There's racemic nicotine on the market?
Dr. Sven-Eric Jordt, an associate professor at Duke University who has studied synthetic nicotine, said it posed many unknowns.About 99 percent of tobacco-derived nicotine is a psychoactive molecule called S-nicotine, he said. But a mirror-image molecule, known as R-nicotine, makes up 50 percent of most types of synthetic nicotine. He said the R-nicotine molecule appears to be less addictive, but very little research has been done on it in animals or humans.“It could alter nerve transmission in the brain in different ways from classic nicotine,” Dr. Jordt said, “but we don’t understand that at this time.”
According to the article, this material is being made in China. Who is making racemic nicotine, and how?