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Nicotine inhalator: nicotine content

The inhalator looks like the one product on this page that goes to the lungs and does not. It is a buccal product with a hand-to-mouth action attached, and that action is a large part of why it works for the people it works for.

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.

What the number on the pack is

It is not a vape, and it does not reach the lung

There is no heat, no battery and no aerosol. The device is a mouthpiece holding a porous plug impregnated with nicotine; drawing air through it carries nicotine vapour into the mouth, where it deposits on the lining of the cheeks and throat. Particle behaviour and the absence of heating mean essentially none of it reaches the alveoli.

So despite the name and the shape, the pharmacology is buccal, like gum and lozenges: minutes rather than seconds, no arterial spike, and the same sensitivity to the pH of the mouth. Anyone expecting cigarette-like speed from it will be disappointed, and anyone comparing it to a vape is comparing two different routes.

The hand-to-mouth action is the actual feature

Smoking is a physical routine as much as a drug habit: something to hold, something to do with the hands, a break with a defined shape, a repeated action performed dozens of times a day. Replacement products generally strip all of that out and leave only the nicotine.

The inhalator deliberately keeps it. For people whose difficulty is the ritual rather than the chemistry, that makes it the format that fits, and it is the reason it is still on the market alongside products that are simpler to use.

Cartridges and dose

European cartridges are commonly 15 mg of nicotine, with an older 10 mg version still sold in some markets. A cartridge is not consumed in one sitting; it is used across a number of sessions until the nicotine is spent, and only part of the stated content is delivered to the user at all. The label states the maximum cartridges per day and how long a cartridge remains usable once opened.

This is another instance of the same trap: the number on the box is a content figure for the cartridge, not a dose, and cannot be lined up against a patch figure, which is a rate.

Cold weather reduces the release

Nicotine leaves the plug as a vapour, and vapour pressure falls with temperature. In cold conditions the device delivers less per draw, which users notice as a weaker effect outdoors in winter. Keeping the device in an inside pocket rather than an outer one is the usual practical answer.

Against a cigarette

The only figure that lets any of these formats be compared is what a smoker actually absorbs: roughly 1 to 1.5 mg of nicotine per cigarette, or something in the region of 20 to 30 mg across a twenty-a-day habit. That is a measured absorbed dose, and it is not the same kind of number as the one on most packs.

A licensed replacement product is designed to sit against that absorbed figure rather than above it, which is the entire point of the dose ladder printed on the pack: enough to remove withdrawal, in a form slow enough not to reproduce the reinforcement.

Quitting from here

A fast-acting form in the sense that matters for combination therapy, and the only licensed product that also replaces the physical routine. Pair it with a patch rather than using it alone.

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

Sources: Product label and Summary of Product Characteristics published by the national medicines agency · Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group reviews of nicotine replacement therapy · Benowitz, Hukkanen and Jacob, Nicotine chemistry, metabolism, kinetics and biomarkers, Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology, 2009 · checked 2026-09-06

Other formats

All formats, the conversion tables and the EU caps are on the hub page.