspersions on his product
which I'm going to guess you haven't tried is that correct?
If we want to believe that he has done exactly what you claim isn't normally done it is our right and our money plus you don't hear any of us complaining about the fact.
Leave the nastiness for Jerry and Ethan to sort out if they choose to do so.
Perhaps you could take that up with Ethan at his site since he cannot post here and ask him about that.
Preferably ask his brother who is the chemist.
I don't care either way it works and it works well for me.
Is it fair to denigrate the product when he cannot respond?
I think not.
C.B.
This is where I brought up the issue with Aroma
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...on-available-aroma-ejuice-79.html#post4677898
Just so you know I have no skin in this game. I am not taking sides as to Jerry or Ethan. I'm just trying to add clarity to the issue of what WTA is. It is certainly not my job to try and figure out what Ethan is doing, or his chemist. I am saying that from my understanding of how WTA extract is made, the idea of different strengths of WTA doesn't make sense. There is simply no logic to it.
Either a WTA e-liquid has the same balance of alkaloids that are found in tobacco or it doesn't, and if it doesn't just what is it and how did they get there. I don't think that is to much to expect.
If I was using the product I would certainly like to know just what it is I was using.
Seems pretty simple to me. You have a sample of extract that you dilute with vg/pg to either high, medium, or low. That vg/pg mix is saturated with nicotine of either high, medium, low, or zero nicotine. Ethan, if I remember correctly, explained that he had a tobacco specifically chosen that has low TSN's in it to reduced presence of carcinogens.
It's either as Milo hobo said - same as with nic-liquids (dilution) - or they are adding stright nic to WTA to create a weaker WTA (more nic to minor alkaloids in the balance). You know how people love convenience.
WTA is not an exact formula; it depends on the tobacco. And also the extraction procedure - which will much more closely (though still not exactly) that in tobacco rather than smoke.
Experiencially, I feel the minor alkaloids come through stronger in WTA liquid than in smoke. But I have no numbers and eberyone will be different. It's so easy to add pure nic to taste as desired that I'f never buy anything other than 100% WTA (i.e. not diluted with just-nic).
WTA is not an exact formula; it depends on the tobacco. And also the extraction procedure - which will much more closely (though still not exactly) that in tobacco rather than smoke.
Experiencially, I feel the minor alkaloids come through stronger in WTA liquid than in smoke. But I have no numbers and eberyone will be different. It's so easy to add pure nic to taste as desired that I'f never buy anything other than 100% WTA (i.e. not diluted with just-nic).
Note: Bolded text lines in quoted text added by me, not the OP
I'm no chemist, a novice to vaping (3 months), and actually do not know the scientific definition yet alone the make up of WTA. But I have read all the info on Ethan and Jerry's website, did some google searches and readings about MAOI, etc. and have been following the WTA discussions in this thread an others.
Me wonders in the recent discussion in this thread if it's partly a semantics and partly unknowns about how both the WTA vendors are creating there WTA brews that has us confused. For example to my simple mind if one can start with a tobacco leaf and wind up with 99.9% pure nic, then the missing component (call it WTA, minor alkloids, magic potion, whatever) has been removed from the leaf and separated from the nicotine. Or we would have pure nicotine available to us.
So to me it seems plausible/possible that a chemist can also isolate this 'missing component' that can be mixed into a solution at different ratios. Then why can't this 'component' then be added into the final mix of PG, VG and nicotine to create what is called 'WTA' e-liquid?
And like someone else said - I don't know or understand the magic chemistry behind all this - I've used WTA e-liguid from both vendors and 'for me' it works better than nic only. It leaves me with that more complete feeling and I can actually put down my PV for awhile instead of chain vaping.
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MikeE3 - they don't need to isolate the minor alkaloids, just dilute with nicotine so that the minor alkaloids become even more minor (WTA-weak). I don't know if any vendor does this; I would think not and it's rather unnecessary as one easily do so oneself.
A WTA extraction is likely, based on speculation from my POV- to be done as a whole. tobacco + WTA is extracted, nicotine content in final isolation would give specific indicators to probable WTA content to nicotine ratio, WTA is added in this manner and testing for nicotine titration rates gives an indicator to total WTA content.
Example: standardized titration test shows X amount of nicotine, therefore we can assume WTA = N [unless you know exactly what it is, it's still a variable].
