I've been wondering about ways to obtain nicotine should nicotine bases become 'unavailable' for whatever reason. After some poking around, it seems there are two main solutions to this.
In the first instance, instructions on the process for chemical nicotine extraction are available on the www.
Nicotine isn't
hugely complicated to extract from fresh tobacco (which grows well in the UK). Essentially you need a strong acid (hydrochloric/sulphuric), an alkali base (lye), and a solvent like benzene or xylene - though you might want to skip xylene as it's nasty and can trigger the genetic mutations that lead to cancer. That hasn't stopped the food industry from using it to produce decaffeinated coffee though.
The second approach, however, is much more compelling.
All you would really need to do to process fresh tobacco leaf would be to boil it, strain off the solids then boil the water right down. Then, after letting this thick solution cool off naturally in a glass beaker, simply scrape all around the edges of the beaker as the first crystals begin to form. More crystals will form on this scraped off residue and the water content will continue to slowly evaporate. Finally, drop a coffee filter into a funnel, drop the funnel into the end of a wet/dry vacuum cleaner pipe, dump in your soggy crystals and vacuum extract the remaining moisture. This would leave you with a high nicotine content crystalline residue. Not pharma pure, but pretty easy and likely good enough.
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I think the genie is out of the bottle on this one. Govt. can't even control a popular class B herbal substance. What chance do they really have of policing a ban on vaping? This country is around £1.7T in debt. Where's the money coming for this?
Fait accompli.
Vape on.
*(I don't advocate trying any of the above. I'm no expert and nicotine is a poison. My comments are purely for edutainment).