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Nicotine content by product

What the nicotine figure on each of 18 product formats actually measures, the arithmetic that makes those numbers comparable, and the EU caps that do and do not apply.

This is a reference page about what is printed on packs and what EU law caps. It is not medical advice, not a diagnosis and not a recommendation to use any product here. Nicotine is addictive and every product on this page can sustain that dependence. If you use nicotine and want to stop, a pharmacist, a doctor or your national cessation service will help you more than a table will.

Four packs, four different quantities

Almost every argument about which nicotine product is strongest is really an argument between people reading four different physical quantities as though they were one. They are not, and no amount of arithmetic will make them comparable until you know which is which.

• A cigarette carries a machine yield: how much nicotine a smoking machine drew out of the smoke under standard laboratory conditions. It is not what is in the tobacco and it is not what a person gets.
• A pouch or a can of snus carries a content: the nicotine physically present in the sachet, or the concentration in the material. Only part of it crosses the gum before the pouch is thrown away.
• E-liquid carries a concentration: milligrams in every millilitre. Until it is multiplied by the millilitres you actually get through, it says nothing about a dose.
• A nicotine patch carries a delivery rate: the nicotine it releases across its wear time. The patch itself contains more than the number on the box.

The one figure that lets you cross between them is what a smoker actually absorbs: roughly 1 to 1.5 mg of nicotine per cigarette, so something in the region of 20 to 30 mg across a twenty-a-day habit. That is a measured absorbed dose rather than a label figure, and it is the anchor used on every page of this surface.

Pouch cans: milligrams per gram to milligrams per pouch

Nicotine pouches and snus are declared either as milligrams per pouch or as milligrams per gram. The second is a concentration and means nothing on its own, because pouch formats differ: mini pouches sit near 0.3 g, slim formats around 0.5 to 0.7 g, and larger formats approach 1 g. The conversion is one multiplication.

mg per pouch = mg per gram × pouch weight in grams
mg per gram  = mg per pouch ÷ pouch weight in grams

Read down the row for the concentration on your can and across to the format in your hand. Two cans that look identical on the shelf can sit three rows apart in this table.

Source: Arithmetic on the declared concentration printed on the can. Pouch weights are the formats manufacturers sell, not a legal standard · checked 2026-09-06

Two things fall out of that grid. The first is that a mini pouch at a high concentration can be a smaller dose than a large pouch at a modest one, which is the opposite of how the cans read. The second is that a strength indicator printed as dots or as a level from one to five has no legal definition behind it and is not comparable between brands. Two cans marked level four can differ several-fold. The milligrams are the only figure that travels.

E-liquid: milligrams per millilitre to milligrams

Liquid strength is a concentration too, and the same trap applies. A drop in milligrams per millilitre accompanied by a rise in millilitres used is not a reduction, and it is the most common way a self-directed taper quietly fails.

The bottom right corner of that table is the one worth remembering: a full 10 ml refill bottle at the EU maximum of 20 mg per millilitre holds 200 mg of nicotine. That is why those bottles must be child-resistant and tamper-evident, and it is why a spilt or swallowed bottle is a poisoning rather than a mess.

What EU law caps, and what it does not

The Tobacco Products Directive sets the numbers that apply across the whole EU. It is worth reading the list once, because the gaps in it explain most of the confusion in this market.

Source: EU Tobacco Products Directive 2014/40/EU · checked 2026-09-06

The last row is the important one. Nicotine pouches arrived on the market containing no tobacco and no e-liquid, which put them outside a directive written for exactly those two things. There was consequently no EU cap on nicotine per pouch, no EU-mandated warning and no EU ingredient reporting duty, and each country has had to decide for itself. Several have prohibited retail sale outright, on tobacco-law or food-law grounds; the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany have each acted against them. Others permit sale with an age limit, a notification duty and a statutory cap on nicotine per pouch.

Because those national rules move, and because someone might act on a figure printed here, this page points at the authority instead of printing a number.

Why the same milligrams feel different

Nicotine is a weak base with a pKa near 8. In an acidic environment it is ionised and crosses membranes badly; in an alkaline one it is un-ionised and crosses them easily. That single fact explains almost every difference between the formats on this page.

Cigarette smoke from flue-cured tobacco is acidic, so almost nothing is absorbed in the mouth and the smoke has to reach the lung. Once there, the alveolar surface is enormous and the blood supply immediate, so nicotine reaches the brain in about ten to twenty seconds. Cigar and pipe smoke, from air-cured tobacco, is alkaline, which is why a cigar works without inhaling. Snus, nicotine pouches and nicotine gum are all deliberately buffered alkaline for the same reason, and acidic drinks are asked to be avoided around oral replacement products because they undo the buffering. Nicotine that is swallowed instead of absorbed in the mouth goes through the liver first and is largely destroyed before it reaches the circulation, which is why chewing gum continuously produces hiccups and nausea rather than relief.