Suppose we then take the amount of nicotine in here and use that as our titration only [adjusting WTA amounts by using total nicotine percentage as an indicator], there will be a minimum amount of WTA based on total WTA content in the source material which will correlate to the total nicotine that is tested for.
If this is standardized to an extent [if you know what your nicotine and WTA content are and can consistently get this level], WTA will be consistent and function in "steps" correlating to the nicotine ratio. If someone wants higher nicotine, nicotine is then titrated [adjusted upwards in small increments] upwards to achieve the desired result after a known maximum percentage [let's say 5-10% of 20ML] of WTA is added.
If you hit the max ratio and you don't have the minimal percentage of nicotine you want to use, you simply titrate the nicotine upwards until achieving the desired results.
Flavoring will certainly throw this ratio off whack a little, but I guess it depends on when it's added.
WTA could also be a super-concentrate, too. [ie, drops per X ML's type dealie] But I'm not 100% sure how you'd concentrate it further or whether it'd be safe to handle... probably not without the right equipment.
This is likely why we don't see it for DIY use everywhere.
I guess since I'm speculating, all of this could be wrong. But you know, it got me thinking.
Thanks for a good topic to wrap my head around, MikeE3.
Example: standardized titration test shows X amount of nicotine, therefore we can assume WTA = N [unless you know exactly what it is, it's still a variable].
Suppose we then take the amount of nicotine in here and use that as our titration only [adjusting WTA amounts by using total nicotine percentage as an indicator], there will be a minimum amount of WTA based on total WTA content in the source material which will correlate to the total nicotine that is tested for.
If this is standardized to an extent [if you know what your nicotine and WTA content are and can consistently get this level], WTA will be consistent and function in "steps" correlating to the nicotine ratio. If someone wants higher nicotine, nicotine is then titrated [adjusted upwards in small increments] upwards to achieve the desired result after a known maximum percentage [let's say 5-10% of 20ML] of WTA is added.
If you hit the max ratio and you don't have the minimal percentage of nicotine you want to use, you simply titrate the nicotine upwards until achieving the desired results.
Flavoring will certainly throw this ratio off whack a little, but I guess it depends on when it's added.
WTA could also be a super-concentrate, too. [ie, drops per X ML's type dealie] But I'm not 100% sure how you'd concentrate it further or whether it'd be safe to handle... probably not without the right equipment.
This is likely why we don't see it for DIY use everywhere.
I guess since I'm speculating, all of this could be wrong. But you know, it got me thinking.
Thanks for a good topic to wrap my head around, MikeE3.
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What you say, I think I understand.
WTA = nicotine (~95%) + minor alkaloids (~5%,)
so WTA + an additional amount of nicotine changes the ratio for example to WTA with a composition of ~98% nicotine and 2% minor alkaloids.
But when the chemist is doing his magical titration (is this the right word?) to get just nicotine what happens to the minor alkaloids. Are they just lost as waste by-product or could they be re-claimed.
If they can be re-claimed/captured then one could re-work the WTA composition by adding 'it' back in? Is this possible or just a simple-minded or just a wrong view?
You're welcome. Hope you have fun wrapping your head around it, as I'm in over my head trying to understand it.
Maybe the WTA vendors can steal the old advert line and change "Better living through chemistry" to "Better vaping through chemistry".
Titration is just a way to measure acidity/alkalinity by monitoring the pH with an indicator as a known amount of the other is added to base/acid. It can be used to determine the nicotine / WTA level in an e-liquid for example.The standard extraction is likely to select just the alkaloids first and then extract the nicotine from there; if done this way, the WTA is already available by stopping at an earlier point (though one might add a step to purify the alkaloids). There might be a way to get the nicotine directly without the WTA step; not sure.In any case, one would not want to be utting anythng back in; just not take it out in the first place.
@Brob : 'WTA minus nic' is just unnecessary, imo. And wouldn't be practical as the concentration would need to be ~20x higher than with nic liquids to be used like an additive such as sweetner.
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What else do you think is new on the vaping front in the better vaping through chemistry.You're welcome. Hope you have fun wrapping your head around it, as I'm in over my head trying to understand it.
Maybe the WTA vendors can steal the old advert line and change "Better living through chemistry" to "Better vaping through chemistry".
