As decades of lawsuits and ads featuring gross black lungs have tanked tobacco’s reputation, one small corner of the vaping industry senses an opening. E-cigarettes vaporize flavored nicotine-infused liquids: no burning tobacco leaves, none of the health impacts of smoke. That nicotine can theoretically come from anywhere. And synthetic nicotine—same molecular formula as the natural version, just as addictive—just might not fall under the Food and Drug Administration’s vaping regulations coming down in August. That’s why Ron Tully started Next Generation Labs, a small company that makes what it calls “tobacco-free nicotine” for vaping liquid companies like SQN. He spent over 15 years working in the tobacco industry before getting into lab-made nicotine. The downside of synthetic nicotine is cost -- 13 times as much as the readily available natural version.