QUANTITATIVE DETERMINATION OF NICOTINE IN 
COMMERCIAL CIGARETTES BY LC/MS/MS

Laurian Vlase1,  Lorena FILIP2 Ioana  MINDRUTAU3, Sorin E. Leucuţa1

Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Iuliu Hatieganu”, Cluj-Napoca
1Department of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmaceutics
2Department of Environmental Chemistry,
3Department of Physical Chemistry

Nicotine is the most abundant of the volatile alkaloids in the tobacco leaf. Nicotine is a highly addictive drug. Approximately 70% of smokers who want to quit smoking cannot and about 83% of smokers smoke every day. The amount of information regarding nicotine content in cigarettes is slight and only a few studies have been done to bring light to this subject. We used a LC/MS/MS method for quantification of nicotine in commercial cigarettes. More than 50 brands of cigarettes available in Romania were analyzed. With our methodology, we obtained values of nicotine in tobacco between 5 and 20 mg/g.

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