Nicotine’s Monologue: Cigarettes Are Harmful, but Not Simply Because of Me

Hello everyone, I am Nicotine!

I want to say: I am not a worthless "poison"! In fact, I am mild and may even be beneficial!

I, Nicotine, am an alkaloid. I am a colorless, transparent, bitter, volatile oily liquid that turns brown when exposed to light or air, and I dissolve quickly in water and ethanol. Many solanaceous plants, including tobacco, chili peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, and potatoes, contain me!

Many people attribute the harm of cigarettes solely to me! Although some say I accelerate heart rate and raise blood pressure, the real culprits behind lung cancer, respiratory diseases, and heart disease are carbon monoxide and tar—my two troublesome companions. They infiltrate your blood vessels and damage your health!

Carbon monoxide, although low-key and less noticeable, loves to cause trouble, a classic introvert. Its ability to bind with hemoglobin is 240-300 times greater than that of oxygen. When inhaled in large amounts, it directly binds with hemoglobin, severely weakening red blood cells' oxygen-carrying capacity, leading to cardiovascular diseases such as myocardial infarction, stroke, and myocardial hypoxia.

Tar is primarily produced during incomplete combustion in low-oxygen conditions, resulting in 99.4% of the substances being harmful, with 0.2% being carcinogenic initiators and 0.4% being cancer co-factors. This is why its content is strictly controlled in cigarettes and prominently featured on cigarette packaging.

Although I exist in cigarettes, the harm of cigarettes is not due to me. Each cigarette contains about 1mg of me, but generally, I first enter the lungs, then dissolve into the blood, reaching the brain, stimulating the brain to produce dopamine, which creates a feeling of excitement. However, with the body's metabolism, I will gradually be expelled from the body through sweat and urine within 2 hours, leaving no residue. I do not cause any harm.

However, excessive intake can still be harmful; consuming over 500mg at once can be fatal. This means that smoking over 500 cigarettes at once or eating 50kg of tomatoes in one go (each kilogram of tomatoes contains about 10mg of me, the highest concentration in plants) could be lethal.

Many scientific experiments can also prove that I do not cause cancer. In a foreign animal experiment, 60 rats were given a solution containing 50mg% cotinine (my main metabolite in smoke) to observe its toxicity, and the results showed that cotinine was not carcinogenic to rats. Although my dosage needs to reach 60mg% to inhibit the central nervous system and cause acute poisoning, it is difficult to achieve high doses of nicotine under normal circumstances.

On July 28, FDA Director Scott Gottlieb also came forward to clarify for me, officially stating that "I have no direct causal relationship with cancer. The lung cancer and heart disease that have taken the lives of millions in the US and around the world are not directly caused by nicotine, but by the tar and other unknown components produced when tobacco is ignited." Even reducing my content in cigarettes to zero may not reduce the health risks of smoking.