Tobacco Juice - Is it really organic?

How organic can tobacco juice really be? We're taking highly cancerous cigarettes and soaking them in water. All the toxins from the cigarettes are leaching into the water. This is probably what's killing the bugs so effectively. Is this really "organic?" Sounds more like a homemade chemical pesticide.

What do you think organic means exactly?

Heisenberg said:

What do you think organic means exactly?

Click to expand...

I concur.••••

Georgyboy.... I'd never put Tobacco Juice on my plants. Every grow book on the market seems to have a voo-doo recipe for using it. Nicotine is a poison by itself, and lord only knows what else Big Tabacco puts in those cigs to help keep people addicted to them.
.
Neem oil is a much better, much safer alternative, well worth the few bucks it costs.
.
I really doubt you can find pure tabacco these days, unless you grow it yourself. But by doing that, you'd put your Mary at risk of contracting TMV. Again, Neem Oil is the safer choice.
.

no shit!!! i agree. but both sides have points. its one of them recipes where is kinda crosses a line in some shape and form. but i guess on paper, its okay. beats me honestly. iff you have bugs the best way to rid them is finish your grow, clean up, then start new plants. i had a full bore consistent harvest system set up were i was harvesting every 2 months. got a bad case of ahpids and i thought i could rid them by trying whatever i could to get them gone. the only thing that worked for me was no more plants in veg while flowering. killed my mothers and started all over. imo, that is thee best and most organic way to rid bugs of your garden. those sticky traps help decrease population on certain hitchhikers only, not all of them though. i have damn gnats from my girlfriend bringing home house plants and over watering them. them fuckers sneeked in my room. good luck with whatever problems you are having. hope you choose something that will work for ya.

If you wanted to make organic tobacco juice, you'd need raw unadulterated tobacco (preferably organically grown tobacco).

The 'tobacco' in cigarettes isn't really tobacco. It's called recon which is reconstituted tobacco plant mass. Basically they take tobacco (and not just the leaves), which is God knows how old, as well as floor sweepings from the cigarette factory and other tobacco by-products and turn it into a pulp, press it into a sheet and shred it. Then before they make cigarettes with it they adulterate it with any number of the 599 approved additives.

Tobacco plants are frequently grown with high phosphate fertilizers mined from a particular kind of apatite ore. These fertilizers contain radium and the decay products thereof: radon gas, polonium-210 and lead-210. These are radioactive substances and they build up in the soil with each application of fertilizer. Radium decays into radon gas, which quickly decays into polonium-210, which decays into lead-210. The radioactive dusts stick to the trichomes of the tobacco leaf, where they stay through the cigarette manufacturing process and ultimately wind up in the lungs of the smoker.

This is why tobacco causes lung cancer and cannabis doesn't.

Hear it from your government: http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/sources/tobacco.html

Use organic tobacco? America Spirits has organic 100% tobacco in pouches.

But I agree with everyone else - define organic. You realize biological warfare is organic right?

That guy ^ is a bit on the nutter side (no offense). They use the same pesticides and fertilizers to grow tobacco as all of our food.

No, they don't. The fertilizers frequently used to grow tobacco come from apatite ore mined in Florida. Other apatite ores aren't typically radioactive, but do contain rare earth metals.

Obviously they wouldn't use the same fertilizer for everything, because different plants have different needs... pot growers should realize this.

From the EPA:

How does radioactive material get into a cigarette?

The tobacco leaves used in making cigarettes contain radioactive material, particularly lead-210 and polonium-210. The radionuclide content of tobacco leaves depends heavily on soil conditions and fertilizer use.
Soils that contain elevated radium lead to high radon gas emanations rising into the growing tobacco crop. Radon rapidly decays into a series of solid, highly radioactive metals (radon decay products). These metals cling to dust particles which in turn are collected by the sticky tobacco leaves. The sticky compound that seeps from the trichomes is not water soluble, so the particles do not wash off in the rain. There they stay, through curing process, cutting, and manufacture into cigarettes.Lead-210 and Polonium-210 can be absorbed into tobacco leaves directly from the soil. But more importantly, fine, sticky hairs (called trichomes) on both sides of tobacco leaves grab airborne radioactive particles.
For example, phosphate fertilizers, favored by the tobacco industry, contain radium and its decay products (including lead-210 and polonium-210). When phosphate fertilizer is spread on tobacco fields year after year, the concentration of lead-210 and polonium-210 in the soil rises.

Click to expand...

Nullis said:

No, they don't. The fertilizers frequently used to grow tobacco come from apatite ore mined in Florida. Other apatite ores aren't typically radioactive, but do contain rare earth metals.

Obviously they wouldn't use the same fertilizer for everything, because different plants have different needs... pot growers should realize this.

From the EPA:

Click to expand...

lol. totally man, blaze on. 90% of farmers use the same 10 fertilizers, simply in different amounts. To think that all tobacco farmers seek out expensive rare radio active fertilizer for just their crop is 100% conspiracy theorist.

