Producer QT 5 Inc. of Westlake Village, Calif., had to yank the bottles off the shelves a year ago, when the FDA found that NicoWater was improperly being promoted as a smoking-cessation product. Now the same water is back, but it’s being marketed as a homeopathic product that can temporarily soothe cravings. (NicoWater faces one other hurdle: an arbitration next month to settle a patent dispute with the product’s inventor.) QT 5 hopes there are big profits in the $1.99, 16.9-ounce bottles, especially as smoking is banned in more places. “There are 47 billion smokers out there who need an alternative,” says QT 5 president Steven Reder. He’s hoping they’re thirsty.
