Nicotine – From the Pipes of Native Americans to the Tanks of 21st century Vapers

Nicotine is a popular stimulant with a deep history that most people, even today, will have some experience with. It is an almost inescapable feature of our social lives in the 21^st century. Thankfully, nicotine consumption today can be much less unpleasant for those nearby and mercifully better for the individual’s health than in the past. This is all thanks to the pleasant aromas, and lack of carcinogens, produced by modern-day vapes. Nonetheless, nicotine has been used recreationally for as long as humans have had access to it. It’s just now we have much more high-tech methods of consuming it with less negative health consequences. So, let’s take a look at the history of nicotine use, what exactly nicotine is and what nicotine consumption looks like in the 21^st century.

Most people’s first experience with nicotine will be from having a couple of puffs of a cigarette. Where you inhale the smoke of cured and then burnt tobacco plant leaves. Maybe, behind your sixth form after class or in a smoking area once you’ve had a couple of drinks. Such social practices have an ancient history and can be dated back over 5000 years ago. Where the plant was regularly smoked for religious ceremonies by South Americans and natives of the country now called Mexico. Tobacco use would go on to be widely consumed as a recreational stimulant, a form of currency and even a sign of peace between warring tribes of Native Americans over the course of the next several thousand years.

As the Americas were one of the only places in the world tobacco plants naturally grew, it took much longer for tobacco to arrive in places like Europe. It was a Frenchman named Jean Nicot (his last name being where the word nicotine is derived from) who first imported tobacco to the European continent when he delivered a ship’s worth to France in 1560. Tobacco quickly took root in the social lives of Europeans during the preceding decades. Alongside other intoxicants like Tea, coffee and opium, the tobacco plant was initially used as a medication. Unfortunately, the link between smoking tobacco and severe illness would not be made until much later in the 20^th century.

Nicotine use has been a consistent feature of everyday life for people in the UK since it first arrived on ships from America. Fortunately, we are now at the stage where nicotine consumption can be done without needing to roll and smoke tobacco leaves as those native Americans did all those centuries ago. Strangely enough, nicotine consumption is one of the few ways we can relate to how people lived all those years ago. In a sense, the modern-day equivalent to native south Americans smoking tobacco during special social events now is a group of modern friends sitting in their living room filling the air with vapour and discussing which brand’s vanilla custard ‘really captures that authentic ambrosia taste’. They are both using nicotine to enhance their social experience just their method of application is different. So, let’s take a look at what exactly nicotine is and how it’s developed into a lab made liquid based solutions.

It is important to distinguish nicotine from what it has historically been most commonly derived from; the tobacco plant. That is, nicotine is simply a naturally forming alkaloid molecule found most notably in the plant Nicotiana Tabacum, commonly referred to as the tobacco plant. Nicotine is actually found in a variety of plants you probably would have never thought of. These plants are members of the Solanaceae, or ‘deadly nightshade’, family of plants. That’s right! Common household plants ranging from chilis, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants and even potatoes all have minuscule traces of nicotine in them. Now, there’s no way near enough nicotine in them to justify consuming them for this purpose or using them to extract large amounts of nicotine. But it helps put nicotine into its proper context.