• Posted August 8, 2024

Are Vape Makers Using Dubious Nicotine 'Mimics' to Bypass Regulations?

That vape pen might contain something even worse than nicotine, new research warns.

Tobacco companies may be trying to duck federal restrictions on vaping products by replacing nicotine with “nicotine analogs” -- related chemicals that have similar properties but unknown health effects, researchers report.

“Vaping products containing nicotine are subject to federal laws that prohibit sales to people under the age of 21,” explained researcher Dr. Sairam Jabba, a toxicologist at Duke University School of Medicine, in Durham, N.C. “Nicotine analogs are currently not subject to the FDA process and have not been studied for their health effects.”

“It’s possible manufacturers are attempting to avoid FDA tobacco regulation,” Jabba added in a Duke news release.

A lab analysis of nicotine analog vapes sold in the United States also “found significant and concerning inaccuracies in the ingredients these products claim to contain and what they actually contain,” Jabba said.

For example, a vaping brand called Spree Bar, which comes in at least nine flavors, is listed as containing 5% 6-methyl nicotine, researchers said. 

A nicotine analog, 6-methyl nicotine has been shown in rodent experiments to be far more potent in targeting the brain’s nicotine receptors, researchers noted. It’s also more toxic than nicotine.

Analysis of the Spree Bar products found they contained 88% less 6-methyl nicotine than labeled. They also contained an artificial sweetener up to 13,000 times sweeter than table sugar and an artificial coolant that mimics menthol.

Another analog called nicotinamide is being marketed as targeting the same brain receptors as nicotine, even though evidence has shown it doesn’t bind to those receptors, researchers said.

E-cigarettes labeled as containing nicotinamide -- Nixotine, Nixodine, Nixamide and Nic-Safe -- had levels lower than their labels indicated, and were combined with undisclosed amounts of 6-methyl nicotine, researchers found.

“These products appear to be designed to circumvent the laws and regulations in place to protect people -- especially children -- from the harmful effects of smoking and tobacco use,” said co-senior researcher Sven Eric Jordt, research project director with the Yale Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science.

“We do not know what these chemicals do when they are heated and inhaled,” Jordt stressed. “These are questions that should be answered before we allow products on the market.”

In late May, a coalition of anti-tobacco groups warned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of at least three nicotine analog products being sold in the United States.

Two of the products, Spree Bar and a snuff made by Outlaw Dip Co., argue on web sites and in promotional videos that their products are not subject to FDA regulation, their letter to FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf noted.

However, the promotional materials also promise the same sort of effects from nicotine analogs that people get from actual nicotine, the letter added.

The letter quotes Spree Bar promotional materials as promising that the product “provides the same satisfaction, pleasure and enjoyment as traditional tobacco products and nicotine e-cigarettes.”

The FDA letter was co-signed by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Parents Against Vaping E-cigarettes and Truth Initiative.

The research was published Aug. 7 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

More information

The American Lung Association has more on nicotine.

SOURCE: Duke University, news release, Aug. 7, 2024