"When phosphate fertilizer is spread on tobacco fields year after year, the concentration of lead-210 and polonium-210 in the soil rises." This applies to all crops that use phosphate fertilizer... which is most all of them... Look up background radiation. Moral of the story is that lungs are extremely sensitive and inhaling hot carcinogenic debris is bad for them - and my carinogenic debri i'm talking about the 50 carinogens reported in most medical journals, not the two common elements that have a half life.

Chemical phosphates which most large growers use are the same as the phosphate used for tobacco. Nicotine is the main culprit when it comes to cancer in the lungs. It doesn't directly cause it but it's an amazing agonist.

Who the hell said this fertilizer was expensive or rare? No. Contains rare earth metals. Doesn't mean it itself is rare. I am sure they use it because it's dirt cheap.

Sure background radiation is everywhere but tobacco seems to be a special plant adept at accumulating this radiation. So the Environmental Protection Agency is full of shit and the radionuclides in tobacco couldn't possibly accumulate in a smokers lungs and 20 years down the road lead to lung cancer? There is nothing conspiracy-theoretical about it.

It must just be a coincidence that the half-life of lead-210 is 22-something years, and an ex-smoker who quit 25 years ago now has the same risk of developing lung cancer as a non-smoker.

The EPA doesn't cite is as a primary carcinogen in tobacco - just a radioactive constituent.

The bit about the half-life makes no sense whatsoever.

Page 24/26 - http://www1.fipr.state.fl.us/fipr/fipr1.nsf/129fc2ac92d337ca85256c5b00481502/5dc7355eabaa3e3c85256b2f00591a7e/$FILE/05-dfp-015Final.pdf Aside from the lungs food delivers more radiation? I can't be reading that right (seriously).

Exactly... radioactive being the key word there. These substances emit alpha particles as they decay, hence why they're radioactive. I don't think it's so far fetched to presume that the accumulation of Po-210 and Lead-210 in a smokers lungs constantly emitting alpha particles, damaging lung tissue as it goes, is eventually what is setting the stage for the cancer. It's common knowledge that radioactive compounds lead to cancer, particularly ones that emit alpha radiation. And in fact I have read research stating that the Po-210 is the ONLY constituent of tobacco smoke capable of causing cancer by itself in experiments involving lab animals. Not going digging for that research right now, but I am sure it can be found easily enough.

The half-life thing makes a decent amount of sense. Twenty-five years after one quits smoking all of Po-210 has decayed (half-life 138 days), and a significant amount of the lead-210 such that the tissue in the lungs has had the time to repair itself... granted no pre-cancerous lesions have already developed.

All tobacco smoking aside, other forms of tobacco are also well known to cause cancer. Snuff and chewing tobacco cause cancer as well, particularly of the mouth and throat. A person who chews tobacco sticks a wad of it between their cheek and gum, typically in just about the same spot every time. Keep that up and a decade or more down the road you have a cancerous lesion in the very spot where you put that wad of tobacco. No other kind of plant that you'd put in your mouth seems to have this effect. My point is to say that smoking is the cause of the cancer is simply wrong, as it fails to explain why smokeless tobacco also leads to various kinds of cancer. But, a radioactive constituent of the tobacco would certainly start to make the pieces fit.

Laughable on the idea of the chemical pesticide and radiation poisoning from this method of course, but there can be a dark side to using the tobacco/nicotine as a pest control.

--> Cannabis is suspect to infections by both TRSV - Tobacco Ring Spot Virus and TSV - Tobacco Streak Virus. Especially when the plant has come under stress, say from an infestation ... how you come about getting nicotine sulfate is best left to other people. Their base for extraction is not subject to the ludicrous "smoking" taxes and comes out much cheaper to find it on the shelf.

It's still "organic" but not all organic means viral or pest free. In other words, sometimes organic is even more dangerous. Tons of people playing with organic methods introduce far more problems than this concern over minute amounts of curatives and the like used by commercial cigarette producers. You're more likely to introduce far higher levels of other trace toxins from just the setups most people are using than to worry about such.


Though I wouldn't recommend using this as most of the pests you're wish to treat usually require something stronger than the nicotine sulfate solutions you can make or buy commercially. The homemade solutions also tend to leave various impurities and strong potentials for secondary growths of molds and such with most recipes I've run into (emphasis indoor).

Oh and lets not forget about the idea that this form of neurotoxin (gotta love the fact nicotine is classified as such) can cause very adverse affects in you as well as the pests and is easily absorbed through the skin. Up to and including becoming very dead. Still looking for someone to run data on anyone having used it in late flower for residual concentrations absorbed. Great combination delivery catalyst but I'd prefer to know the dosage when I make a spliff ...

Did you look at the scholarly article? It says you get just as much of the same radiation through eating the typical diet. I also read the article that the EPA references. The main concern being the ability to absorb and not the amount that was actually being absorbed.

"Test plants were grown within a chamber enriched with radon-222 in the atmosphere, in tobacco fields with different sources of phosphate-containing fertilizer, and in culture containing lead-210 in the nutrient solution."

