to feel positively evangelical about electronic cigarettes?

[KatyTheCleaningLady]

I was reading the AIBU thread about the husband vaping in the house with a newborn. I was struck by the passionate testimonials from former smokers, saying they couldn't have done it without e-cigs. I had tried a puff one of those things that look like a cigarette and was underwhelmed. But I didn't know about the more advanced set ups where you can fill them up with your flavour of choice. Anyway, I was intrigued. I smoked a pack a day for 25 years, and never quit more than a few months at a time, no matter which methods I tried.

nb84 encouraged me to give it a try and told me what to buy to get started.

I ordered a starter kit that night. It arrived the next day and I fell in love. I have three of them, now (one always charging, one near to hand, and one in my purse ready to go) and eight different flavours of the juice.

I don't want to smoke cigarettes any more. I like this better. It tastes really good. It feels good. And it doesn't stink. My hands, clothing, and breath don't reek anymore. I don't have to keep going outside. I don't have to feel like a smelly pariah. My husband can't smell it even when I'm sitting right next to him.

And I don't have to try and not think about the fact that my mother died of cancer after spending her last decade debilitated by emphysema.

And instead of paying £8 a day for fags, I can buy a week's worth of juice for £10. The hardware was less than £20 to get started and will require only £10 a month going forward. Of course, I can spend more. Many people geek out on it as a hobby because the gadgets are fun and constantly improving.

I'm not worried about putting on weight like people usually do when giving up the cancer sticks. In fact, I snack less. I no longer crave sweets. I would normally nibble all day, especially Haribo sweets. I don't want them anymore because I am tasting a bunch of sweet flavours all day long.

I'm so happy that I want to tell everyone - every smoker and everyone who loves a smoker - about it.

Melongena
My thought when I see someone using an e-cig is, what a shame they haven't the strength to actually quit. And the tacky-looking e-cig shops that are popping up everywhere in empty retail units? Ugh.

clearly you are just making a moral judgment about people who do things that you dont approve of instead of choosing abstinence & self denial.

As for calling the shops tacky, well so what, thats just your subjective opinion which arises out of your dislike of smoking & vaping.

Nicotine is a harmless mild stimulant, the problem is with the delivery method (ie smoking) not the substance itself.

If someone is addicted to something harmless & pleasurable so what, I'm addicted to reading books, I spend alot of time looking for my next hit, and quite alot of my disposable income on books, I have to have a book on the go or I cant function.
Is that a bad thing, ought I to try and break my addiction?

And your heroin vs methodone analogy is just a bit of cheap rhetoric designed to further demonize smokers who switch to vaping

Hi Katy,

I have looked at the site you linked to, but I don't understand what the difference is between 'mostly PG, 50/50, and VG only' when buying the liquid?

Please could you explain. It seems very complicated to me to start up, although I really want to give it a go.

Do I only need a couple of ego/ce4 blister packs (£7 each) and some juice to get started? And which juice should I go for? PG, 50/50 or VG only? I don't understand the difference or what it means.

Melongena

Well I think your comparison is problematic, but let's go with it.

Do you think methadone should be banned? What's the difference between injecting heroin & drinking methadone then?

Huge differences, as you know. It's a way of trying to manage an addiction safely.

This is what vaping is doing, so what's the problem?

Do you think NRTs should be banned as well? That's just another way of delivery the fix too?

If you don't, then what on earth is your problem with vaping?

I cannot stress this enough - small doses of nicotine are not harmful to human health, at least no more than caffeine is. So really, who cares if I or anyone else chooses to stay addicted to nicotine forever if it's not particularly harmful?

Smoke is what is harmful with smoking - just like, much of the time, dirty needles & overdose is what's truly harmful with heroin addiction. Although heroin has a MUCH greater effect on health than nicotine so I think it's a very poor comparison.

Tbh I don't see the methadone comparison as such an insult. As a matter of public policy, we want smokers to do less harm to themselves, their kids and their colleagues. We spend a fortune on smoking bans, cessation programmes, etc. After years and years of attempts, we still have no easy, fail safe way of curing an addiction to smoking.

So what is wrong with finding a way for addicted smokers to manage that addiction while minimising harm? That's the approach we take with every other addictive substance.

Assuming its true. A big caveat for me is we need regulation and research as fast as possible, so people can buy from safe suppliers and they know the score, on mouth cancer for instance.

Kids are attracted to fags anyway. The eCig thing is quite sobering for them- once you start, you may become truly hooked, look at all these people who are stuck with it.

As a never-smoker there is no way I would vape based it becoming normalised. It doesn't sound all that wonderful. I drink and eat chocolate instead.

