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E-Cigs and Juices


ddcboyle

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I've been smoking since about 1992 on at least 20 a day now, I'm the kind of smoker who if I wake up in the middle of the night has to get out of bed for a smoke or I won't sleep for the rest of the night. I've tried just about everything to quit, gum, patches, you name it.

 

My most succesful quiting experience so far was using Champix, a lot of friends quit using it so I asked the NHS nurse for it. I was warned about vivid dreams before taking it and to me that sounded great! And it was! For someone that doesn't think they dream, having nightmares about giant spiders etc was pretty ****ing awesome, I'd wake up knowing it was a dream and that was that. That was until the dreams started to get vivid but about mundane things, it started with dreaming about work. Do you know how awkward it is asking a member of your staff how the work you discussed with them is going just to find out they have no idea what you're going on about? The amount of odd looks I got in meetings with Exec board members... I'm suprised I still have a job! It came to a head when I ordered a Yeti's fist, that's a car wash mit if you don't know, aptly enough for this forum! Here's what they should look like:

 

yetifist-washmitt-640_490.jpg

 

...it arrived mid week before work, I opened the packaging, looked at it and thought well that's rather dissapointing, it's nothing like the photos! Put it to one side and went to work. Saturday came and I thought sod it, I'll use it anyway. I spent over an hour searching my one bedroom flat for the god damn wash mit only to realise I'd dreamt it arriving and it hadn't really happened! Time to get off those ****in' tablets! Back to smoking.

 

Since then I tried e-cigs, green smoke brand were the best I found, mainly because I borrowed a friends on a flight to a stag do and they worked for the duration of the flight. They have a good reputation in the field and the amount of vapour you get is pretty good... but it wasn't enough to get me off the cigs.

 

However, my brother has been 'vaping' for the last 12 months and at Christmas he bought me a vaporizer, and MVP2 model which costs fairly little (£30 ish maybe), here's one:

 

iTaste-MVP2-924x784.jpg

 

 

Unfortunately it was a bit big to carry around to work etc, however after vaping on this thing I didn't want to smoke, why bother? I can get more smoke/vapor from a machine than a regular cig, I don't wake up every morning with a cough and a runny nose plus the taste is SOOO much nicer!

 

So since Christmas I've been buying vaping bits and bobs and have ended up with this:

 

1540338_10151887165406977_1128606469_o_zps68d93d5f.jpg

 

This is a top end model, at 20 marlboro's a day you're talking 6 weeks ish of smoking cost wise. However I've seen people with hundreds of 'mods' because they've started small and worked there way up. I figure it's better just to hit the top end and use it rather than buying a new step up every month or so. I'll make my money back soon enough anyway.

 

The one bit of advice I'd give anybody getting in to vaping, even as a very new vaper myself, is get good juices! I strongly recommend triphammer.co.uk down in bournemotuh, the juice will make all the difference to quiting the 'analogs' or not. Seriously that guys like a Willy Wonka of the vaping world.

Edited by HaydnH
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I'd just like to add, the 'vapor' you exhale isn't just water, it also contains nicotine (assuming you are using a fluid containing nicotine in the first place). This is another of the reasons they are starting to be banned in non-smoking places.

 

Actually Nicotine has nothing to do with them starting to be banned. There's probably been more research in to nicotine than any other recreational drug and it's fairly commonly know that it's pretty harmless but mildy addictive, although it can cause skin irratation in it;s pure form. Most people will think the word mildly is wrong there, but actually it's not that addictive on it's own. It's the 'nicotine delivery' chemicals in normal cigarettes that make it so addictive, and compared to something like Heroin, well.

 

A 'juice' for vaping contains, at most, 5 ingredients:

 

- Propylene Glycol

- Vegetable Glycerine

- Nicotine

- Flavourings

- Water

 

The first 2 are registered as safe by the FDA, don't know about the UK equivelant. Nicotine has plenty of research basically saying it's not harmful in any quantity a smoker/vaper/e-cig user would encounter. The flavourings you'll find in any fairy cake (although admitedly there are some where the E numbers shouldn't be consumed in vapour form). And water... not gonna bother saying anything about that.

