All Vapes Are Flavored Vapes, Some Just Have Cigarette Flavors

A plea for more accurate descriptions of non-combustible nicotine products.

Why do we only call some vaping products "flavored"? I ask because every vaping product on the market is flavored. Those that taste like tobacco have flavor added just like those that taste like menthol or vanilla or berries. So some vaping products taste like combustible tobacco products (with either tobacco or menthol flavor) and some do not. It is possible to make unflavored vaping products, but there is no market for such products so no one does.

In order to be more accurate--and better communicate the underlying reality--I would suggest a revised nomenclature: We should refer to vaping products as either cigarette-flavored (i.e. tobacco and menthol) and non-cigarette flavored. This would be more accurate and, insofar as there are any health concerns about flavor additives, make clear that there are no unflavored products (and also that the FDA "deemed" vaping products to be tobacco products; they do not actually contain tobacco).

This change in nomenclature would also help clarify the nature of the FDA"s policy choice to only consider approving vaping products that taste like cigarettes. It might also raise further questions about the wisdom of the FDA's approach. After all, the FDA is denying smokers the ability to transition away from smoking by using products that would sever the connection between nicotine and the taste of cigarettes. The FDA is also ensuring that insofar as youth or other experiment with vaping, they are using products that taste like cigarettes.

This change in nomenclature might also help some people understand why there is a growing body of evidence that non-cigarette-flavored vaping products can help smokers quit (by helping them associate nicotine with a different flavor, and may pose less of a "gateway" risk for smoking, particularly for youth. Restricting non-cigarette vaping flavors appears to increase smoking, particularly among youth.

Perhaps clarifying the language will help clarify the policy choices the FDA and others are making.

Comments

[Currentsitguy]

This is inaccurate on it's face. My wife and I use a completely unflavored liquid. No tobacco, no fruit, no flavor whatsoever. It helped us both kick a life long habit, in my case 4 packs a day for 28 years. When we first started we used something that claimed to be tobacco flavored. It was vile. Neither of us has much of a sweet tooth, so none of those ever appealed. We have some that claims to be bourbon flavored we keep in reserve. Every now and then it's a nice change, but 99% of the time it's the plain old unflavored stuff that serves no purpose other than as a nicotine replacement therapy.

[Ska]

I get what you're saying - nothing is going to taste like burned tobacco leaves. The "cigarette flavored" ones as referenced by the author typically start with a flavor like unlit tobacco - earthy, spicy, and moderately sweet - like taking a drag of an unlit cigarette, cigar, or pipe. I've tasted ones that veer more into sweet: maple syrup notes and almost like pancakes. I've tasted others that focus more on the spicy: like a fresh cigar with pungent tobacco.

Any version, whether cotton candy, chocolate chip cookie, watermelon-guava-peach, menthol cigarette, or RY-4 (one of the earliest tobacco flavors produced), are flavored vapes. The only unflavored vapes, as you point out, are the truly unflavored PG/VG liquids with or without nicotine added.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm personally allergic to tobacco, the plant. Doesn't matter if it's the smoke or just the pollen, the slightest exposure and I'm severely congested and coughing up phlegm. (Yes, life was hell back when smoking was popular.)

As a result, I've sort of been conditioned to view the odor as repulsive.

So I'll catch a whiff, and before I realize what it is it doesn't smell half bad, then my brain catches up to what I'm smelling, and I want to throw up... Not a pleasant experience to go through.

[Currentsitguy]

To be fair, it's the actual favoring agents that create the odor. The unflavored stuff has no odor whatsoever. My dog, and one of my cats are,, like you, violently allergic to any tobacco. Wen I've come in after having the occasional cigar on my patio any attempt to come near me results in fits of snorting and sneezing. With my unfavored vape they can sit right in the middle of an exhaled cloud and not even notice. With my bourbon flavored liquid you can walk into the room and it smells like a distillery. I got stopped years ago for a minor violation driving and had to demonstrate it to the cop because he claimed my vehicle reeked of whiskey. Just to avoid potential misunderstandings and unnecessary delay I've never brought it into the vehicle since because considering my crappy balance I'd never pass a field sobriety test even sober as a judge.

