Alexander Kobulnicky

Nicotine
12”x16”
Acrylic on canvas
2010
$350

Like most drugs, nicotine is an insecticide. This special alkaloid found in tobacco is, like caffeine, psilocybin and cocaine, designed to keep ants, worms and caterpillars from nibbling the plants to death. Clever creatures that we are, humans have figured out how to pick, cure, roll, and smoke tobacco, titrating our dose and keeping death at arm’s length.

Unlike cocaine or caffeine, nicotine actually has been used as a commercial insecticide. Nicotine acts on the acetylcholine system much like pyrethroids, and causes the same twitching, loathsome death that pyrethroids like Raid do. However, nicotine has been banned as an insecticide since 2001, due to its toxicity to humans.

Nicotine is often called a poison, but its toxicity is surprising, compared to more reviled drugs. Nicotine is twice as acutely toxic, by weight, as cocaine, and ingestion of as few as three cigarettes can be fatal. Smoking cigarettes is comparatively safe, since almost all of the nicotine is burned up, leaving only trace amounts to afflict us — along with the tar, carbon monoxide, and other residua of a burnt cigarette.

These molecules are rendered as space-filling models, in a natural, low-energy conformation, and displayed from an angle that shows off as much of their structure as possible. The atoms are color-coded, with carbon being black, hydrogen white, and nitrogen blue. They are painted in artist-quality acrylics, on gessoed canvas.