This article dicusses how the differentiation between TDN and synthetic tobacco has become a regulatory and economic necessity due to the current regulatory "loopholes" that mandate regulation of TDN but not synthetic nicotine. The current policy incentivizes unsatisfactory processes like mislabelling of TDN products as synthetic to avoid the regulatory processes applicable to TDN. TDN is ~99.3% (S)-nicotine, whereas SyN can vary from racemic (50/50 (R)/(S)) to 99% (S)-nicotine, i.e., chemically identical to the tobacco-derived compound and very difficult to differentiate. The authors present evidence that only radiocarbon analysis offers a definitive method for identification which does not rely on the impurities that most tobacco products lose during extraction and purification processes.
Citation
Cheetham, A. G., Plunkett, S., Campbell, P., Hilldrup, J., Coffa, B. G., Gilliland, S., & Eckard, S. (2022). Analysis and differentiation of tobacco-derived and synthetic nicotine products: Addressing an urgent regulatory issue. PloS One, 17(4), e0267049. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267049