Speed matters as much as dose. The reinforcement that makes a habit hard to break comes from a short interval between the action and the effect, which is why a cigarette is the most reinforcing nicotine product ever sold and why a patch, which has no peak at all, is the least. Two products delivering the same total nicotine over a day can differ enormously on that axis.

Source: Benowitz, Hukkanen and Jacob, Nicotine chemistry, metabolism, kinetics and biomarkers, Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology, 2009; Benowitz, Nicotine addiction, New England Journal of Medicine, 2010 · checked 2026-09-06

How long it stays

Nicotine has an elimination half-life of about two hours, so it is largely gone within a night and never accumulates across days. Cotinine, the metabolite most of it is converted into, has a half-life near sixteen hours and therefore does accumulate, which is why a test looking for recent nicotine use measures cotinine in saliva, blood or urine rather than nicotine itself. A single exposure remains detectable as cotinine for days rather than hours.

The two-hour figure also explains the shape of a smoking day. Levels build through the morning, plateau, and fall overnight, which makes the first use after waking the largest relative jump of the day and the hardest one to skip. How quickly that first craving arrives after waking is the single best indicator of physical dependence in standard questionnaires, and it is a more useful thing to know about yourself than the number on any can.

Children, pets and swallowed nicotine

The oldest number in this field, that around 60 mg of nicotine is a lethal dose for an adult, has been challenged in the toxicology literature and the true figure is very probably far higher. That is not a reason to relax about it. Concentrated nicotine is genuinely dangerous to a small child, and the modern products are the problem: a full 10 ml bottle of 20 mg per millilitre e-liquid holds 200 mg, and a nicotine pouch is small, sweet-smelling and easy to swallow.

If a child swallows a pouch, chews one, or drinks e-liquid, treat it as a poisoning immediately rather than waiting for symptoms. Call your national poison information centre or the European emergency number 112. In Estonia the poison information centre number is 16662. Keep cans closed and out of reach, do not leave used pouches in an open lid, and store liquid with the child-resistant cap actually closed.

Source: Mayer, How much nicotine kills a human?, Archives of Toxicology, 2014, on the origin and unreliability of the 60 mg figure · checked 2026-09-06

Burned or heated tobacco

Tobacco you do not burn

Tobacco-free nicotine

Licensed replacement medicines

Quitting from here

Every format on this page can hold a nicotine dependence in place, and the way out of all of them is the same. The first useful step is arithmetic: convert whatever you use into milligrams a day using the tables above, and write the number down. A taper you cannot measure is a taper you cannot hold.

The pattern with the most evidence behind it is the same whichever product you are stopping. A long-acting form holds the baseline so that withdrawal is not generating cravings all day, and a fast-acting form is there for the moments a craving still arrives. Cochrane reviews of nicotine replacement therapy find that using it improves the chance of stopping compared with no medication, and that combining a patch with a fast-acting form does better than either on its own. Behavioural support on top of medication does better again.

Two things are worth knowing before you start. Under-dosing is the usual failure: people choose the low strength, use it less often than the label says, and conclude that replacement does not work for them. And prescription medicines exist for tobacco dependence as well; those are a conversation with a clinician rather than a shelf decision.

National services are free and staffed by people who do this all day. In Estonia the National Institute for Health Development runs cessation counselling and publishes the current clinic and helpline list. In Finland the Stumppi service run by Filha covers the same ground. In Sweden it is Sluta-Roka-Linjen. Your pharmacy will know the local one.

Source: Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group reviews of nicotine replacement therapy and of combination therapy · checked 2026-09-06

Frequently asked questions

Where these figures come from

Legal caps are the EU Tobacco Products Directive. Licensed-medicine strengths are the strengths printed on the products and in the Summaries of Product Characteristics published by national medicines agencies. Pharmacology is standard published review material, cited on each page. The conversion tables are arithmetic performed here from the two inputs named in each caption.

What you will not find on this surface is a milligram figure for a named brand. Manufacturers change strengths and formats, a stale number on a nicotine page is worse than no number, and there is no reliable way to keep hundreds of product SKUs current. The can in your hand is the authoritative source for its own strength, and this page exists to teach you how to read it. There are no shop links here either, deliberately.

Source: EU Tobacco Products Directive 2014/40/EU · checked 2026-09-06

Caffeine content by drink covers the other everyday stimulant on the same terms, and alcohol units and calories does the same arithmetic-first job for drinks.