So I read 'this' and read 'that' about WTA and the more I read the more I realize what I don't know. To say nothing about the 'unknown unkowns'. So I called Ethan and had a long conversation with him. I felt guilty taking up so much of his time, but he was more than willing to talk on and very open with me.
At the end of the conversation he asked if I would post the following for him. He stressed ( and I encourage you to take him up on his offer ) to please ask any questionss and raise any concerns on his blog about WTA. From my experience with him, I'm sure he's more than willing to discuss WTA and answer any questions.
The Other Guy's Blog
The following is Ethan's response on WTA Safety:
Throughout all nicotiana tabacum and rustica nicotine by weight in the whole plant can range from 0.5% to 8%. For tabacum, the range is more like 1 to 4.5% or a more common range of what people would be smoking it is more like 1.5 to 3.5%. Only about 50% of all nicotiana species have nicotine as the major alkaloid and certain isolated Native American tribes used species where nicotine was not the major alkaloid.
What this means though is that not all WTA is the same, contrary to what I have seen said on ECF recently. Dvap originally dosed by some sort of titration giving total alkaloid content. It's actually helpful to have some sort of chart to visualize this but say you have two tobaccos with the same amount of minor alkaloids where they are 5% of the total alkaloidal content. (This is the conventional wisdom on WTA but isn't even all that accurate)
If one tobacco has 5% minor alkaloids but the nicotine is only 1.5% of total weight and you are going to make an extract of this at 20mg/ml or whatever, then you compare this to a 5% minor alkaloid WTA made from 3% nicotine tobacco, what will this look like? The nicotine is doing "most of the work" getting toward total alkaloidal content of 20mg/ml, so the 1.5% tobacco is going to be relatively low in nicotine but the WTA effects will be more potent than from the 3% tobacco.
Then there are still more questions than this which need to be asked like, "What is the breakdown of the other alkaloids?", "How potent are the effects of these alkaloids and what is their pharmacological action?", etc.
The fact that nicotine is about 95% of the alkaloids by weight does not mean that the minor alkaloids are that much less important. One of the characteristic flavors from green bell peppers (2-isoButyl-3-methoxypyrazine) is detected as an odor at 0.002 parts per billion, so a single drop would have a very high impact in a swimming pool's worth of water. There's similarly "high impact" alkaloids in tobacco which researchers don't even know that much about yet. We know a good bit about nicotine metabolism, but still not so much even about the core "minor alkaloids" (anabasine, nornicotine, anatabine, cotinine and myosmine).
All sorts of things like a person's age, race, gender, whether menthol is used in tobacco, whether the person takes birth control or drinks wheatgrass or grapefruit juice have effects on nicotine metabolism. It's complicated enough just talking about nicotine but we do have some idea how the other alkaloids affects us.
Could it be argued that whatever natural balance of alkaloids as taken from tobacco is better? I'd say yes, but there is a huge variation of what alkaloids, and thus TSNAs, are in all the different varieties of tobacco. To make a "super WTA" or one which would be more similar to what we get from smoking, it would be ideal to co-extract another plant besides tobacco. I don't do this, but it would be required to mimic the alkaloid profile of cigarettes since new alkaloids are boosted ("pyrosynthesized") by the burning process, and could possibly be more effective in helping more entrenched smokers to quit.
Regardless of how much I do or do not know about the exact levels of these alkaloids in one WTA to another, there was no way for me to know what levels in e-liquid would be effective without giving it to people to try. The four strengths from Low to X-high are based on feedback from testers over the past 9+ months. Our process is pretty much set in stone, including using the same low-TSNA tobacco, nowadays so we are proceeding to ramping up production and will get the more expensive testing to reassure people and establish what carcinogen levels are vs. regular cigarettes, nic-only e-liquid and snus. There's not much point to release batch testing when I can't keep a batch stocked long enough to even get results back, but we are working toward this.
I expect the levels of TSNAs to be below levels set for the Gothiatek standard used in snus and that certain constituents of snus like heavy metals would not survive the WTA extraction process. In the 2010 results from snus manufacturers, they exceeded their own guidelines, but there are studies assigning a sort of "risk rating" to each individual carcinogen which is a concern. So, we can look at the Gothiatek numbers and balance that with what is known about use levels, look at what is in WTA and what is known about e-liquid use levels (1-6ml with a 3ml/day average is my guesstimate), then we can calculate an overall "risk rating" comparison.
