5 ms·

The mean LD50 of caffeine and nicotine in humans are 150-200 and 6.5-13 mg/kg, respectively.

• Dylan16807 8y ago
  The LD50 doesn't matter unless you have a brick of mystery drug in front of you. This is about harm from recreational doses.
  • ryanmercer 8y ago
    It's extremely easier to ingest a fatal dose, or even just enough for nicotine poisoning when you've got a liquid flavored like a dessert vs cigarettes.
  • rosser 8y ago
    In the general case, yes. In this case, however, I'm responding to the claim that, "nicotine in isolation is really no more harmful than caffeine." (Emphasis added.) Two orders of magnitude greater lethality by dose comports with no definition of "no more harmful" which I can conceive.
    • Dylan16807 8y ago
      That's not how doses work. A dose of nicotine weighs less than a dose of caffeine (roughly 12mg vs 95mg). "In isolation" is talking about removing the effects of the other chemicals, probably popping one pill of each, not about putting the exact same quantity into each pill. But more importantly LD50 is completely the wrong metric for measuring the harm of this kind of drug. The number of overdoses is statistically negligible.