Electronic cigarettes also have nicotine. Why is it less harmful than cigarettes?

Many people’s fear of nicotine may come from the same saying: a drop of nicotine can kill a horse. This statement often appears in various public service advertisements for smoking cessation, but in fact, it has nothing to do with the actual harm caused by nicotine to the human body.

As an addictive substance ubiquitous in nature, many familiar vegetables, such as tomatoes, eggplants, and potatoes, contain trace amounts of nicotine

Injecting nicotine is indeed very toxic. Extracting nicotine from 15-20 cigarettes and injecting it into a vein can cause death. But please note that inhaling nicotine-containing smoke and intravenous injection are not the same thing.

Studies have shown that the nicotine absorbed by the lungs only accounts for 3% of the total amount of nicotine when smoking, and these nicotine will quickly degrade after entering the human body and be excreted through sweat, urine, etc. This is why it is difficult for us to cause nicotine poisoning due to smoking.

Evidence from modern medicine shows that the serious consequences that cigarettes may bring, such as lung cancer, emphysema and cardiovascular diseases, basically all come from cigarette tar, and the harm of nicotine to the human body cannot be compared with that. Public Health UK (PHE) released The report mentioned that tar-free e-cigarettes are at least 95% less harmful than cigarettes, and there is actually no difference in the nicotine content of the two.

The current exaggerated and false claims about the health hazards of nicotine began in the European and American public health campaigns in the 1960s, when governments in various countries deliberately exaggerated the toxicity of nicotine in order to promote smoking cessation. In fact, whether a small amount of nicotine is good or bad for the human body is still controversial in the medical field: for example, the Royal Society of Public Health (RSPH) has emphasized some of the medical benefits of nicotine, such as the treatment of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and attention deficit disorder. and many more.