Whether you are a smoker thinking of quitting or just a bystander walking past plumes of unnatural clouds, you’ve undoubtedly heard something about vaping. There has been a lot of mixed press about vaping, in the beginning, a lot of negative press due to this new fangled craze using devices that were exploding and yet hardly any explanations as to why (who remembers the “terrorist” stop on the M6 [a motorway in the UK for our international readers] because they saw smoke from a e-cig device). Couple that with the burning of some unknown and unregulated substance, it’s a recipe for the public to go hunting for issues.
It’s a different world these days. As the popularity of vaping rises (no pun intended), and the awareness from the public and government becomes peaked, it’s inevitable that regulations and scrutiny are now prying into the world of vaping. We’ll get into that in another post though as there is a lot of moving parts to vaping, and I regularly get asked “can you tell me more about vaping?”, I think it will be useful for those thinking of getting into vaping to have a basic rundown of what’s going on.
Let’s break this down into a bite sizes pieces so you can skip what you already know. The following parts will summarise the various aspects to vaping though we will have more detailed topic discussions like how to build coils etc coming soon.
Why Vape?
The main reason I hear from a lot of vapers is that they want to quit smoking but find going cold turkey too difficult. Alternatives such as patches, gum, mints etc sometimes doesn’t help from the point of view of habit. I am an ex smoker and I’ll freely admit I have no willpower. If it wasn’t for vaping, I would probably still be smoking. The thought of being able to continue to have something in your hand for social occasions, and have a “smoke” but not be affected by the Tar and other carcinogens in a cigarette. Now that hasn’t been 100% proven by respective medical bodies but early studies have shown significantly better results when compared to smoking cigarettes. The UK Government has published an independent report showing that it is 95% less harmful when compared to tobacco, you can read the report here.
I have heard of some quite creative uses for vaping for example, diabetic suffers uses 0% nicotine e-liquids to give them a sense of sweet taste without the sugar. Clever stuff!
Subjectiveness
Something to make clear from the very beginning is that vaping is super subjective. Everyone is different so naturally your taste buds will adapt and change according to what you like and will change over time. It’s not just flavour though, we’re talking about gear too. What might look like the Bugatti of vape gear to you might be the Dacia someone else. Bare in mind your circumstances will vary, what stage of vaping are you at? What type of devices are you using?
