EnglishBeer as “Nicotine dispenser”
“With our beer you won't have to go outside the pub for a quickie”.
The next "Nicotine dispenser"?
NicoShot beer, produced by the German company Nautilus GmbH, contains three milligrams of nicotine alkaloids per 250ml can, equivalent to a few regular filtered cigarettes.
One 250 ml can of NicoShot contains 6.3 percent alcohol by volume. Three cans of the brew are comparable to an entire pack of cigarettes.
Nautilus Laboratoriumsbedarf describes the lager as having “cigarette satisfaction in a beer without the smoke”.
However, nobody knows the taste and the satisfaction this beer can give. How about the taste of combining beer with nicotine? Will this be better than smoking?
“The cigarette should be conceived not as a product but as a package. The product is nicotine. Think of the cigarette as the dispenser for a dose unit of nicotine”. – Philip Morris, 1972
Nicotine delivery devices range today from snuff, chewing tobacco, cigars, pipes and conventional cigarettes to chewing gum, patches, aerosol sprays and inhalers, but not yet in food and beverages.
Nicotine-beer ban?
Today the German company, that it is currently testing NicoShot, is hoping its product will be approved within the next few months in the USA. But there is little chance of the same happening in Australia, when such products are already banned.
Lydia Buchtmann from Food Standards Australia New Zealand says it has already addressed the issue: “People overseas were adding nicotine to other things such as mineral water, so we thought wèd be absolutely cautious because while the Food Standards code didn't actually say you could add nicotine, it didn't actually say you couldn't”, Ms Buchtmann said.
“So wève since amended that, done a safety assessment and ensured that nicotine can't be added to food or beverages”.
NicoShot beer finds difficulties in the European Union too, except in Sweden, the latest European country to ban smoking in restaurants, bars and cafes.
Swedish smokers may find some reprieve in the European Court of Justice ruling, which allows for sale of nicotine patches and nicotine gum from outlets other than the state run pharmacy monopoly Apoteket. Therefore, the Swedish loophole may also allow for distribution of other new prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications including nicotine enhanced beer.
Nicotine beer to kick the habit?
The German company Nautilus GmbH claims NicoShot helps smokers kick the habit. “NicoShot is a smoking-cessation brew designed to satisfy the nicotine urge whenever you want a cigarette, but can't smoke – providing a realistic way to quit smoking”, a Nautilus spokesperson said. “NicoShot can lessen cravings, it can help you make changes in your lifestyle without having to walk out of the bar for a quick smoke to deal with sudden withdrawal symptoms”.
“It can be used to relieve withdrawal symptoms at the beginning of quitting, to relieve urges from cigarette smoke (cravings) while quitting, or to avoid relapse months after quitting when a new stress or situation may trigger a strong urge to smoke”.
Furthermore, more and more countries have a smoking ban in bars and restaurants, and the German company assumes they found a unique way of combating a ban on smoking in pubs, and maybe a new business.
“A very fine drug”
However, in 1962 BAT already declared: “We are in the business of selling nicotine - an addictive and very fine Drug”. And in 1969 Philip Morris explained that “The primary motivation for smoking is to obtain the pharmacological effect of nicotine”.
The risk is that the same drug, however administered, will produce the same addiction. In principle, you will satisfy the nicotine urge whenever you want a beer … by lighting a cigarette.
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