What is nicotine?

What is nicotine?

Nicotine is known to be an alkaloid, which is part of all plants from the nightshade family, for the most part contained in tobacco and in lower quantities in tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, green Bulgarian peppers. Nicotine alkaloids are also contained in Coca leaves. Nicotine constitutes 0.3 to 5 % by weight of the tobacco in dry form, the biosynthesis of nicotine occurs in the roots, accumulation of nicotine in the leaves.

Mortality statistics

Most smokers doubt that tobacco smoke is harmful. However, as we all know, statistics is a stubborn thing. In the world every 10 seconds another person dies as a result of tobacco consumption. Now, according to statistics, every year, tobacco kills about three million people worldwide, but this figure in the future, expected to grow to 10 million. Some skeptics say that there are over 6 billion people and 10 million is not a very big number and that this is not so important – but it's important for these 10 million, which has all chances to get any smoker. According to calculations, should the current trends, about 500 million of the now living people, representing approximately 9% of the world's population will be killed by tobacco eventually. If you look at the statistics, since 1950, tobacco killed 62 million people, that is it turns out more than were killed in world war II. Also it has been proved that tobacco causes 6 % of all deaths worldwide and approximately 3 % of the global burden of disease. Moreover, statistics on deaths from tobacco continue to rise, and at this rate, by 2020 tobacco will cause 12 % of deaths in the world!

The effect of nicotine

The action of nicotine very much. It is a potent neurotoxin, which exerts a special action on insects; therefore, nicotine had often and widely used as an insecticide, and currently continue to apply in the same as the derivatives of nicotine, such as, for example, imidaclorpid. In one cigarette contains about 1 mg of absorbed nicotine. This substance, which operates in mammals, and is also one of the main factors that are responsible for formation of dependence on tobacco Smoking. The American heart Association is of the opinion that dependence on nicotine has historically be considered one of the most difficult as quitting Smoking is very difficult.