would it be possible to isolate the nicotine from cigarettes, extract or synthesize it, and infuse herbal cigarettes like cloves, rose or something with the pure nicotine? it would take out the tar, cancerous stuff, and other. of course breathing any combusting matter into your lungs isn't the best idea, but cigarettes could be safer than they are now, and they'd taste a lot better.
-- evanescent, Mar 20 2001

Smokable Nicotine Sticks http://www.theonion...n3325/nicarest.html
Another brilliant idea from The Onion - I'm up to 2 packs a day now. [waistcoat, Sep 03 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]

Do we have any actual reason to believe that "herbal" cigarettes are less dangerous than ones made from tobacco?
-- jutta, Mar 20 2001


You can take the nicotine out of the tobacco , but you can't take the tobacco out of the nicotine...something like that. Trust me on this one...if it were possible for them to make a buck doing it, they would have a very long time ago. To top it off, you may recall a fiasco sometime back when records showed that tobacco products had been made more addictive by virtue of additives which are spoken so highly of in the suggestion.
-- thumbwax, Mar 20 2001


invent the pure-nicotine inhaler, and the anti-smoking lobbies will beat a path to your door. In the meantime, you could try smoking organically-grown asparagus.
-- absterge, Mar 20 2001


Nicotine is the addictive component of tobacco. There are legal limits, in many countries, to how much nicotine is allowed in a cigarette. There are additives which can increase the efficiency of your body's nicotine uptake and the affect that amount of nicotine has. Thus cigarettes can be made more addictive without increasing the amount of nicotine.

Herbal cigarettes, indeed any plant matter, when smoked will still produce tar, carbon monoxide and all the other bad things associated with tobacco smoking. By adding the nicotine to that mix you make it just as bad as tobacco.

Maybe it would smell better... but that's a matter of taste. And you'd still be forcing others to breathe it.
-- sirrobin, Mar 20 2001


Close to baked. The big nicotine companies are testing a product that dispenses only nicotine. Great for church services, no smell!
-- yunohu, Jul 03 2001


Apparantly if you smoke dried sage leaves it can relieve asthma. Counter-intuitive I know. Anyway, a few years back I tried it (I don't have asthma, but was hoping for some kind of bronchodilator effect). Nothing happened other than the development of a acute hacking cough and a herby taste in my mouth for an hour or so. And that was in a herbal medicine book. Tcha.
-- Nadir, Jul 03 2001


What I'd really like to see developed is a nicotine 'substitute' that is chemically similar to nicotine (your body thinks it is nicotine).
-- andrewm, Nov 02 2002


--Apparantly if you smoke dried sage leaves it can relieve asthma.--

I know this is quite an old one and this is a bit off topic, but something I found quite interesting when I started smoking in my early twenties (have since given up btw) I found smoking cured my hayfever allergy which was always very intense before and has become intense again since I gave up smoking a year ago. Obviously, the benefit is far outweighed by the cancerous risks but I did always wonder why it happened.
-- Nickynackynoo, Jun 30 2003


The problem drug in cigarettes is not nicotine. Nicotene is the highly addictive part of smoking, but has many medically useful side-effects. Doctors used to recommend cigarretes for nerves. It has been shown to be highty effective in treating certain mental, heart, and gastric conditions. The problem drugs are the toxins that are delivered with the nicotene, these reduce the ability of the lungs to exchange oxygen, and introduce themselves into the blood stream, affecting the heat and other organs. Remove the nicotene and you have a non addictive cocktain of crap. All the bads and no goods.
-- dibley, Aug 14 2003



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