Is this as good as the long term epidemiological studies like those showing snus to be 98% less harmful than cigarettes? I guess not, but it will give us some idea. I plan to release more info on what sort of testing should be done and what we do in an attempt to set industry-wide standards for WTA. It is more like a half dozen specialized tests required, not a single "go get a GC/MS" as suggested in the "WTA - the Issues" thread. The "other WTA place" claims to get testing but shows no results. Even if they own a $10k+ GC machine, GC is not the industry standard for testing certain aspects of tobacco and their results are not as credible as using a lab specializing in tobacco.
If you look at the Box Elder results done by Perfumer's Apprentice, you will notice that a hefty percentage of the results are not certain enough to really say what is in their nic. This is precisely why we will be using an American lab with special certifications for tobacco and not just doing it ourselves or sending it off to anyone with a GC machine. Is there something to be concerned about since we haven't released GC results yet? Not really, but if people have questions/concerns they should post on my website rather than jumping to conclusions when they don't quite get the science. We do some more advanced testing than titrations. Understanding the process and doing some basic steps toward purity are sufficient, though we will benefit from "GC" too. I get some info from "upstream" about my tobacco and there is a huge body of knowledge on what is in varieties of tobacco we can draw on to say that we are pretty much doing everything we can toward safety at this point.
(Of course, because of FDA policy, I can't officially say that WTA is safer than traditional tobacco products and this is no different than nic-only e-liquid. Regulation, in general, serves to protect larger companies from competition regardless of stated purposes to protect consumers. Anyone who thinks that WTA poses a bigger risk to vaping than the FDA itself is horribly mistaken. They are surely going to ignore CASAA's request to have ecigs treated as "modified risk" products by default and assert their power to protect BT/BP's outmoded products by requiring the substantial equivalence rules for "new tobacco products", attempt to tax ecigs the same as cigarettes or worse, etc. I know people are just finding out about this but they have had a whole timeline up on the FDA website, so nobody should be surprised.)
So, since we do know pretty well how much nicotine is in X amount of WTA which results in end users being satisfied at whatever their use patterns results in whatever of the 4 strengths Low to X-high, we then take this amount of nicotine and balance it with added nic if people want the higher levels up to 36mg. I have some customers who are happy with the amount of nic in WTA alone, then I have others who are ordering Low WTA and 30mg nic. I think that a combination of quantification along with subjective, qualitative analysis is a superior methodology versus establishing a crude "total alkaloid content" dosage and guessing at tobaccos which can very easily have double the nicotine from one to the next.
The average levels of the minor alkaloids (and TSNAs) varies far more than nicotine, from non-detectable above a 50 nanogram threshold to several percent, from one tobacco to another. Anyone saying that all WTA is the same is flat out wrong.
Adding nic alongside WTA is pretty much just like making WTA from a higher nicotine tobacco, not a "miracle of chemistry". A configuration like Low WTA - 36mg probably doesn't relate to what is natural in any type of tobacco. There's no tobacco with nicotine-only like most people vape so it is a dangerous fallacy to assume that what is natural is best or vice versa. I think giving more options is the way to go.
At the end of the conversation he asked if I would post the following for him. He stressed ( and I encourage you to take him up on his offer ) to please ask any questionss and raise any concerns on his blog about WTA. From my experience with him, I'm sure he's more than willing to discuss WTA and answer any questions.
The Other Guy's Blog
The following is Ethan's response on WTA Safety:
Throughout all nicotiana tabacum and rustica nicotine by weight in the whole plant can range from 0.5% to 8%. For tabacum, the range is more like 1 to 4.5% or a more common range of what people would be smoking it is more like 1.5 to 3.5%. Only about 50% of all nicotiana species have nicotine as the major alkaloid and certain isolated Native American tribes used species where nicotine was not the major alkaloid.
