While the primary reason most people smoke is for a nicotine delivery system, there isn't much understanding or knowledge about how much nicotine is in a cigarette. Nicotine is a complex and rather interesting subject, especially when you consider how demonized the substance is by the general public (never mind the fact that cigarettes actually contain a wide variety of far worse toxins, including ammonia, tar, carbon monoxide, and many others). It's true that nicotine is incredibly addictive (it's often said to be as addictive as cocaine or heroin), but it's also true that nicotine poses no known significant threat to your physical health.
Most smokers are curious about how much nicotine is in a cigarette, especially when they decide to switch to vaping and want to convert the amount of nicotine they were getting from cigarettes to an equivalent amount. However, this is a question without a clear answer, partly because cigarette manufacturers often have various options with differing amounts of nicotine. Your favorite cigarette might contain anywhere between 7mg and 15mg of nicotine — but again, that's not the number that matters.
How much nicotine do you absorb when you smoke?
The real question isn't how much nicotine is in a cigarette, but rather how much of that nicotine you actually consume. For starters, you exhale a good portion of that nicotine after you inhale. Also, much of it burns off between puffs. On top of that, you take more or fewer puffs from each cigarette and hold your hits for more or less time than the next person. This means we'll still arrive at an imperfect average, but we can still make an educated guess.
On average, you're probably consuming about 1mg of nicotine per cigarette you smoke. It might not seem like much, but it's more than enough to satisfy your craving. Of course, this number varies from person to person and from cigarette brand to cigarette brand.
How much nicotine is in a cigarette and human factors
As mentioned, not everyone absorbs nicotine at the same rate or in the same way. Even if everyone absorbed nicotine at the same rate, the effects would still differ for different people — for example, the same amount of nicotine might affect a smaller person differently than a larger person, an older person differently than a younger person, or a healthy person differently than someone with certain health conditions.
All these factors make it easy to see why it's so difficult to determine how much nicotine you absorb when smoking. However, we can use what we do know to give you a starting point for choosing the right vape juice for you, as you are probably trying to understand nicotine amounts. Generally, if you're smoking more than a pack a day, look for an elikit containing around 2.4% nicotine; if you smoke less, 1.2% should do the trick.
