Nicotine as a Chemical Weapon?

On July 22nd, 2011, Anders Breivik, a Norwegian neo-Nazi terrorist and extremist, launched two devastating attacks—one in Oslo and the other on Utøya Island in Norway—killing 77 people, mostly teenagers. He surrendered to police and is now serving a life sentence in a high-security prison.

Ninety minutes before the attacks, he released a 1,518-page compendium on social media entitled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.” This manifesto detailed two years of meticulous planning for his atrocities.

The manifesto described his preparations, including renting a farm to buy fertilizer for a large bomb and instructions on making or purchasing hollow-point bullets. He then detailed his plan to inject the bullets with toxins to convert them into biological or chemical weapons.

He searched for a suitably poisonous and easily available toxin. After rejecting heroin, various insecticides, and cyanide, he determined that nicotine would be the ideal chemical weapon. In his manifesto, he even provided a form letter to order nicotine “for e-cigarettes” from chemical suppliers, complete with their addresses.

He was “relieved” to obtain 50 mL of 99% pure nicotine from China with “no complications whatsoever.” This single small bottle contained approximately 50,000 mg of nicotine. Assuming a minimum fatal dose of 60 mg, that bottle was theoretically capable of killing over 800 people. Fortunately, Breivik did not use the liquid nicotine in his attacks.

This case reveals a terrifying loophole. While pure nicotine is a poison rivaling cyanide, it is legally available because it is marketed for e cigarette devices. The e cigarette industry’s growth has created a vast, largely unregulated market for concentrated nicotine, which is sold online and in stores with minimal oversight.

Breivik’s choice highlights several dangers of unregulated e cigarette liquid:

• Availability: It can be ordered online from international suppliers without prescription or license.

• Potency: 99% pure nicotine is far more concentrated than the liquid used in most vaping devices.

• Lethality: A small bottle can carry a dose lethal to hundreds of people.

• Stealth: Ordering “for e-cigarettes” provides a plausible, legal cover story.

The authors Diethelm and McKee concluded: “It is unimaginable that governments would have failed to restrict access to any other poison that had been used or was threatened to be used in such circumstances. Yet nicotine retains its privileged position as an active pharmacological agent that is largely exempt from regulation.“

The fact that a mass murderer could legally acquire enough poison to kill 800 people simply by ordering e cigarette supplies should alarm everyone. While e cigarette devices help some smokers quit, the concentrated nicotine that fuels them is a potent toxin that remains dangerously accessible. Until regulations catch up with this reality, the potential for e cigarette nicotine to be used as a chemical weapon remains a clear and present danger.

References

Cervillin, G., Luci, M., Bellini, C., and Luppi, G., “Bad News About an Old Poison: A Case Report of Nicotine Poisoning Due to Both Ingestion and Injection of the Content of an Electronic Cigarette Refill”, Emergency Care Journal, 9: e18, 2013

Diethelm, P., and McKee, M., “Nicotine: Not Just an Unregulated Poison but Now a Potential Chemical Weapon”, European Journal of Public Health, 21: 681-683, 2011