When you are about to make the switch from cigarettes to E-Cigarettes it can be tough to figure out what strength to go for. There are people who have been vaping for years who will tell you that 0.6% is high enough for anyone, and others (including us) who will tell you that 2% is a good strength when you make the switch from smoking to vaping.
So who is right? To answer that and figure out the right nicotine strength when you start vaping we need to explain a bit first.
WHAT IS NICOTINE?
Nicotine is not actually harmful, it is of course very addictive (it’s the reason that we all smoke after all) but why it is thought of as so dangerous is that for thousands of years nicotine was always found in tobacco. The nicotine made smokers come back to tobacco, and the tobacco has 4000+ chemicals and 50+ carcinogens in.
On it’s own though nicotine is very similar to another chemical called acetylcholine, which is created in the brain and is a neurotransmitter.
A neurotransmitter helps connect all the different parts of the brain together. They are vital for memory and higher thought.
Due to this, nicotine is considered a stimulant like coffee, and in some specific cases has actually been shown to help people’s mental health!
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO USE THE CORRECT NICOTINE STRENGTH WHEN VAPING?
Anyone who has tried switching to vaping can tell you that the first few days are crucial. You are moving away from an addictive habit you have had for years, so giving yourself the best chance is a must.
One of the best ways of helping yourself to make the switch is getting the right nicotine level. If you do get it right then your body gets all the nicotine it needs to stop any cravings, and you can stop smoking altogether.
If you get it wrong though you can still feel the urge to smoke, even when you are using an electronic cigarette, which makes switching much harder.
WHAT ARE THE VARYING LEVELS OF NICOTINE FOUND IN VAPES AND E-CIGS?
What makes this difficult is the range of strengths in nicotine. The legal limit is 2% (or 20mg ml) of nicotine in the e-liquid, but it can drop all the way down to 0.3% (3mg ml).
The reason for such big differences is because not only do you have to look at how much nicotine is in the liquid, but how much vapour is being made as well.
For example, at SMOKO all our UK made liquids in the E-Cigarette starter kits are 80% PG/ 20% VG, which means our liquids give you a good throat hit, but don’t make much vapour. We focus on a high nicotine content as there isn’t much vapour for the nicotine to travel through, so the percentage needs to be high.
For liquids that are designed to create large amounts of vapour though you don’t want a high amount of nicotine, as you are getting a large amount of vapour you will absorb more nicotine naturally.
To put it simply, it is quality or quantity. If the liquid is designed to make small amounts of vapour like a cigarette then you need more nicotine, but if you are creating large clouds then you need lower amounts of nicotine.
You will end up with a similar amount of nicotine in your system with either method, it’s just if you want the throat hit and feeling of a cigarette that a high PG (and low vapour) vaping experience can give you.
HOW MUCH NICOTINE IS THERE IN E-LIQUID?
That’s all fine, but if you are looking at vape kits you will probably want to compare these to cigarettes. It should be as simple as comparing the numbers, but that’s not the case.
Finding how much nicotine is in a cigarette is hard as each cigarette brand is different. On average a cigarette has about 1g of tobacco in, and according to the CDC (The American Centre for Disease Control) the mean average was 19.2 mg per gram of tobacco.
So 1 cigarette on average has the same amount of nicotine in as a 20mg refill.
Cigarettes though don’t give the full amount of nicotine to the smoker when they are smoked. In fact they only give about 1.2 to 1.4mg per cigarette!
And the same can be said about E-Cigarettes. The absorption of nicotine is slower with vapour, and some people don’t take in even 10% of the nicotine in the vapour.
To make comparing them even more difficult, vapour is absorbed slower and less efficiently than smoke, which means that if you had a cigarette that had 10mg per gram you could be getting double the amount of nicotine from that then from a 20mg/ml e-liquid.
E-Cigarettes should be considered as their own thing, test them out and see what is working for you, and don’t worry too much about comparing numbers. All the numbers in the world won’t make a difference to your body if it ends up craving nicotine!
WHAT DO THE NUMBERS ON THE E-LIQUID BOTTLES MEAN?
So far I have used % or nicotine and mg/ml to measure how much nicotine is in the liquid, but it can be confusing to figure out what they mean.
No matter what you call it, E-liquids, vape juice, nicotine e liquids, they are always measured in milligrams (weight) per millilitre (volume); expressed as mg/ml. This shows how much pure nicotine liquid has been mixed into the total e-liquid. For example if you are using a 20mg/ml that means 20 milligrams of pure nicotine are in 1 millilitre of e-liquid.
The “per mL” (/mL) is often dropped on many labels and in definitely in blogs and articles about e-cigarettes to save the writer’s wrists and as the amount of nicotine is the vital piece of information.
The percentage is also used as they mean the same thing, to use the same example again, if you have 20 milligrams of pure nicotine are in 1 millilitre of e-liquid, and you have 10ml of liquid, that means that there is only 2% of nicotine in the whole bottle.
HOW DO YOU DETERMINE THE CORRECT NICOTINE STRENGTH?
If you have read to this point then you might be able to tell that nicotine strengths are hard to gauge. As each e-liquid has a different mix, and will be used on a different device it can be hard to find a unifying standard.
As a general rule of thumb here at SMOKO we always suggest starting on a higher strength and working your way down. That way you can get the most nicotine when you need it most (when you have just made the switch from smoking and need to make sure your body is getting the nicotine it needs) and then when you get used to E-Cigarettes you can then start moving down the strengths.
Even if you are not heavy smoker we normally suggest this, as you might not smoke a lot, but it may well be that you need the nicotine.
DETERMINING THE RIGHT NICOTINE STRENGTH WHEN SWITCHING TO VAPING CONCLUSION
If you are a smoker and are trying to figure out what the strength you need then we would suggest starting at the top and working your way down. Even if you don’t stay on the higher strengths for long, it can still help you to make the switch away from cigarettes.
If you want to get started on a E-Cigarette starter kit with a great throat hit and only the amount of vapour as you would smoke from a cigarette, give SMOKO a try!
