Is the nicotine used in ‘Nicotine Replacement Therapy’ (patches, ‘inhalator’ cartridges, gum) refined from tobacco, in a similar fashion to medical opiates being made from opium poppies?
I would imagine that nicotine can’t (easily?) be manufactured from scratch.
And does this mean that Nicotinell, NicQuitin et al are making money for the tobacco industry?
That depends on your definition of the “tobacco industry”.
You can plant tobacco in your back yard and extract nicotine from the harvested plants.
Probably not with the rain I get here.
I’m just curious as to whether the manufacturers of NRT products provide income for tobacco companies, whose traditional products they are seeking to (temporarily) replace.
ps. I have emailed the ‘email an expert’ on the NiQuitin website, but don’t necessarily expect a response…
According to this site there are a number of patents concerning extraction of nictotine from tobacco. Although the synthesis described there is relatively simple, it does produce racemic nicotine. Even this synthesis is probably more costly than extraction. Also notice that nicotine is used as an insecticide (there’s another incentive to give up), so the necessity for an extraction process is not a new one.
Some drug companies (e.g., Novartis) sell nicotine replacement products. I would assume that they purchase nicotine extracted from tobacco plants and use that to formulate their products (rather than synthesizing it). So I would say yes, companies that manufacture such products are making money for the tobacco industry.
I apologise to huge pharmaceutical companies everywhere. I had this email this morning:
"Hi Staggerlee,
Thanks for your email.
We are happy to confirm that the nicotine used in our products is derived from a natural source and is prepared to pharmaceutical standards.
Kind regards
Medical & Consumer Affairs Department
GLAXOSMITHKLINE CONSUMER HEALTHCARE"
The natural source being tobacco I assume.
Could be eggplants. They contain nicotine, too. So do tomatoes and red peppers. Just not nearly so much as tobacco.
Like orders of magnitude less. Depending on its source, dried tobacco contains 0.3 to 5% nicotine by weight. The food plants contain so little that you would have to process about 2000 kg to get the same amount of nicotine contained in the tobacco of one pack of cigarettes. This would hardly be economical.
Although the nicotine used for insecticide, nicotine replacement therapy and other medicinal uses comes from tobacco, it comes from tobacco waste. So if the tobacco companies are still able to sell as much of their usual product, they can make additional money from the nicotine derived from what they would normally throw away.