I’m comparing it mentally to caffeine. It’s considered normal (and sometimes even beneficial, for high-powered/ultra-motivated types) to be addicted to caffeine. We have soft drinks and sweets (chocolate) with caffeine in them. We have caffeine pills available over the counter.
Why don’t we have nicotine soft drinks and nicotine candies and nicotine pills as easily available? Does it taste bad? Is it inherently worse for us than caffeine?
Thanks for any information 
Nicotine gums and lozenges are pretty readily available, though costly. They don’t taste great and tend to get hot in your mouth.
They’re better than smoking, but still not good for you.
If I remember my chemistry, nicotine in its pure form is a deadly poison. Whether it could be used in small and/or diluted amounts for your suggested use, I have no idea. I’m sure a chemist will show up soon to answer.
Meanwhile, don’t try it. 
During the early part of my life, some researcher figured out how to force laboratory dogs to smoke cigarettes. Before that, the best they could do was to paint nicotine on the shaved backs of lab rats. That reliably gave the rats cancer. That was enough to convince me.
Indeed, it is a murder weapon in some Agatha Christie mysteries, and she knew her poisons well.
The first time I used tobacco, it made me woozy, I assumed that was the nicotine. I don’t recall having that reaction to caffeine.
As a (now reformed) smoker and a father, I’ll never forget the sight of my two year old son sitting in my spot on the sofa, chewing and swallowing pieces of cigarettes. I’ll never forget the terror I felt and I’ll never forget the ER doctor telling me I probably had nothing to worry about where my son’s health was concerned; the doctor gave him syrup of ipecac ‘to be on the safe side’ and then gave me hell for carelessly endangering my son; I accepted some serious abuse from that man. But, according to that doctor, poisoning my son via cigarettes ingested orally wasn’t a major concern.
Sorry, the doctor was more concerned that my lighter was lying next to the cigarettes; if my son had figured out the workings of a Zippo, things might have been terrible.
It’s true that many more kids are harmed or killed via playing with lighters than by acute nicotine poisoning, but the latter does occur. Fortunately death from eating cigarette butts is very, very uncommon, due to the degree of nausea and vomiting that usually kicks in first.
Is it possible to quantify the harmfulness of nicotine, assuming that it isn’t being eaten, in comparison to the tars and other carcinogens in the cigarette? My possibly incorrect understanding is that it’s the tar that wrecks your lungs, but it’s the nicotine that you become addicted to. In a way it seems similar to what happens with Vicodin addicts–it’s the hydrocodone that keeps them hooked, but it’s the acetaminophen that wrecks the liver.
Off topic, but I sense a misconception here. Acetaminophen can most definitely wreck the liver, but not from chronic use as you seem to be implying. No, acetaminophen causes liver failure only when too much is taken at once. A person can pop a dozen Tylenols a day for twenty years but their liver won’t be the worse for wear. OTOH, take a couple of dozen at once, and your liver may pack it in.
Pretty much anything in sufficient dosage is “a deadly poison”. But is it so in dosages normally encountered in everyday use, such as smoking 20-40 cigarettes per day? Or is the majority of the harm done by the smoke or other chemicals inhaled.
Continuing the off-topic… Depending on the strength of the tylenol, a dozen over a month could lead to liver damage. It all depends on if you are talking about regular strength (325 mg), or extra strength (500 mg). The extra strength is pretty much what everyone takes now a days.
A dozen regular 325mg tablets is 3900 mg, while a dozen 500mg tablets is 6000 mg. The 3900 is below the max dose of 4000 mg (for a non-drinker), while the 6000 is in the danger area, and will lead to damage if taken chronically.
Now, I know you KarlGauss knows this, but just wanted to nitpick for anyone else that might read this.
My father chewed nicorette gum for over 20 years with no ill effects, no cardiovascular problems etc. Probably ingested more than 10mg nicotine / day during that period. I’m not saying it’s good for you, but I thought I’d share this data point.
Yes, nicotine by itself is bad for you. Nicotine is well-known as a vasoconstrictor making it a quite bad idea to ingest nicotine if you’re suffering from hypertension. As others have pointed out, it’s also quite addictive.
If you take your nicotine through smoking, you get all the tars which are quite carcinogenic. You also get a lot of CO which impairs the ability of blood to carry oxygen and increases the risk of an infarct (cite). Ergo double fail (risk of cancer and coronary diseases). If you take your nicotine by other means (e.g. dipping snuff or chewing tobacco) you’re not exposed to the tars and the CO, but a regular snuff user often will show higher nicotine blood levels than a smoker does. And the nicotine is still a highly addictive vasoconstrictor. Given the prevalence of hypertension in modern society, I’d consider that a bad idea, even if it probably is significantly less harmful than smoking.
Dipping snuff, chewing tobacco or chewing nicotine gum is probably healthier than smoking, but definitely less healthy than doing without nicotine at all.
So is caffeine, generally considered fairly benign.
Note that chewing tobacco vastly increases the likelihood of mouth cancer. I’m not aware of any such evidence for the same applying to nicotine gum.
Cite?
Wet snuff is in widespread use in Scandinavia (or, more specifically, Norway and Sweden). Those boxes were previously covered with warnings about mouth cancer, but the warnings have been toned down now (to something along the lines of “is addictive and may be bad for your health”), allegedly due to the lack of hard scientific evidence for the carcinogenic effects of wet snuff.
I’m not claiming that chewing tobacco or dipping snuff is healthy, but AFAIK the scientific jury is still deliberating the specific issue of mouth cancer.
Is The National Cancer Institute a reliable enough cite?
Also note that they cited all of their direct references as well.
Remarkably, recent research indicates nicotine may be beneficial in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. There also appears to be a negative association between nicotine use and the risk of Parkinson’s.
My father-in-law has developed this terrible disease and we have been doing alot of research lately.
Cites: here or here
Its a potent stimulant. It will work as caffeine does to sharpen your focus.
It is much more addictive than caffeine. Much more. On a per weight basis, it is the most addictive substance known to man.
Nicotine alone will increase your risk of heart disease, stroke, and cancer. It is much more deleterious to your health than caffeine.
That being said, its legal. There are pros to consuming nicotine as a stimulant. It works fantastically, but you will soon become addicted to it and your performance while not using nicotine will begin to suffer.
There are risks, but there are also advantages. In my opinion, the risks outweigh the advantages. However… If you need a one time boost to focus then it can work very well for nicotine naive people . Say, for an exam once per year. I know people will poo poo me for saying this, but it really does work very well as a stimulant. The key, as with all things, is in moderation. You do not want to mess around with this drug if you do not have the willpower (e.g. cortical inhibition of subcortical structures including the nucleus accumbens) to use it only once.
PS: Individuals with schizophrenia are renowned for their refractive use of cigarette smoking. They smoke because the nicotine helps treat their symptoms. I’ve spoken with a few schizophrenics, and they all have told me that they feel more “normal” after they smoke and subjective measures of behavior and affect would tend to corroborate what they say.