Nicotine - How Is It Taken?

How Is It Taken?

Nicotine is taken in several ways. The most common and quick-acting manner is smoking. The user lights a cigarette, draws the smoke into the lungs, and exhales it. The effects of the nicotine can be felt within ten seconds, and they usually last between fifteen minutes and an hour.

Tobacco Statistics

Did you know that….

  • As of 2005, tobacco use was considered to be the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. Nearly 500,000 deaths are related to tobacco use each year.
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that smoking takes 5.6 million years of potential life away each year in the United States.
  • In the United States each day, some 4,000 people under age 18 smoke their first cigarette.
  • Most adult smokers started using tobacco before their 18th birthday—nearly 80 percent of them, in fact.

People who smoke cigars and pipes generally "puff" them and do not inhale the smoke into the lungs. Even so, the soft tissues in the mouth absorb the nicotine and send it through the bloodstream to the brain. Smoking pipes or cigars is, indeed, habit-forming. Puffing is just another way to deliver nicotine to the brain. The presence of the smoke in the mouth and throat can lead to cancers in those body parts, and to cancer of the esophagus, the tube leading into the stomach.

With chewing tobacco, the user takes a wad of moist tobacco and presses it between the cheek and the gum. As the mouth fills with saliva, the user must spit, because swallowing tobacco-laced saliva could be deadly and certainly causes stomach upset. Users of chewing tobacco generally keep a wad in the mouth for about thirty minutes, during which time about 2 milligrams of nicotine enter the bloodstream through the cheek and gum tissue.

Few people snort snuff anymore, but it was once a popular way to use nicotine. Snuff, finely-ground tobacco, was snorted up the nose and usually removed by sneezing. A "pinch of snuff" was thought to ward off colds and other infectious diseases.