Field levels were insignificant (according to gov standards).

I said nothing about chemical pesticides, and I never said making a solution out of a pack of cigarettes would lead to radiation poisoning. The point I was trying to illustrate is that the tobacco in cigarettes isn't natural tobacco and certainly shouldn't be considered organic by any means.

At any rate, whatever pest you have there is probably a much better alternative than this.

Combination reply toward the OP ... I should have taken a few minutes to remove the sarcasm aspect from this now that I see how that reads ... Heck, looks like I needed to unstring some thoughts period!

RE: The idea of introducing the specific forms of radiation - the only way I know of to describe it is poisoning. Exposure may have been the more correct term, but the idea is it will be ingested. Which leads me back to the idea of poisoning ... Semantics suck sometimes.

And sincerely didn't mean to place words in your mouth. Just trying to translate how this would affect the subject of the end product to the best of my ability.

By organic I mean is it something that regularly occurs in nature. For example, Superthrive contains 1-Naphthyl Acetic Acid (NAA) which is a manmade compound. Therefore, even if Superthrive can be used with organic grows, and have no negative effect on microbiology and such, it is not organic. So if anything in the cigarette is a man made compound, and is leaching into the water, tobacco juice would not constitute as organic, even if it were perfectly safe. 100% pure organic tobacco with no additives, I think, would constitute as organic. But would a tobacco juice made from organic tobacco kill the insects? Is it the nicotine that kills or something else? Also, I never have nor will I ever smoke cigarettes (except the funny kind), so I'm not in a hurry to toss them on my plants. I'm not trying to dog on anyone for using tobacco juice, I'm just saying we should take a second to think about what we're tossing on our plants and soil before we do it. This goes for everything not just tobacco juice. And for the guy who says why would they use anything different for tobacco plants than our food crops, you hit the nail on the head my friend. The shit on most our food isn't safe either. Support your local farmers and business. Shop at your local co op and check out the farmers market when they're open. There's a whole different world of flavor and variety out there.

georgyboy said:

... Is it the nicotine that kills or something else? ... But would a tobacco juice made from organic tobacco kill the insects? ....

Click to expand...

Nicotine is the active toxin. When extracted using sulfuric acid you get the sulfate of it. More or less call it a concentrated/commercial form of the active toxin.

Cigarettes from various makers are pretty much just organic tobacco without all the curatives people assume have to be used. I say pretty much because all claims of organic (hence this thread) are always suspect. Even OMRI certified etc. Since you know the rough mg dosage of nicotine per cigarette and it is the only thing (outside of the sticky factor most juice recipes wind up with) that kills, and you can extrapolate how to make a percent dosage based on the boiling method used etc, ... yes, you can make a spray from it.

Is the tobacco used in a cigarette the ideal choice and all that rot? Nope.

Nicotine has been used as an insecticide for a very long time.

Tobacco has the highest concentration but it is not the only plant you can gain this compound from for all that.


Still not sure why something covered so widely in basic horticulture has you questioning the source of toxicity to the pest from this extraction ...

I agree, organic tobacco will yield an organic product. Anything else will not.

I am sorry, Gastanker, but reading the pdf you provided actually seems to me to support the notion I have that the radionuclides in tobacco smoke are significant contributing factors to lung cancers, if not the trigger that causes the dominoes to fall.

Tobacco smoking appears to provide a dose equal to or greater than that provided by dietary ingestion for both Pb-210 and Po-210 in bone tissues, liver and kidneys; and for Po-210 in the spleen for the three Western-style diets addressed in Sect. 4.1. The smoking dose estimates are most comparable to those obtained for dietary intake by Arctic dwellers.

Click to expand...

A comparison of the estimated maximum doses indicates that adults ingesting an "ordinary," mixed Western-style diet in the U.S.A., U.K., and Federal Republic of Germany would receive between 10-50% the adsorbed radiation to target organs that adults ingesting observed diets in Japan and the Arctic would receive.

Click to expand...

I must also note, from what I read, that in this article they used some assumptions, estimates and conversion factors. I think it would be difficult to gauge just how much radiation exposure a smoker is getting from their cigarettes versus their diet. The amount of cigarettes a smoker consumes daily varies widely as would the radionuclide content of the tobacco they're smoking as would their diet and the radionuclide content of it. Furthermore, a smoker is getting radiation from both their cigarettes as well as their diet. The extreme differences in modes of delivery may also effect just how much damage ultimately occurs from what radiation is ingested. That is, when you consume foods the radionuclides are likely distributed throughout the body and be more readily excreted. When you smoke a cigarette you're directly depositing the radionuclides in the alveoli and bronchioles, and if you're smoking a pack a day it is going to accumulate there. As well, if you're constantly putting a wad of chewing tobacco in the same spot of your mouth then you're constantly exposing that area to alpha radiation, on top of any other exposures you're receiving.

Finally, that article was published in 1983. All of the sources for the radionuclide contents of tobacco per country are from the late 1960's, early 1970's. They are probably much higher now.

By the way, I smoke cigarettes.