Nicotine: is it the devil they have made it out to be?

This discussion has been a long time coming. Caveat: I am not telling you to start smoking. I will say that I have patients who smoke, and unless they ask for assistance in quitting, I stay out of that arena. The use of nicotine is a personal choice people make, no matter the nicotine delivery device, and there are health benefits to nicotine. If you are over age 18 and choose to use it, that is your personal choice.

With that out of the way….. I have had two separate groups of healthcare friends discuss nicotine in the last week. And I do believe it merits a conversation here.

First off: benefits of nicotine. It is a naturally occurring substance in tobacco plants, tomatoes, eggplant, and other crops. Nicotine has been shown to offer neuroprotection against diseases such as Parkinson’s. As discussed by Dr. Humphries and Dr. Ardis, nicotine receptor sites in the body were also great “plug in” spots by the covid spike protein, and the use of nicotine was used as a prevention for the spike protein attaching to those receptor sites. If nicotine was already “plugged into” them, the spike protein cannot attach there. Dr. Ardis is a big advocate of using nicotine patches in low dose form as a health benefit. There is clinical evidence that nicotine also utilizes the MAO receptor sites and mimics the action of an antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication. I also discuss with patients that if you are upset, smoking a cigarette naturally forces you to slow down your breathing and take deep breaths when you inhale…..so by default the mere action of inhalation works to reduce anxiety as well. (Again, not telling you to smoke, just pointing out the physiology here).

Nicotine in and of itself is NOT cancer causing. Big tobacco is what turned nicotine delivery into a dangerous habit. Cigarettes made by big tobacco have thousands of chemicals that do indeed cause health issues. 400,000+ people die each year due to complications of smoking, primarily COPD and emphysema. If you grow your own tobacco or use organic tobacco, a lot of the health issues you see from the Camel and Marlboro users are not present. It also explains why tobacco use 100-150 years ago did not result in the health issues we see today. Yes, we can thank big tobacco for the majority of issues that tobacco causes, they manipulated and monkeyed around with it.

Do people have options? Yes. There is nicotine gum, nicotine patches, and there is the option of vaping. Vaping has been demonized pretty heavily by big tobacco because it costs them millions of dollars when people quit using big tobacco products.

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2025/04/05/the_king_of_denial_an_fda_honchos_legacy_of_ashes_1101842.html

This is a very important article to read. The head of the FDA Tobacco division made it his personal mission to ban vaping products that were not manufactured by big tobacco, claimed to “protect the kids” from flavored vape products, all while approving numerous tobacco products that the big tobacco companies submitted for approval. To make a long story short, when vaping hit the market, many long time smokers wanted to quit, and when they turned to vaping, they found that they could manage and control their nicotine consumption, avoid the detrimental crap in standard cigarettes, and found their health improved. Lungs cleared up. Cough went away. By 2010, vaping was such a rapidly growing industry that big tobacco was starting to lose money. A LOT of money. So big tobacco did what it does best. The smear campaign against vaping started. The FDA came out and did what it could to shut it down. The FDA has all but banned most vaping options while at the same time, approving various new big tobacco products. The article above discusses that very shenanigan. The medical industrial complex has been trained to tell you vaping is the devil and worse or as bad as smoking. Big tobacco is in bed with big pharma with their cessation products, they know if the patch or gum fail, you will go buy another pack of cigarettes. Both big complexes make their money. The 12 month quit success rate using patches and gum is a paltry 3-8% at best. Big pharma and big tobacco know this. So when vaping hit the market, and it was successful for many people to lay down the cigarettes for good, the industrial complex knew they had a big problem on their hands. Stop and think about it for a minute: if big tobacco use is so bad for you (as has been shown), then why is it still available to purchase everywhere? But if VAPING is so bad (when studies show it isn’t), why are they trying to ban all sales of it unless it is a vaping product produced BY a big tobacco company?? This isn’t about vaping being bad or “saving the kids”, this is about big tobacco wanting you to only use THEIR vaping devices and nicotine liquid. They want to cut the competition off at the knees.

The math isn’t mathing is it?

Read the article above. Watch Dr. Humphries on Joe Rogan where she discusses the use of nicotine. Research Dr. Ardis and his hypotheses on nicotine use. Worthwhile reading and knowledge.