A few nights ago, a friend and I were outside smoking cigarettes. My friend started blowing smoke on a few of the ants and spiders that were crawling around the porch.
He said he was blowing smoke at them, because it will kill the bugs. His reasoning … all the toxic stuff in cig. smoke overwhelms their little bodies and kills them.
Is my friend making this up or is there any truth to his reasoning?
Nicotine is toxic to insects. In fact, that’s why tobacco plants produce it, in order to deter plant-eating bugs. In fact, nictotine sprays are sometimes used as insecticides, although they are not that popular in the U.S. today.
That said, I suspect the concentration of nicotine in cigarette smoke is not nearly enough to kill them outright, but it may annoy them.