The pharmacology section is sophisticated.
CIGS are bad, nicotine is pretty neutral to good,
as a lozenge or patch or gum.
Edit: Nicotine can be way more medically relevant than “less bad”.
Not sure what the person replying to me is even on about, tbh
Pretty much every other form of tobacco that is not cigarettes is less bad.
I imagine if you inhaled helium several times a day for decades that it would also mess something up.
Millions of people have been using inhalers to control asthma too, this well studied and agreed to be safe. This is just off the top of my head.
The function of if tobacco causes cancer has as much to do with processing (it used to be cured by wood fire at a higher temperature which is where much of the carcinogenic properties came from) and the byproducts that processing creates, particularly Nitrosamine, its now cured differently in a process which is closer to snus, and somewhat safer.
Nicotine addiction (which I have) should be about harm reduction first, cigarettes are the only product that I can think of if used as commonly used will kill you or dramatically shorten your life, and it probably wont be cancer, it’ll be COPD, heart disease, or other cardiovascular issues - which are the same issues firefighters get from repeated smoke exposure. Breathing the byproducts of combustion is what’s really awful (and deadly).
Nicotine products aren't safe; they are highly addictive and may exacerbate tumors that are already there. But they're far less addictive than tobacco products and they probably won't kill you.
I agree with you that tobacco is uniquely harmful, but smoking by itself is also bad by itself. Even exposure to smoke from campfires, if chronic, will elevate your risk for COPD, cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, etc.
But the role of the smoke itself is overemphasized which leads to a false sense of security. Switching from cigarettes to dip does lead to a significant improvement in mortality. But the real step change is moving to oral nicotine pouches, gum, patches, etc.
I'd also point out the risk from campfires and from cigarettes is not at all comparable. They are several orders of magnitude apart. Even smoking marijuana isn't nearly as dangerous as smoking tobacco. (Smoking marijuana is not safe, that just goes to show how ridiculously dangerous cigarettes are.)
Nicotine is not harmless. It is a teratogen, it may exacerbate cancers you already have, it can harm brain development in young users, it can cause high blood pressure, etc. And as stated previously - it is not good to be addicted to something! That is a bad health outcome in and of itself!
I occasionally use synthetic nicotine products, I don't judge people for using them, but let's not misrepresent what this is. It is a drug. If you take a look at the risks and decide it's worth it more power to you. But don't tell people it's harmless, that is dangerous misinformation.
No!, we’re specifically trying to avoid talking about tobacco.
We’re trying to talk about nicotine!
It is now.
I’m one of the top level comments just trying to discuss and highlight isolated nicotine.
Barely relevant now.
So both complement each other well.
[0]https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674%2826%2900335-1
[1]https://phys.org/news/2026-04-nicotine-biosynthesis-wild-tob...
I swear we are heading toward McKenna's Peak Novelty in this timeline.
I find nicotine to be an underperforming chemical, despite its popularity. A bit more of a cognitive kick would be nice. Know what I mean?
Chemically possible? Why not?
Going to bed and waking up an hour earlier,
working immediately upon wakefulness,
will keep you there.
I'm sure if you did it once or twice a year it'd be fine but let's be real, anyone who's willing to take it in the first place (outside of having a genuine medical reason like narcolepsy/ADHD) will want to take it a lot more than that.
Besides, in the long run - measured over weeks or months - these absolutely will not give you a productivity boost anyway comparable to sorting out your sleep/exercise/diet/mental health.
So instead of plugging away on house work or chores or my employer's boring work, I was building compilers and databases from scratch at 3am, unable to sleep.
And then I checked my blood pressure. Oops.
Also seemed directly implicated in a loved one of mine acquiring an eating disorder.
1/10 would not recommend.
It wears out quickly enough though, maybe in 3 hours.
Either way somebody somewhere wondered about this before 1820.
30 seconds on Wikipedia would have given you context of when the separation of nicotine occurred. Kind of hard to guess how tobacco plants make nicotine when you don't know what it is.