 

The research is a bit complicated at the minute, mainly due to big tabacco companies (BTs), pharm' companies or politics. The BTs don't want this stuff coming in for obvious reasons, the pharm's create all those profitible NRTs (gum, patches etc etc) and the politicians, to be fair, are getting fed shitty information left right and centre based on the research funded by the first 2. There's a lovely post to the Euro MPs from various scientists basically complaing that the research they'd done had been taken completely out of context with regards to the new european policies coming in and saying that they actually support e-cigs, you can find that on ukvapers.org if you're interested along with plenty of other material. It's signed by about 30 leading health experts. To explain the confusion the ploticians must be in, personally I like Baroness Hayters comment, purely because it isn't even in a discussion about e-cigs, it's about transparency and it was an example she gave:

 

Source: http://www.theyworkf...cigarette#g13.2

 

Similarly, we would know nothing about meetings between the big six energy companies and HMT or DECC officials because they use their direct staff for that. Or consider the anti-electronic-cigarette lobby, largely funded, I understand, by the pharmaceutical industry, which produces nicotine replacement therapy and ideally would like e-cigarettes off the market. Johnson & Johnson, GSK and Novartis have teams dedicated to that lobbying work, and none of that would be known under the current provisions.

 

And before anyone argues (for the sake of it as usual), I'm not saying e-cigs or vaping is healthy, even with the research by Drexel university among others (again look that up if you're interested) it's not clear whether it is or not yet. However what is clear is that it's many many times healthier than smoking tabacco and there is no evidence that, as one of the governments arguments, it is a gateway to tobacco use - quite the opposite, it's a gateway off tabacco use.

 

Also I'm not an activist for this stuff, on ukvapers.org there's a thread asking people to go to a different website to answer a poll 'Is it OK for a celeb/role model to advertise e-cigs' and answer yes for the 'cause', **** that! I don't want kids vaping because some celeb has advertsised it, regardless of whether it'll help the Euro MPs take notice of some cause or not.

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Firstly big respect to all those who've taken the decision to try and quit.

As a dentist I have seen quite a few cases of mouth cancer.

Primary cause as you've guesed is smoking.

The stats are very alarming.

In the UK alone we have 5 deaths a year JUST FROM MOUTH CANCER.

The lucky ones we catch in time with surgery but even then it's horrific.

Last year one of our patients survived but had to have half his tongue removed along with his lower jaw bone.

They rebuilt his mandible with part of his hip.

As far as we know, the e cigs cause none of the risks of tobacco as they don't contain the long list of toxins that tobacco has and so I'm more than happy for my patients to be on these long term I instead.

 

At the last post graduate meeting on oral cancer I went to we were told that hopefully e cigs would soon be available from gp's on prescription.

This would greatly reduce the cost as products such as patches etc are normally prescbed in a months batch at a time.

ECIGS get my thumbs up

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At the last post graduate meeting on oral cancer I went to we were told that hopefully e cigs would soon be available from gp's on prescription.

This would greatly reduce the cost as products such as patches etc are normally prescbed in a months batch at a time.

ECIGS get my thumbs up

 

I'm actually not keen on e-cigs being made a medicine, along with a lot of othere people. There are different kinds of e-cigs, from the ciagalikes you can buy at the corner shop to full blown mods like mine above. The cigalikes have varying success already, I've tried them and they didn't work for me, the PG content is too high and hurts my throat. Making them prescription will mean people have to take time off work to see a GP, probably multiple times as they do with other quiting smoking services to check lung function etc. For a lot of people this is a hassle in itself, why should I **** off my employer by missing a day of work when I can simply head to the corner shop and buy a real cig? And how many times can you go on these things with the NHS footing the bill? If the 'medicine' hasn't worked 3 times, can I still get a prescription for them? It's only going to reduce the probability of people using them succesfully to quit.

