“Smoking is addictive as hell but nicotine may not be the culprit.”
Well what about all these teens who seem to be hooked on nicotine “vapes”? As I understand it, a good portion of these vape products use synthesized nicotine that was never part of any tobacco plant.
Harvard failed to addict ANYONE in their study. Pumping nicotine into people at the rate that occurs with smoking had ZERO effect. Try that study with heroin and you will have a lot of addicts on your hands. They could not conclude that nicotine is addictive.
Other than being addictive, nicotine is relatively harmless. Vaping is an excellent nicotine delivery system for those who are addicted. The problem is that teenagers choose the flavored varieties and, just as ciggies’ damage is done by the tobacco’s additives, the (mostly Asian) producers of flavored vaping stuff add all sorts of noxious chemicals to their products.