I just did a little research.
An average can of chewing tobacco is 3.4% nicotine. For 1 ounce of chewing tobacco (or 1 entire can of shit), that is approximately 964 mg of nicotine.
If you chewed a quarter of a can a day (2 cans a week), that's 241 milligrams of nicotine a day. That breaks down to 120 pieces of gum a day at that level. If you split that quarter of a can into 8 small chews, that is approximately 15 pieces of gum per timy chew from the can.
Here's the other issue: that 170 count box of gum contains 340 mg of nicotine. This is approximately 35% of the amount of tobacco in a can of chew for $42 more! It would take 482 pieces of gum to equal one can of chewing tobacco!! That is now $115.68 you have paid for the same amount of nicotine you were buying before for $5!!!
Why would you torture yourself by limiting your body to just enough nicotine to keep you addicted, but not enough to satisfy one craving? That's insane. I know nicorette has effective marketing, but this quit procedure does not work. How can just enough nicotine to keep you addicted make your quit suck less?? Look at the numbers. It is a mentality that may be keeping the chew out of your lip, not some overpriced inneffective piece of poison. I've done the "1 chew a day" thing too. I ended up playing "how much can I stuff in my face at one time" game.
WE'RE NOT HERE TO SELL YOU SOMETHING. WE ARE HERE TO HELP YOU. WE HAVE ONE PRICE FOR OUR SERVICE: QUIT.
If you pull the bandaid off now, it will take 3 days for that shit to be out of your system. You can do this now, or you can do this in 8 weeks. Either way, you still have to step off the ledge sometime. Then, instead of having to pay $47 for a 170 count box of gum, you can pay $.05 ($8.50 for a 170 count bucket) for a piece of bazooka and you get an awesome little comic (with each one!!) to go with it.
Skyhook, we've all held onto crutches here. We aren't going to be mean if you grow a pair and decide to quit. We've all been there. We know what you're going through, what you will go through, and we can advise you what's worked for us. Do you really want to put all your eggs into 1 coach's basket, or take a chance with thousands?
PS Doesn't that nicotine gum taste like pre-chewed wintergreen gum? The thought of chewing it again disgusts me and I haven't had it since 2004.
Ummm WP,
Your numbers are so far off I got a chuckle out of it. I know what your intentions were but you used the % nicotine by dry weight. Since tobacco is almost 50% moist in the can you didn't account for that.
You need to look at how many MG per gram or mg/g. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4819a3.htm
On that list Skoal measured an 11 mg/g as the highest. So at 34g per can of chew you are looking at 374 mg per can.
I will let you take it from there but the above numbers are correct.
Yeah, after I posted that I started doing the research.
I realized how duplicite the tobacco companies are, and why we all run in circles looking for some sort of sanity in our quits. I was so quick to run with the stat of chewing tobacco being 3.3% nicotine. Glad I made ya laugh.
I discovered it when I was trying to create a chart trying to get the equivalent chew to cigarette to gum ratio. I was way off there, and have been researching it since.
I ended up running with the old 1 can of chewing tobacco equals 60 cigarettes (as I found quoted in many quitting websites). Each cigarette is approximately 1-1.5 mg of nicotine (as I found at Nicorette and quitting websites). This is the only way to make the numbers aline. Some places said that a 2 can a week addiction equals a pack and a half a day of cigarettes.
I found out that 11 pieces of 2 mg gum equals a quarter of a can of chew (or 15 cigarettes). Unfortunately, this makes the total nicotine in the can 90 mg, so the numbers are skewed again. If I go with 34 mg per can, that makes the 11 pieces of gum equivalent to two-thirds of a can (or 15 cigarettes in this instance).
:wacko:
I've gone cross eyed.
'help'
My stupidity
I say we pick 10 fog-tards and assign them the math as homework, we'd never get a correct answer but I bet we'd get a shit ton of laughs.
Yeah, if it helps you out in your quit then go for it but you are over thinking this WAY too much.
In the popular brands skoal, grizzly, cope, kodiak... there are 34g per can. In each gram there is between 7-11 mg of nicotine and a lot of variable in between. You don't need any other numbers than what I gave you to figure out your calculations. You have some crazy thing going with percentages that means nothing in terms of finding out how much dip is equal to cigs or gum.
Lets go by rough averages: 1.5 mg in a cigarette x20= 30mg per pack
Dip 9mg per gram= 34x9 = 306 mg per can.
HOWEVER,
Cigarettes are normally rated through a system where a machine "inhales" them and the contents are then analyzed. A lot of the nicotine is lost and not accounted for. Just as in a dip, no all of that nicotine gets absorbed, in fact, most of it does not because not all of it gets pulled out and put in the blood stream. I have heard that cigarettes contain near 5mg but only a small portion of that makes it to the blood stream.
So again your numbers are never going to be consistent as the amount of time in the mouth, the amount of saliva, and all sorts of things are taken in to account.
Don't beat yourself up over it. A dipper is going to get about twice as much nicotine if usage is similar. Numbers just don't work when trying to compare this as too many other factors come in to play. You can however fairly accurately compare two dippers based on brand and quantity.
I am going to edit this in:
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/o ... _nicotine/Notice they use the word "yield" in there. What that means is that is the actual nicotine content that was captured on a smoking machine. Again, the actual nicotine content in a cigarette is much higher but through many factors this is about what the user will get in the blood stream. I don't think it is possible for them to get a measure of what a dipper gets but I would suspect it would be some where in the 3-6 mg range per gram.
