A reversed phase ion-pair liquid chromatographic method for the determinati
on of nicotine in commercial tobacco products was previously developed and
optimized (Ciolino, L. A.; Turner, J. A.; McCauley, H. A.; Smallwood, A. W.
;Yi, T. Y. J. Chromatogr. 1999a, 852 (2), 451-463) and provided reliable re
sults for the determination of nicotine in commercial moist snuff(Ciolino,
L. A.; McCauley, H. A.; Fraser, D. B.; Barnett, D. Y.; Yi, T. Y.; Turner, J
. A. J. Agric. Food Chem. 1999b, 47, 3706-3712). The method uses an aqueous
-based sample extraction and provides rapid separation of nicotine from the
minor tobacco alkaloids and other commercial tobacco components. In the pr
esent work, the method is evaluated for the determination of nicotine in co
mmercial cigarettes and compared to both an official AOAC method for total
alkaloids in tobacco (AOAC, AOAC Official Methods of Analysis of AOAC Inter
national, 16th ed.; AOAC International: Gaithersburg, MD, 1995; pp 30-31),
and a published GC method (Lyerly, L. A.; Greene, G. H. Beitr. Tabakforsch.
1976, 8 (6), 359-361). Good agreement was obtained between the ion-pair LC
method and the GC method with relative differences in determined nicotine
contents of 0.6 to 5% for a series of commercial and reference cigarettes.