What is Nicotine Salt?

You may have heard the term floating around and you have asked yourself, what in the world is Nicotine Salt? Nicotine Salt, also known as Nic Salt, is a type of processed nicotine used in vape juice. Many vapers find nicotine salts more satisfying than regular “freebase” nicotine. Freebase nicotine is what you will find in your normal ejuice.

Nicotine salt ejuice is much easier to inhale than regular eliquid due to its biocompatibility. The vape is a lot less harsh on the throat and allows vapers to use stronger liquids. It’s this ability to inhale higher nicotine per puff that makes the nicotine salts more satisfying.

Now, don’t run off and start vaping nic salts in your sub-ohm dripper. Due to the high level of nicotine, vaping nic salts in a dripper or a high-powered device would not be a pleasant experience.

What make Nic Salts unique from traditional liquid nicotine solutions, often referred to as “freebase” nicotine, is the process of extraction. They bond cat-ionic acids from the tobacco leaf with the acid’s free hydrogens using a cryogenic freeze. This results in a nicotine base that has a much smoother nicotine delivery than free base nicotine, as well as a cleaner taste. For example, if you were to try a 50mg liquid made with freebase nicotine in a closed pod, it would be too harsh to vape. While a 50mg liquid made with nicotine salts is easy to vape, and deceivingly strong.

In order to understand what nicotine salt is, it’s important to understand how freebase nicotine works. Nicotine in tobacco leaves has the chemical composition of a salt. A salt is made up of a chemical reaction that has a positive charge (Acid) and negative charge (Base).

Nicotine’s chemical nature is a weak base and made up of negatively charged particles. As a base, it seeks to find positively charged particles (Protons) to find stability and become ionized. Nicotine in tobacco leaves or ions is not the most effective way of delivering nicotine into our bodies because ions have a harder time moving across organic membranes and are not easily vaporized.

This is where freebasing comes in. Phillip Morris found that if the nicotine was de-protonated (via ammonia) or to remove its positive charge, it can go back to its free state where it will be much easier to travel across membranes in our bodies. In a nutshell, nicotine in its freebase form makes it more bioavailable to your lungs and to your brain which makes it more potent. Phillip Morris found that impregnating tobacco with a salt like diammonium phosphate releases ammonium when the cigarette is combusted thereby freeing the nicotine into free base form.

Pax labs, the innovator of this new vaping method found a way to use nicotine salt as a means to make 50mg nicotine palatable while making it more bioavailable than what we have currently in the vaping market. Their goal was to mimic the sensation of smoking a cigarette as closely as possible and so far, it looks like it’s working.

Mouth-to- lung vapers simply love to buy nicotine salts e juice! They also work well with lower-powered vape mods, pod mods, and other devices. In fact, vapers should be cautious of using stronger concentrations of nicotine salts e-liquid, especially in high-powered vape devices. The nicotine hit is so robust that the vaper can be easily overwhelmed until they get used to the change. So, we always recommend that vapers should start out slow, at first.

Because the high amount of nicotine that is delivered, vaping Nic Salts also means you get more bang for your buck! You end up vaping less because you get a lot more nicotine. So, if you love that light headed feeling, but hate having to vape 24/7, nic salts may be right for you.