What this means though is that not all WTA is the same, contrary to what I have seen said on ECF recently. Dvap originally dosed by some sort of titration giving total alkaloid content. It's actually helpful to have some sort of chart to visualize this but say you have two tobaccos with the same amount of minor alkaloids where they are 5% of the total alkaloidal content. (This is the conventional wisdom on WTA but isn't even all that accurate)
If one tobacco has 5% minor alkaloids but the nicotine is only 1.5% of total weight and you are going to make an extract of this at 20mg/ml or whatever, then you compare this to a 5% minor alkaloid WTA made from 3% nicotine tobacco, what will this look like? The nicotine is doing "most of the work" getting toward total alkaloidal content of 20mg/ml, so the 1.5% tobacco is going to be relatively low in nicotine but the WTA effects will be more potent than from the 3% tobacco.
Then there are still more questions than this which need to be asked like, "What is the breakdown of the other alkaloids?", "How potent are the effects of these alkaloids and what is their pharmacological action?", etc.
The fact that nicotine is about 95% of the alkaloids by weight does not mean that the minor alkaloids are that much less important. One of the characteristic flavors from green bell peppers (2-isoButyl-3-methoxypyrazine) is detected as an odor at 0.002 parts per billion, so a single drop would have a very high impact in a swimming pool's worth of water. There's similarly "high impact" alkaloids in tobacco which researchers don't even know that much about yet. We know a good bit about nicotine metabolism, but still not so much even about the core "minor alkaloids" (anabasine, nornicotine, anatabine, cotinine and myosmine).
All sorts of things like a person's age, race, gender, whether menthol is used in tobacco, whether the person takes birth control or drinks wheatgrass or grapefruit juice have effects on nicotine metabolism. It's complicated enough just talking about nicotine but we do have some idea how the other alkaloids affects us.
Could it be argued that whatever natural balance of alkaloids as taken from tobacco is better? I'd say yes, but there is a huge variation of what alkaloids, and thus TSNAs, are in all the different varieties of tobacco. To make a "super WTA" or one which would be more similar to what we get from smoking, it would be ideal to co-extract another plant besides tobacco. I don't do this, but it would be required to mimic the alkaloid profile of cigarettes since new alkaloids are boosted ("pyrosynthesized") by the burning process, and could possibly be more effective in helping more entrenched smokers to quit.
Regardless of how much I do or do not know about the exact levels of these alkaloids in one WTA to another, there was no way for me to know what levels in e-liquid would be effective without giving it to people to try. The four strengths from Low to X-high are based on feedback from testers over the past 9+ months. Our process is pretty much set in stone, including using the same low-TSNA tobacco, nowadays so we are proceeding to ramping up production and will get the more expensive testing to reassure people and establish what carcinogen levels are vs. regular cigarettes, nic-only e-liquid and snus. There's not much point to release batch testing when I can't keep a batch stocked long enough to even get results back, but we are working toward this.
I expect the levels of TSNAs to be below levels set for the Gothiatek standard used in snus and that certain constituents of snus like heavy metals would not survive the WTA extraction process. In the 2010 results from snus manufacturers, they exceeded their own guidelines, but there are studies assigning a sort of "risk rating" to each individual carcinogen which is a concern. So, we can look at the Gothiatek numbers and balance that with what is known about use levels, look at what is in WTA and what is known about e-liquid use levels (1-6ml with a 3ml/day average is my guesstimate), then we can calculate an overall "risk rating" comparison.
Is this as good as the long term epidemiological studies like those showing snus to be 98% less harmful than cigarettes? I guess not, but it will give us some idea. I plan to release more info on what sort of testing should be done and what we do in an attempt to set industry-wide standards for WTA. It is more like a half dozen specialized tests required, not a single "go get a GC/MS" as suggested in the "WTA - the Issues" thread. The "other WTA place" claims to get testing but shows no results. Even if they own a $10k+ GC machine, GC is not the industry standard for testing certain aspects of tobacco and their results are not as credible as using a lab specializing in tobacco.
If you look at the Box Elder results done by Perfumer's Apprentice, you will notice that a hefty percentage of the results are not certain enough to really say what is in their nic. This is precisely why we will be using an American lab with special certifications for tobacco and not just doing it ourselves or sending it off to anyone with a GC machine. Is there something to be concerned about since we haven't released GC results yet? Not really, but if people have questions/concerns they should post on my website rather than jumping to conclusions when they don't quite get the science. We do some more advanced testing than titrations. Understanding the process and doing some basic steps toward purity are sufficient, though we will benefit from "GC" too. I get some info from "upstream" about my tobacco and there is a huge body of knowledge on what is in varieties of tobacco we can draw on to say that we are pretty much doing everything we can toward safety at this point.