 

The other kinds of e-cigs that require e-liquids (of which you can buy 0 nicotine types as well so you can aim to reduce to 0 over time) are far more succesful for helping people quit smoking. Unfortunately, as turning this in to a medicine would most likely require a measured delivery these types of liquids would most likely be illegal. Even if they aren't then they would require costly licenses etc and the competition would die out which only benefits the big Pharma's, we'd probably end up with cig, menthol and possibly a few fruit flavours if that happened, just like the cigalikes. As I mentioned above it's finding the right juices that will really help with the quiting, currently you can get so many flavours, from some lovely cuban cigar type flavours, Christmas pudding, Wham bar (remember them), jelly babies even Marmite! I read somewhere that during the ~10 year history of vaping there has only been 1 fatality which was caused by a young kind drinking an open bottle of e-liquid or possibly nicotine liquid used to make you own liquids, law and education around labelling and storing like we have with household bleaches etc seem to be the right solution, to me at least.

 

Alternatively put real cigs on the prescription only list! Of course the BTs and government wouldn't let that happen...

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HaydnH, can understand your disagreement to eCigs being regarded a medicine but there has to be a degree of regulation in place, such as CE marking of the devices themselves to ensure a level of quality, and given that components of the vapours themselves have already been cited to include propylene glycol, glycerine and of course nicotine I for one would want these to be of a suitable grade, such as complying with the monographs of the European and/or British pharmacopoeias. I would be surprised if these were ever considered as prescription only products, more likely that they will be regulated by the MHRA but granted a general sales list category such that they can be sold on shop shelves, such as your supermarket own brand paracetamol tablets etc.

 

I would add that I am smoker, still on cigarettes, and have looked at the whole eCig thing but have yet to try

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Agreed, but you only have to look at any of the nicotine containing products such as patches and the like, due to the content of nicotine these are regulated as medicinal products. Why therefore would any of the vapours containing nicotine therefore not be treated as such. Not saying I agree entirely with the approach but this is government led, albeit with a degree of lobbying from pharma

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My main concern is that currently the nicotine in most juices is pharamcutical grade and often has the name of the supplier available. Even if the government handle this badly vaping won't go away, it will just be a black market thing with god knows what grade ingredients. And I'd still vape as it would still most likely have less toxic crap in than cigs.

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Many many parts are CE marked and contents of the liquids are food grade, so they are already quality checked.

 

The reason patches and the likes are regulated by the MHRA is because they are a "quit smoking" tool, whereas E-cigs are not and should not me marketed as such, if they are already by some. They are a Nicotine replacement device, a healthier way to get your shot of nicotine, if you chose to use them to quit, then thats fine, but rationing your cigarettes each day, slowly removing one each set amount of days is the same thing.

 

It's almost certain that they will tax them when they see the billions in tax the cigarette industry isn't bringing in anymore, and thats the only reason there is so much talk about them.

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Well I decided to try "vaping" rather than just dismiss it without even properly trying it. I bought a starter kit from a shop in Cardiff today that was £29.99 including a bottle of E-liquid. The E-cig itself is a KangarTech T3S with adjustable voltage and the E-liquid I decided to try is Cherry flavour with 9mg 0.8% nicotine I believe.

I decided to try the cherry rather than a tobacco flavour E-liquid as I wish to stop smoking cigarettes so thought it was best to use something that didn't mimic there flavour but still gave me my nicotine hit.

 

See how it goes but by all accounts this is a much healthier option than smoking cigarettes so if I can keep it up I will be better off health wise as well as financially. :thumbs:

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You will find that the tobacco flavoured juices are horrible.

 

I like the fruit flavours the most especially rasberry and blueberry!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I did try load's in the shop.