[Brett Bellmore]

I've remarked before that, once you adjust for dosage, nicotine isn't actually any worse than caffeine; Caffeine has a theraputic index, (The ratio between the 'theraputic' dose and the lethal dose.) of about 100. For nicotine it's 2-300.

For alcohol it's maybe 5-10, roughly comparable to Tylenol, to put that in context of what's viewed acceptable in an OTC drug.

Virtually all the nasty side effects nicotine gets blamed for are actually due to other compounds in the tobacco plant and its smoke.

And the addictiveness is mostly due to the typical mode of administration, via the lungs. If you were to inhale caffeine it would be equally addictive; The psychological component of addiction is a form of conditioning, and the more immediate the reward is, the more effective conditioning becomes.

[Armchair]

""I've remarked before that, once you adjust for dosage, nicotine isn't actually any worse than caffeine"

Brett, I've responded before....ignoring dosage in these types of assessments is illogical and frankly, just dumb. Especially if you just rely on therapeutic index.

Let's give you an example of two compounds. One has a therapeutic index of over 30,000. The other has a therapeutic index of less than 5. One is a Schedule II compound. The other is freely given away to school children.

Those two compounds are remifentanil and water.

Remifentanil (one of the fentanyl class of opioid agonists) had a great therapeutic index. It's also easy to OD on because the dose is so small. Micrograms. Dose matters.

Water has a miserable therapeutic index. An adult man needs ~ 1 gallon of water a day to live. Give them 5 gallons of water a day, water intoxication and death set in. But 4 extra gallons of water a day...that's pretty hard to unintentionally OD on (Drowning aside). Dose matters.

No rational person would say "water is so much more dangerous than remifentanil, we need to restrict it." But that's where you get by relying on just therapeutic index alone. Because, again...the dose matters. Likewise, nicotine really is much much more toxic than caffeine. Because the dose matters.

Remarking that "once you control for dosage, water is much worse than fentanyl" is one of those statements that ultimately is pretty dumb in considering real life. ...because the actual dose matters.

[Brett Bellmore]

Armchair, you'd have a point, of somebody was selling pure nicotine over the counter. But they're not, except maybe as an insecticide.

Now, if nicotine were restricted to a black market, you'd have a real problem, because the stuff would be distributed pure to minimize smuggling problems, the way fentanyl is. And accidents would inevitably happen.

Instead we have a legal market, and they're selling products that contain highly diluted and carefully measured amounts of nicotine. And the relevant dose for accidental overdose purposes isn't the tiny bit of nicotine, it's of the vape fluid, or gum, or whatever.

So, you don't actually have a point, now, do you?

This does have an implication, though. In the case of alcohol, ODs do happen, despite the fact that beer, say, is safe enough. They happen because the product is sold in a very wide range of concentrations, ranging from basically pure Everclear, one good gulp could kill you if you didn't throw it up, to beers with a few percent alcohol in them, that you could drink all day and barely get buzzed. The wide range of concentrations on the market makes accidental overdoses easy.

So, a rational regulation of nicotine products would be to establish a fixed nicotine content that was low enough to make an OD unlikely to occur.

And that's remarkably easy to do, because of the wide therapeutic index of nicotine. So that therapeutic index really does matter, after all.

Finally, my point about nicotine being fairly safe, once you adjust for dose, is that it's a stimulant, and JUST a stimulant, and at normal recreational doses it isn't going to do anything but stimulate you. It's not going to destroy your liver, or anything crazy like that.

All the nasty effects of smoking are due to everything else besides the nicotine! Nicotine gets a bad rap thanks to being associated with tobacco, and there's no particular reason for it to be more dangerous than caffeine if you eliminate the tobacco from the picture.

[Armchair]

"Instead we have a legal market, and they're selling products that contain highly diluted and carefully measured amounts of nicotine."