My thought when I see someone using an e-cig is, what a shame they haven't the strength to actually quit

And, honestly, my thought when I see something like this is "mind your own business".

Heroin isn't all that harmful. ..constipation is about the worst effect, it's the life style and the problems concomitant with it's illegality which cause the problems

I'm a non smoker who is tempted to try vaping as a way to get the benefits of nicotine without any harmful effects, I could have the boost of a coffee and a fag when I get up without doing myself any harm at all :o :o

Well, yes, that's true, Suzanne - one reason why I think drugs should be legalized. But that's a whole other thread

A whole other thread and a massive can of worms!

littlemiss I had the same confusion and found this on a forum:

'E-liquid is a mixture of varying amounts of about 4 different ingredients. Nicotine, PG (propylene glycol), VG (vegetable glycerin) and flavoring. Some liquids can have additional ingredients, but for the most part, these are the main ingredients to all e-liquid.

The amount of nicotine is dependent on the strength of nicotine in your e-liquid, but let’s say it is around 10% nicotine. Somewhere around 10% of your e-liquid will be flavoring. That leaves 80% of the liquid in your bottle for fillers, which dilute the flavoring and the nicotine. This is where PG and VG come in, and depending on how you like your vape, that determines the percentage of PG and VG in your e-liquid.

Vegetable Glycerin (VG) is a thick, sweet liquid.

VG produces luscious clouds of vapor. VG also imparts a sweeter taste to your liquid.
Simplified, VG gives more vapor and is sweeter. The more % of VG, the thicker the e-juice.

Propylene Glycol (PG) is a much thinner tasteless liquid. PG produces more of a “throat hit” (TH) than VG does, which simulates the feel of smoking better.

PG also has a higher rate of sensitivity for some people, meaning that some people just can’t use PG in their vape.
The more % of VP, the thinner the e-juice.

So, 50%PG/50%VG is an equal mix of TH and vapor.

My recommendation is to start out with a 50/50 mix of PG and VG in your e-liquid. Then after you have tried it, you can make adjustments on your next order. If you aren’t getting enough throat hit to satisfy you, then next time try a 30/70 VG/PG mix. If you want more pillowy clouds of smoke, then maybe a 70/30 VG/PG mix is for you.'

Thank you so much waterlego. That makes a lot of sense.

I usually smoke 120 cigarettes a week.

They are 10mg tar, 0.9mg Nicotine.

I'm not sure which strength liquid to buy tbh.

Katy said something about most smokers needing 5mg a day to start, but then said she only spends approx. £10 a month on liquid.

I'm sure once I get started, it will all fall into place, but I am hoping to initially replace cigarettes with vapouring, so don't really want to spend lots on starting off only to end up buying cigarettes too.

Any suggestions?

I suppose I want to initially set myself up for a week or two, and see how I get on?

That will hopefully give me 2 weeks to play around with it and see how I get on. I don't want to be buying cigarettes as well though.

Vapers are still addicted though, like a methadone patient who would go back to injecting if there's no methadone available, they'd go back to smoking in the blink of an eye. Still addicted, see?

Evidence for this?

Some would, sure. I believe most wouldn't. Several people here have said that they would not go back to smoking now; you probably don't believe them. But I can categorically state that if all of my vape gear disappeared right now, I would not go and buy tobacco. I'd be pissed off and miss my mint candy and gingerbread flavours, but I would not go back to smoking BECAUSE IT'S NOT THE SAME THING. I had a rolly at a festival a few weeks ago, just out of curiosity. It was gross! I have also, several times in the beginning, found myself without spare batteries, or running out of juice or whatever. No sense of panic. Didn't go down the shop for tobacco. Was perfectly able to wait a couple of days for more vape stuff to arrive in the post. Why did I order more, why didn't I just stop and bask in my puritan strength of character, you ask? Because I like it. It's a little, relatively harmless pleasure, and if it wasn't this, it would be cake, or crisps, or sweet tea.

Some of us aren't paragons. Some of us like to indulge a little. It's not hurting you, so why on earth do you care?

I mean, really. Go and campaign about alcohol if you've a bee in your bonnet about people enjoying dangerous, addictive, appealing-to-teenagers substances in public. I'd rather see a vape shop than a Bargain Booze on my high street.

Oh, and an interesting anecdote about nicotine addiction. Purely anecdotal, it's not evidence or anything, but I thought I'd share.

