First of all my question does nt apply to these new nicotine salts, just your standard nic concentrates.
Frebasing essentially makes certain alkoloids absorb much easier into the body. Crack is freebased cocaine, and cigarettes add ammonia to freebase their nicotine.
Now I am encountering some people who are telling me that the liquid nic concentrates we have used for years are a freebased nicotine. I think that they are confused and saw these as "nicotine base" or something.
I read the wikipedia freebase and it was either things I knew already, or chemistry i flat out dont understand.
I really hope I am not wrong, because I have used that argument a lot talking about why e liquids nicotine content is so much higher than cigarettes, because cigarettes have freebased nic in them...
Anyways thanks for any help!
Most nic is freebase. They add ammonia in the extracting process in order to make the ph the closest they can to a neutral 7. From what I understand this makes it cross the blood-brain barrier faster. The only nic that I have seen that isn't is Nude Nicotine salts where they add different acids to the mix to mask or exaggerate throat hit and prolong oxidization. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
Also, you say that cigarettes have less nicotine in them than ejuice but that is misleading. The average cigarette has 12 mg of nicotine. Compare that to 12 mg/ml juice and you would have to vape 20 ml a day to have the same amount of nicotine as a pack a day smoker (20 cigarettes in a pack, some have more).
Firstly, the average cigarette does not contain 12mg of nicotine. It was post on ECF years ago that a full flavor PACK of cigarettes contains, on average 22mg of nicotine. Further, you can't say "20 cigs in a pack, 22mg per pack, so 1.1mg per cig, or approx 3 cigs for 1ml of 3mg juice" because those numbers only represent the amount of nicotine available in either medium. It does not reflect how much you actually absorb, which changes from person to person based on how you inhale or how much burns without being smoked (cigs) / how you inhale, what wattage you're vaping, etc. There are so many factors. It's not easily equatable.
I see that I have made bad comparisons. Thank you for the information. edit: After more research it seems that cigarettes do have an average of 12mg nicotine but you actually absorb around 1 mg per cig. As you said though there are too many variables involved in trying any kind of comparison.