Well... Let's examine that. Let's take your vape fluid example. You can get your vape juice levels at up to 30-60 mg/ml for nicotine. Those will come in up to 2 ml cartridges. So...120 mg nicotine. The LD50 for nicotine is reported to be 0.5 to 1 mg/kg. So...~~60 mg in an adult. And 6 mg in a child.

Oh, and just to add insult to injury...nicotine penetrates the skin really well (those dermal nicotine patches work after all). Caffeine..not so much.

So, you spill your coke on your 5-year old...and you get paper towels. You spill your vape cart on your 5-year old...and you're rushing to the hospital, hoping you're in time.

[David Nieporent]

I've never brought it into the vehicle since because considering my crappy balance I'd never pass a field sobriety test even sober as a judge.

Pro tip: never take the FST. It's not mandatory, and it's subjective; if the cop says you failed, you failed. At least breathalyzers and blood draws are objective.

[Currentsitguy]

I know. Let me just say It's best to avoid giving the reasonable suspicion to even demand it.

[Krayt]

How is it possible to not have an electronic recording and printout of your status? What's the point if a cop can just lie without the technological proof?

[shawn_dude]

There are entire legal youtube channels devoted to cops just like this.

[Longtobefree]

Also, there is no tobacco in these "tobacco" products, and some have no nicotine.
But never let facts get in the way of an intrusive regulation, right?

[Currentsitguy]

And in other cases the nicotine is not tobacco derived. It's completely synthetic, so I'm not sure how it could even be considered a "tobacco product". That would be akin to claiming tiki lamp oil is "whale derived".

[Brett Bellmore]

I believe that, for regulatory purposes, all nicotine is treated as a "tobacco product" regardless of whether or not it's ever been within a hundred miles of an actual tobacco plant.

[Currentsitguy]

I know you're right, I just despise inaccuracy, especially when its used to extend the regulatory hand into places where it has no business going. Just because you redefine an camel as a kind of horse doesn't make it accurate or right. It's just a bureaucratic power grab.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I'm not sure there is nicotine that isn't initially from tobacco.

[Currentsitguy]

There is. Mine is completely laboratory synthesized.

"Nicotine is a chiral compound, meaning that there are two enantiomers or different forms of nicotine: (S)-Nicotine and (R)-Nicotine. (S)-Nicotine is the naturally occurring enantiomeric form of nicotine in plants from the Solanaceae family. Tobacco-derived nicotine contains predominantly (S)-Nicotine (~99.3%) and less than 1% (R)-Nicotine, with a small amount of (R)-Nicotine formed during combustion. Tobacco-derived nicotine is regulated under the FDA Center for Tobacco Products and has the CAS# 54-11-5.

Synthetic nicotine on the other hand does not come from the tobacco plant. It is synthesized using either a chemical or an enzymatic process. This is then often followed by a chemical or enantiomeric purification. There are multiple forms of synthetic nicotine. Synthetic nicotine can be identical to tobacco derived nicotine and be >99% (S)-nicotine, or can be a racemic mix of (R)- and (S)- (50/50 with the CAS # 22083-74-5) or vary in the ratios of (R)- and (S)-nicotine.

Currently there is no FDA regulatory requirement to determine the enantiomeric composition of synthetic nicotine or verify that the synthetic nicotine is indeed synthetic and not mislabeled or adulterated with tobacco derived nicotine."

[Armchair]

While you can get synthetic nicotine fairly easily, the question is "what's the source of the nicotine in the flavored vapes?"

And I'm fairly sure the answer here is...tobacco. There's a reason for that.

1. Tobacco is relatively cheap, compared to de novo chemical synthesis. Doing the nicotine extraction on tobacco (~1-3% by weight), versus getting a hold of specialty chemicals, then performing the chemical synthesis...tobacco is almost certain to be cheaper.

2. When you start using chemicals to synthesize something for human administration (rather than use "natural" sources) you get a whole bunch of other FDA guidelines that need to be followed, looking for random little byproducts in the synthesis. It adds all sorts of costs that are undesirable.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, actually some of the vapes DO use synthetic nicotine. The FDA officially doesn't care that it's synthetic.

