[circlecity]

Pure nicotine is quite toxic. You can extract enough from three or four strong cigars to kill someone in less than a minute. I’ve read that if you squirted a full eyedropper of pure nicotine on the skin of a rabbit it will curl up and die.

[TigersEye]

I’ve heard that too. However, I put about a pound of cigarette butts in a gallon plastic jug, filled it with water and steeped it for about two years. Strained it out this summer for a pesticide and splashed a bunch of it on myself. Didn’t do a thing. It did make a colony of ants pick up and move though.

[jjsheridan5]

Pure nicotine is quite toxic. You can extract enough from three or four strong cigars to kill someone in less than a minute. I’ve read that if you squirted a full eyedropper of pure nicotine on the skin of a rabbit it will curl up and die.

This is one of those "gee how scary is that" statements that is extremely misleading. Plants are full of natural insecticides that are quite toxic to humans when concentrated. Even vitamins, when concentrated, can become toxic at low levels, as can many other chemicals found in vegetables. Look at the number of "toxins" in a potato.

Nicotine poisoning and overdose is quite rare, and there is no indication that ingestion at less than toxic levels has any negative health implications, and there is considerable evidence of positive benefits from less than toxic levels of ingestion.