Ever since the release of the JUUL, nicotine salt e-liquids have been becoming increasingly common in the vaping industry. The idea is pretty simple. If you can get nicotine to the vaper more effectively, you’ll be able to convert smokers who aren’t satisfied with the usual options. But as with everything related to Juul, there is a lot of controversy about nicotine salt e-juices, and really understanding what they are can be more difficult than you might think. In Australia non nicotine vapes are available but one can use nicotine vape from online store in NZ which exports the Nicotine E Liquid in Australia.
The nicotine actually comes in a couple of different forms. Ordinary e-liquid contains what’s called “freebase nicotine.” This is the type of nicotine that’s absorbed by your body and therefore the most “direct” way to produce a nicotine e-liquid: you don’t need to do anything else, just add the juice to the liquid and it will work as intended. This is the type of nicotine they use for patches and gums, too, for the same reason it’s the most common choice for e-juice. However, in the tobacco plant, nicotine comes in salt form.
In the most basic terms, nicotine salt is the pure “freebase” nicotine bonded with an organic molecule – specifically, an acid. Since nicotine is a base, you might remember from high school chemistry that the result of mixing it with an acid is a salt (and water). This is a stable form of the molecule, and that’s why it’s found like this in tobacco plants.
The challenge for e-liquid manufacturers was producing this in a form that could actually be vaped. When they tried acetic acid (essentially vinegar), it produced an awful taste (unsurprisingly, like vinegar) you could never vape. Plus, in other forms getting it to convert back into freebase nicotine during the vaping process was a major challenge. But eventually the scientists at Pax Labs found that benzoic acid was the key ingredient, both enabling the nicotine salts to be vaporized and offering a smooth, pleasant vaping experience.
The main goal of nicotine salt e-liquids is to be a closer fit to how cigarettes deliver nicotine. JUUL’s initial testing showed that the salt e-juice produces more of a cigarette-like spike in the level of nicotine in your blood after the same time spent puffing. Ordinary e-liquids, in comparison, don’t produce this sharp spike, so it usually takes longer to get the same amount of nicotine by vaping. This depends on device, but it’s never quite at the same level as smoking a cigarette.
