Is Vaping more addictive than traditional cigarette smoking? - Part 2
Bottom Line: Nicotine is the third most addictive drug on the planet, more addictive than crystal meth – providing near instant gratification to the body while running its course in about ten minutes leading to cravings potentially as often as six times per hour for users. That’s what we discussed in the first part of this story today. For this second part, I’ll specifically address why it seems as though vaping may be more addictive than smoking traditional cigarettes.
An average cigarette contains 12mg of nicotine. Burning the cigarette also burns the nicotine. Based on one’s method of smoking and the cigarette itself, as little as one mg of nicotine is generally derived from a cigarette. That means cigarettes are only about 8% effective. So, what’s normal in a vape? 5mg. On the surface that might appear better than traditional cigarettes but the devil in the details is the effectiveness. Using data from Juul, their devices are about 50% effective for the distribution of nicotine.So,here’s the net-net of it.
- The average cigarette delivers 1 mg of nicotine
- The average vape equivalent delivers 2.5 mg of nicotine
So, there it is... Even if someone was sticking strictly to using a vape similarly to a cigarette, they’d be getting 2.5 times more nicotine, the third most addictive drug on the planet. In this context it’s easy to see why we’re having the problems we’re now having as vaping has started to mainstream. It’s far more addictive than even traditional cigarette smoking.