When I switched to vaping from smoking, I chose low-nicotine liquids. For about a week, every night, I experienced very vivid, weird, disturbing dreams. I did my usual panic-Google, and after a bit of discussion on various forums, during which many people likened this to their experiences with Champix - a side-effect of nicotine withdrawal. So I was getting quite a bit less nicotine from vaping than my body was used to from smoking. You'd think that if the swapping-one-addiciton-for-another crowd were right, I'd have felt unsatisfied and either upped the nic content or run cravenly back to the smokes. But no. The dreams stopped, and I continued with the low-nic juice until it ran out, and the next batch I ordered were lower still. Next time I order they will be zero-nic.

I'm a non smoker and have never even tried it but I think anything that helps smokers give up is a good thing. Obviously it would be great if all smokers could give up using will power, patches etc but that's not going to happen with the seriously addicted so if this helps then that's a benefit. What is also good surely is that if smokers switch to vaping and stop smoking there will be a reduction in passive smoking. I loathe the smell of cigarettes etc and as I have asthma that is triggered (among other things) by cigarette smoke this would benefit people like me (I can't be the only one who has smoke as a trigger).

I don't think that someone who switched from smoke to e-cigs and has been puffing them for 3 years can claim they have quit.

Of course I have quit because I haven't smoked tobacco for 3 years. I don't buy, use or smoke cigarettes. I don't smoke I vape they are completely different. No lighting up, no burning, no tar, no foul smell, no smoke, no ash. They are not tabacco FFS

yes! all this 'you cant claim that you've quit' stuff is about wanting to take the moral high ground.

I say get off your high horse lady

There's a difference between quitting smoking and quitting nicotine. For me, for now, I will be happy to say I've quit smoking with the help of an e-cigarette with a view to ending my addiction to nicotine.

I only heard of them a few weeks ago. So will people be able to smoke them in non-smoking zones. They do sound like a good idea.

Melongina -"And I care if it's tacky, my kids have to walk past our local one (which used to be the greengrocer's, cheers Tesco!) and if they were older they might pop in to see what the shiny things are and maybe give it a go, I mean, it's loads safer than smoking, innit?"

So would you prefer your teenager to walk into Tesco, Asda, an off license, a garage, a corner shop etc to buy some cigarettes to try? As much as we are campaigning and highlighting dangers, 23% of teenagers tried smoking in 2012.

I gave up smoking five months ago after years of being addicted. I heard about these e-cigs but I did not want to swap one addiction for another, I wanted to be completely free from the tie. I don't have to worry if I have cigs/supplies/wondering where I can smoke them when at a new place e.t.c. which is how it use to be when I was smoking 'proper' cigs! It just seemed like a straight swap and was not for me.

I do think these are better than people smoking proper fags and that is how I associate them, I think to myself "at least they are not smoking", I associate them rightly or wrongly with the addiction of smoking.

I am no health professional as such but I do have to disagree with the previous comment made about nicotine not being harmful and it was just the delivery of it ( traditional smoking) that caused harm, nicotine does have a lot of risks including raising blood pressure and messing with our insulin systems.

But overall I do think they are much BETTER than smoking and would rather anyone that I loved used these than smoke proper cigs.

I have used an ecig (jacvapour)for nearly two years now as haven't had a real fag in that time.
I've got a few smokers into them. At work there are only a couple of smokers and quite a few vapours.
The only time I've managed to quit real cigs was when I was pregnant.
I love my ecigs!My favourite is bubblegum flavour at the moment.

I like smoking & am happy to have been on e-cigs for 6 months now. I'm harming anybody else so couldn't care less about moralists.

When I smoked real cigs I DID feel I was causing harm. Others around me being forced to passive smoke, speaking to people (especially children) just after I'd had a cigarette bothered me the most. My teens were asked if they smoke - no, they don't. They hate it. But the smell of my cigarette smoke was all over them. Now I'm glad I, my home, & people around me don't stink of cigarette smoke. I feel much healthier, & motivated to exercise more.

I tried Champix when I 1st thought I should give up. I miss it as it made me feel sooooo mellow about life! But hey..I like smoking & don't want to give up really so as long as e-cigs are available, I'll keep on. I don't smoke openly in indoor venues but have been known to have sneaky puffs where its not obvious. No-one even notices or comments -theres no smell. Smoked one in cinema last night. At least I'm no longer inhaling almost 4000 chemicals including rat poison & arsenic, & inflicting my addiction on those around me.I'm not giving up my smoking pleasure, I'll leave the moralists up on their soapbox thanks

Vaping as I type. DP and I last smoked 3 years ago. We have saved about £10000 in that period. Our clothes no longer smell. Our house no longer smells. Who cares what anyone else thinks.