Regulation and Enforcement of Non-Tobacco Nicotine (NTN) Products

"In response to the increase of NTN in popular tobacco products, Congress passed a federal law which went into effect on April 14, 2022, clarifying FDA’s authority to regulate tobacco products containing nicotine from any source, including synthetic nicotine. This law makes FDA's authority clear, and imposes requirements under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) for manufacturers, importers, retailers, and distributors of NTN products."

So, as I said, for regulatory purposes, any product with nicotine in it, even synthetic nicotine that's never been near a tobacco plant, is 'deemed' to be a "tobacco product". The regulations are officially based on a statutory lie.

But, yes, synthetic nicotine IS in use.

[Armchair]

Fun site. Thanks. Two big take away message though.

1. The FDA really does care that it's synthetic.
2. "Currently, no NTN products (synthetic nicotine) have received marketing authorizations. "

So...sure...synthetic nicotine is in use. It's entirely illegal to use synthetic nicotine in any current vaping products in the United States (a point I missed, and which gets around all those pesky FDA regulations). I just was thinking about LEGAL use.

[shawn_dude]

It's the internet so I'm going to pick a nit here.

"Tiki" is a Maori word and has nothing to do with whales or oil or lamps. "Oil lamp" would be sufficient to make your point.

I would suppose the "tobacco product" language is more political than anything else since prior efforts to keep tobacco out of drug regulation revolved around it being a natural product where the nicotine was incidental. (as if.) Compare that to hemp vs marijuana and successful efforts to regulate hemp.

Anyhow, vaping pretty much puts the lie to nicotine as incidental to tobacco use since, as you correctly note, the nicotine is the only thing in the vaping fluid that people care about.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, sure. It's all about the nicotine, and hardly at all about the tobacco.

Which is great, because nicotine is fairly harmless, and it's the tobacco that damages people's health. Which is why it's incredibly stupid to reduce the incentives to market nicotine separate from tobacco!

[Martinned2]

This is a plea that only lawyers (and the kind of hopeless pedants that inhabit the VC comments section) could love.

[Bubba Jones]

Smoking is dumb.

Vaping is marginally less dumb.

I could not care less what you do to your lungs, so long as I don't have to smell it.

[Frank Drackman]

Its not your lungs that make people stay away from you

[Currentsitguy]

I'm not one to let the merely very good be the enemy of the perfect. There is no such thing as second hand vape, nor is there any demonstrable harm caused by it. As for any odor from someone around me, I personally find perfume, cologne, and strong aftershave far more offensive, but I figure it's not my place to object to other people's choices.

Now pipes? I don't personally use, but I love that odor. I wish someone made pipe scented air fresheners.

[Brett Bellmore]

Per above, barf.

[shawn_dude]

The NIH disagrees with you. It is a thing. It's just not as bad a thing as burning tobacco because there's no "sidestream" vapor between puffs. However, the exhale contains all the same particulates the person vaping inhaled, including nicotine. If you're vaping in an enclosed or crowded space, you're exposing the people around you to your drug. Also, while the NIH studied common vaping solutions, anything special might contain additional toxic particles.

When it comes to smell, I think of smoking and vaping the same as I do farting in an elevator.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I still remember my brief experience with Clove cigarettes (circa 1985). What a rush!

[shawn_dude]

Tobacco companies started mixing tobacco into cloves as means to generate more youth smoking. I recall people saying it was okay to smoke cloves because they weren't addictive. Except, it turns out, that wasn't true for all brands.

All those goth kids got duped.

[DIsrobing]

I wonder if Mr. Adler receives any compensation from the vaping industry or its trade groups?

[Armchair]

I mean, the simple answer is this. The fruit/bubblegum/"fun" flavors are designed to get kids to start vaping. And once they start, they get addicted to nicotine and don't stop.