Some really bizarre flavours available too; banana & tobacco, tiramisu, french pipe, Turkish tobacco, energy drink etc :scare: I tried the banana & tobacco one which to be fair was quite nice as it goes.

I got the cherry one because I liked it the best from the one's I tried but looking at a fact sheet the owners gave me if I'm still happy using it next weekend I will try Strawberry, Cola and Vanilla flavour I think. :p They do 3 bottles for £9.90. ;)

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Try the triphammer.co.uk juices. :)

 

I bought some kanger tech protank 2s before which I really didn't get on with, to get the right amount of flavour and vape I had to remove wicks and all sorts, got it perfect and it started leaking. Much appier with my Kayfun. :)

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You will find that the tobacco flavoured juices are horrible.

 

I like the fruit flavours the most especially rasberry and blueberry!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I like the Marlboro every now and again but I mainly use banana, blueberry, bubblegum, vanilla and spearmint.

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Try the triphammer.co.uk juices. :)

 

I bought some kanger tech protank 2s before which I really didn't get on with, to get the right amount of flavour and vape I had to remove wicks and all sorts, got it perfect and it started leaking. Much appier with my Kayfun. :)

Thanks might do.

Googled the Kayfun ~ look's good quality and from what I saw they are German made. Was your's expensive? does it have variable voltage?

 

Just going to stick with my Kanger Tech T3S for now just to see how I get on with it but so far so good. Haven't had a cigarette since around 3:30pm this afternoon. :scare:;)

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I used the T3 and thought it was great, until I found the EVOD which truely make the T3 inferior. The smoke you get from it is awesome, nice thick vapour :D also found the coil on the T3's die after a few weeks, I've had EVODs without changing any parts for well over 6 months and they're just as good as the day I bought them.

 

I now have 5-6 EVODs with different colours for each flavour. I've tried probably 4-5 different atomizers since and the EVODs still come out on too, except for the really expensive £20+ ones.

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I used the T3 and thought it was great, until I found the EVOD which truely make the T3 inferior. The smoke you get from it is awesome, nice thick vapour :D also found the coil on the T3's die after a few weeks, I've had EVODs without changing any parts for well over 6 months and they're just as good as the day I bought them.

 

I now have 5-6 EVODs with different colours for each flavour. I've tried probably 4-5 different atomizers since and the EVODs still come out on too, except for the really expensive £20+ ones.

Any links with these EVODs?

 

Still only been at it a day but doesn't hurt to learn about what's out there. ;)

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Try the triphammer.co.uk juices. :)

 

I bought some kanger tech protank 2s before which I really didn't get on with, to get the right amount of flavour and vape I had to remove wicks and all sorts, got it perfect and it started leaking. Much appier with my Kayfun. :)

Thanks might do.

Googled the Kayfun ~ look's good quality and from what I saw they are German made. Was your's expensive? does it have variable voltage?

 

Just going to stick with my Kanger Tech T3S for now just to see how I get on with it but so far so good. Haven't had a cigarette since around 3:30pm this afternoon. :scare:;)

 

Yes it's vv/vw. You can find prices for it plus the Semovar mod on cloud 9 vaping, although the v3 Kayfun is discontinued, v4 due in spring. About £180 for the Mod and £110 for the atty. :scare: Still, it's only 6 weeks or so of smoking.

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Yes it's vv/vw. You can find prices for it plus the Semovar mod on cloud 9 vaping, although the v3 Kayfun is discontinued, v4 due in spring. About £180 for the Mod and £110 for the atty. :scare: Still, it's only 6 weeks or so of smoking.

Bl**dy hell that's expensive. :scare: So it's solid Gold then right?! :lol:

 

It is a lot cheaper than smoking cigarettes though you're right. I worked out that on average I probably spend around the £1500 mark a year on cigarettes.

Not a great deal by some peoples standards but then I don't earn a lot so if I can get most of that back by vaping instead then I'm definitely up. :D

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