As vaping products become more and more regulated, vape manufacturers are looking at various methods of creating alternative nicotine products to stay in business and avoid the burdens created by FDA regulations. These two methods are freebase nicotine and tobacco-free nicotine (aka synthetic nicotine). Which one is more preferred? Which one will be the future of vaping? The eJuices.co team takes a look at both methods.
Freebase Nicotine
Freebase nicotine is the purest form of nicotine and is used in vape juice. This makes freebase nicotine more bioavailable (defined by the amount at which a substance is absorbed by a body). The other form of nicotine is nicotine salts, which is found naturally in a tobacco leaf. For those who have used traditional tobacco products in the past such as cigarettes, nicotine salts are already found in those products.
What are the advantages of freebase nicotine? If you’ve been vaping for a while, you should continue to use vape juice that contains freebase nicotine. Freebase nicotine is also used for high-powered, high-wattage, sub-ohm vaping experiences, as well as those who cloud chase. The best part about freebase nicotine is that many unique flavors that you purchase from eJuices.co use freebase nicotine.
Some drawbacks of freebase nicotine is that you can’t use it in lower wattage devices such as vape pens and pod systems. If you enjoy more discreet vaping experiences, you might want to use nicotine salts. It all depends on the preferences of your customers. Freebase nicotine is here to stay unless manufacturers place serious time and effort into alternatives.
Synthetic Nicotine
Synthetic nicotine is starting to gain popularity thanks to flavor bans, PMTA, and other regulations. This type of synthetic nicotine offers quality and purity that typically exceeds the levels found in tobacco-derived nicotine. One of the best things about synthetic nicotine is that it usually has less of the impurities found in tobacco-derived nicotine, meaning the average vaper cannot detect the difference between synthetic nicotine and tobacco-derived nicotine.
In addition to the purity advantages, many industry insiders believe that synthetic nicotine is not subject to regulation by the FDA. According to Vincent Schuman, CEO of Next Generation Labs and the manufacturer of the TFN brand of synthetic nicotine, “All indications from the FDA confirm our long-held position: TFN Nicotine products cannot be regulated under the Deeming Rule as they are not tobacco products, and we continue to believe that an open or closed system device for use with a choice of synthetic nicotine products will qualify as a non-tobacco product.” This could mean that vape manufacturers can bypass some FDA regulations through the use of synthetic nicotine or TFN, and are not bound to PMTA or any process of the FDA.
One of the disadvantages? Only one company has a patent pending (at least as of this writing) for synthetic nicotine, namely Next Generation Labs’ TFN. While smaller vape companies can take advantage of using synthetic nicotine, each manufacturer will have to weigh the economic costs of creating vape juice from synthetic nicotine versus dealing with the FDA regulations. Once again, economic factors will play into whether or not one should start making vape juices using synthetic nicotine—considering only one company has a patent pending for synthetic nicotine.
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What do you think about synthetic nicotine and TFN? Do you plan to alert your customers to this innovation in vaping? Let us know! If you have any questions or concerns, you can always contact your eJuices.co account manager or sales representative.