It's not adults switching off cigarettes that were driving these flavors. It was new teen "smokers". And the industry knew it. Banning the "flavors" is basically banning the advertising to new teen smokers.

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-10-27/fruity-flavors-lure-teens-into-vaping-longer

[Brett Bellmore]

So. Freaking. What.

Again, once you get tobacco out of the picture, nicotine is no worse than caffeine. There's no reason you couldn't sell Mountain Dew or Pepsi with nicotine substituted for the caffeine, at an appropriate concentration of course, and medically it would be basically indistinguishable.

And we let children drink sodas, don't we?

You should actually PREFER non-tobacco flavored vapes, they're much less likely to be a gateway to smoking than the tobacco flavored ones! And smoking would be medically bad for you even if nicotine didn't exist, or if tobacco plants contained caffeine instead.

[shawn_dude]

Caffeine and tobacco aren't addictive in the same way. Plenty of science behind that but you could easily test it out for yourself. I know you're not a smoker but if you drink caffeine, just stop for a month. Maybe a few days of headaches and you're free. Nicotine, OTOH, is as addictive as heroin. Caffeine is far less harmful than Nicotine when consumed in moderation. It's probably better compared to alcohol than Nicotine. Coke used to contain cocaine. Do you think it was a mistake to regulate that?

But hey, if you want to make it legal to put highly addictive chemicals into Mountain Dew, I'm sure PepsiCo would be aggressively supportive. Their stock value would double!

[Brett Bellmore]

Nicotine is more addictive than caffeine due to it's mode of consumption. The psychological component of addiction is a form of operant conditioning, and the more immediate the reward is after the action, the more efficient operant conditioning becomes.

You can't get faster than administration via the lungs. Caffeine would be enormously more addictive if administered via the lungs, too.

So, if you wanted to ban the administration of ANY psychoactive drug via the lungs due to the elevated addiction potential, that would at least have the advantage of being rationally related to what is going on. Unlike just obsessing over a particular stimulant that is inherently no more dangerous than any other.

Still destructive, however, because vaping displaces smoking, and is far, far less damaging to health. But, hey, anti-vaping crusaders are Puritans waging a war on vice, not health advocates. So that doesn't matter to them.

Oh, and you do realize that the anti-vaping crusade is being subsidized by governments that are concerned that vaping is cutting into that sweet, sweet tobacco settlement money, right?

[Armchair]

"Nicotine is more addictive than caffeine due to it's mode of consumption."

No. Or at least not just due to this. Nicotine is also very addictive as "dip" or "chew" or through many other methods of administration. Far more so than caffeine.

Nicotine is also more far more than just a stimulant. Caffeine just hits the adenosine receptors. Nicotine acts via the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, acting as an agonist at most, but an antagonist at 9 and 10. It acts as a continuous addictive need. You don't see people "Jonesing for a coffee" at 3 PM... Nicotine users...they got to have it.

[nicmart]

Cigarette favored vapes have identical properties as other flavors, so why make any such distinction? And why in the world would anyone with even a modicum of respect for liberty, and the Lockean basis for it, want the government involved in regulating what adults can ingest?

[shawn_dude]

Regulating what companies can sell doesn't regulate "what adults can ingest."

I'm not a libertarian, mind you, so I don't mind if the government prevents companies from selling fake and/or harmful products.

[Armchair]

"Cigarette favored vapes have identical properties as other flavors, so why make any such distinction"

Because the other flavors are marketing to children and teens.

It's like including a vaping pen with a Minecraft subscription.

[Frank Drackman]

Gotta ban these, get the kids to do something healthier, like drinking.

[shawn_dude]

Once the tobacco companies get children hooked on nicotine, they are guaranteed the vast majority of them will be regular customers for life because the product is highly addictive and difficult to quit.
Youth addiction is a problem and candy-flavored tobacco and vaping products are targeted directly at that segment of society.

More importantly, most smokers started prior to 18 years old and virtually no adults pick up the habit after they hit 26.

Vaping is just the newest way nicotine distributors hook youth on the drug.