(Of course, because of FDA policy, I can't officially say that WTA is safer than traditional tobacco products and this is no different than nic-only e-liquid. Regulation, in general, serves to protect larger companies from competition regardless of stated purposes to protect consumers. Anyone who thinks that WTA poses a bigger risk to vaping than the FDA itself is horribly mistaken. They are surely going to ignore CASAA's request to have ecigs treated as "modified risk" products by default and assert their power to protect BT/BP's outmoded products by requiring the substantial equivalence rules for "new tobacco products", attempt to tax ecigs the same as cigarettes or worse, etc. I know people are just finding out about this but they have had a whole timeline up on the FDA website, so nobody should be surprised.)
So, since we do know pretty well how much nicotine is in X amount of WTA which results in end users being satisfied at whatever their use patterns results in whatever of the 4 strengths Low to X-high, we then take this amount of nicotine and balance it with added nic if people want the higher levels up to 36mg. I have some customers who are happy with the amount of nic in WTA alone, then I have others who are ordering Low WTA and 30mg nic. I think that a combination of quantification along with subjective, qualitative analysis is a superior methodology versus establishing a crude "total alkaloid content" dosage and guessing at tobaccos which can very easily have double the nicotine from one to the next.
The average levels of the minor alkaloids (and TSNAs) varies far more than nicotine, from non-detectable above a 50 nanogram threshold to several percent, from one tobacco to another. Anyone saying that all WTA is the same is flat out wrong.
Adding nic alongside WTA is pretty much just like making WTA from a higher nicotine tobacco, not a "miracle of chemistry". A configuration like Low WTA - 36mg probably doesn't relate to what is natural in any type of tobacco. There's no tobacco with nicotine-only like most people vape so it is a dangerous fallacy to assume that what is natural is best or vice versa. I think giving more options is the way to go.
It's a fair point that tobaccos vary widely in the alkaloid mix and there is the suggestion that much work went nto choosing the right ones with low TSNAs and offering differing WTA profiles (nic/minor and perhaps more - based on feedback rather than knowing what all the minors do, for that we don't know in any depth.)
One point that caught my eye : "To make a "super WTA" or one which would be more similar to what we get from smoking, it would be ideal to co-extract another plant besides tobacco. I don't do this, but it would be required to mimic the alkaloid profile of cigarettes since new alkaloids are boosted ("pyrosynthesized") by the burning process, and could possibly be more effective in helping more entrenched smokers to quit."
Why co-extraction, and not just combine two extractions?
I doubt the role of pyrosynthesis in creating any interesting psycho-active alkaloids; it's a destructive, highly oxidative process. Heating, on the other hand, might cause milder chemical changes through reaction, limited oxidation or limited decomposition; this might also occur in the e-cig, although in the case of smoking there are a whole range of other compounds present that would not be in WTA. (Around 90% of the alkaloids in tobacco are wasted through smoking; the salt forms by and large are not freed or otherwise carried out.)
Hope this is taken constructively; Ethan is a pioneer in the field.
In short, the different WTA strengths relate to the balance of nicotine to the minor alkaloids, as far as I can tell. (Ethan often refers to WTA as though it was just the minor alkaloids. )
One point that caught my eye : "To make a "super WTA" or one which would be more similar to what we get from smoking, it would be ideal to co-extract another plant besides tobacco. I don't do this, but it would be required to mimic the alkaloid profile of cigarettes since new alkaloids are boosted ("pyrosynthesized") by the burning process, and could possibly be more effective in helping more entrenched smokers to quit."
Why co-extraction, and not just combine two extractions?
I doubt the role of pyrosynthesis in creating any interesting psycho-active alkaloids; it's a destructive, highly oxidative process. Heating, on the other hand, might cause milder chemical changes through reaction, limited oxidation or limited decomposition; this might also occur in the e-cig, although in the case of smoking there are a whole range of other compounds present that would not be in WTA. (Around 90% of the alkaloids in tobacco are wasted through smoking; the salt forms by and large are not freed or otherwise carried out.)
Hope this is taken constructively; Ethan is a pioneer in the field.
In short, the different WTA strengths relate to the balance of nicotine to the minor alkaloids, as far as I can tell. (Ethan often refers to WTA as though it was just the minor alkaloids.
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