If you’ve always wondered why vapes are such a tough habit to kick, here’s a possible reason why: it contains a fuckton of nicotine. To be precise, you’d get as much nicotine from a bottle of 30mg vape juice as you would smoking almost ten pouches of rolling tobacco, or over 700 darts.
Armed with some vape juice and tobacco pouches, Critic Te Arohi’s very real team of crack mathematicians (a volunteer writer with Google Calculator) set to work. We found that a 35mL bottle of 30mg vape juice contains 1,050mg of nicotine: the equivalent of 9.52 pouches of rolling tobacco, or 714 cigarettes (assuming each cigarette contains 0.4g tobacco). A 40mg bottle has about 12.69 (nice) pouches worth of nicotine: in other words, the same amount as 951 cigarettes. Our maths for this is at the bottom of the article.
Coming in at around $25, a bottle of vape juice is far cheaper than its rolling tobacco equivalent, which has contributed to its popularity on campus. But while most students Critic Te Arohi spoke to were aware that vapes deliver a more potent hit, few knew just how much stronger it was.
Harry, who was busy hooning on a cherry ice flavour, guessed that his bottle of 40mg juice probably contained “about four” pouches, “because it’s stronger, right?” When we told him the number was closer to thirteen, Harry responded: “Well that explains why it’s been so fucking hard to quit.”
Nelle spoke to Critic Te Arohi as she puffed on a grape-flavoured pen. Nelle said that while she used to smoke darts, she switched to vaping because “it’s just so much cheaper, and I can do it anywhere.” Unlike the others we spoke to, she actually knew that her vape juice was closer to ten packs of rolling tobacco, saying: “Yeah, that’s the whole point, right?”
When we asked Harry if he’d be able to quit, he said “probably not”. Nelle expressed no desire to quit. This was probably unsurprising, considering they’d both ingested almost 1,000 cigarettes’ worth of nicotine in a single week.
For anyone interested, here’s our maths:
30mg/mL at 35mL = 1,050mg nicotine per 30mg juice bottle
40mg/mL at 35mL = 1,400mg nicotine per 40mg juice bottle
One 30g pouch of rolling tobacco = 75x 0.4g cigarettes
1 filtered cigarette = 1.47 mg nicotine received (Ministry of Health figures)
1.47mg per cig * 75 cigs per pouch = 110.25mg nicotine received per pouch
1,050mg in 30mg juice / 110.25mg in pouch = 9.52x more nicotine in a 30mg bottle than a single pouch
1,400mg in 40mg juice / 110.25mg in pouch = 12.69x more nicotine in a 40mg bottle than a single pouch.