Well, that’s good, then. Hopefully the legalities will be sorted out soon.
No problem! :: shakes hands :: 
Thanks Sunspace
My friend did indeed order a volcano and he loves it. Its funny, he’s so used to going outside to smoke that he does it with his e-cig. He also forgets that its OK for him to vape in my car.
Here’s my vape story, started back up by this very thread.
I’ve been a smoker for about 20 years (shit, that makes me feel old) an to be honest I absolutely love it. I love the nicotine, of course. But more importantly I LOVE the feeling of a full flavored Marlboro Red entering my lungs and having the smoke come out of my mouth. But, I hate the reduced lung capacity and fatigue I get being a pack-a-day smoker. Even worse, I hate the god-awful, horrendous, soul sucking hangovers that come with drinking and smoking all night.
So a few years ago a buddy of mine started vaping (to quit dipping, as in chewing tobacco). Seemed like a good idea, so I gave it a (not entirely fair) try. After spending about 70 bucks on all that vaping required I gave up on it after about a week and went back to my beloved Marby Reds.
Since then I’d try his vapes from time to time, and each time I did the throat hit would have me coughing and my throat burning. I thought it was pretty odd that he hadn’t smoked cigarettes in over ten years, yet from the first time he started vaping 2 or 3 years ago he had no troubles with it.
Well, after reading this thread I decided to try it again, and this time give it a few weeks at least. Two weeks ago, on my buddy’s recommendation, I got the Joye eGo (from cignot.com, ~70 bucks for 2 batteries, 2 atties, a wall/USB charger, and 5 Marlboro flavored pre-filled carts), some low resistance cartomizers, and some liquid. I got everything last Saturday afternoon, and as expected at first I wasn’t getting good vape AND it was killing my throat. I’d still smoke analogues when the need arose, but still hit the vape often. By Tuesday last week I found that I was getting by just fine on the vape, with maybe 1 or 2 cigarettes just because they were there. Then by this past weekend I went the entire weekend solely on vaping and didn’t crave an analogue at all. I also managed to drink quite heavily and still thoroughly enjoyed vaping.
My suggestion if you are getting inconsistent/low levels of vape from carts, get cartomizers, specifically low resistance cartos (http://www.electronicstix.com/SPARE-PARTS/CARTOMIZERS/510-Series-Cartomizers/BLANK-BOGE-1-8-OHM-LOW-RESISTANCE-510-CARTOMIZERS-BLACK-p252.html). They cost 8 bucks for 5, and can be used multiple times. Just take a paperclip, pop off the end you put your mouth on, and drip liquid evenly around the sides (avoiding the middle so it doesn’t drip straight through). Let it soak for a minute and repeat until the top has a sort of “slushy” look. Though the beauty to me us that you can top it off at your leisure, so even if you don’t fill it perfectly it’s no bother.
I take both my eGos to work with me, with only the 1 carto they each hold, and the battery and vape last long enough. In fact, I bet if I went with just 1 eGo and 1 full carto I could go 2 full working days without topping off batteries or juice. As for topping off batteries, when I first got my eGo, it took no longer than 20 minutes to top off each battery, and I haven’t notice it take any longer since.
I ramble, but I hope the gist of my message comes across: Try cartomizers!
Hey all- I apologize for not returning sooner, but I didn’t get any thread update emails for some reason.
Anyway, I popped in to let you guys know (Although it appears GildedLily beat me to the punch) about my experience with cartomizers. I got them in the mail Wednesday, after ordering Monday morning. Two days with regular mail from Hawaii is pretty darned impressive.
These things are AWESOME. I am hesitant to give such a glowing review for something that I have only used for two days, but…WOW. It’s like the best of both dripping & carts in a single package. The insert says they are only good for 4 uses, which seems a bit short for the price to me, although I imagine it is like an atty, where they are only supposed to last a month but will continue for much longer.
OK, non-smoker hijacking here. What exactly are the benefits of e-cigs? I’ve picked up a certain amount from reading this fascianting thread, but can anyone just briefly list the benefits? I guess what I really want to know is: how much safer are these than regular cigs? I mean, if someone had never ever smoked, and then started with e-cigs, how bad would it be for their health, compared to regular smokes? Half as bad? One quarter as bad? I’m really pretty ignorant about this. Has a total non-smoker ever taken up smoking strictly with e-cigs? Or is that absurd? Are they straictly a cut-down/quit/less-bad-for-you option to regular smoking?
I suppose I could Google myself up some answers, but you folks are really into it here, and I bet your responses will be good.
(I’m not intending on becoming an e-cig smoker, but I’m curious.)
I got mine on Wednesday, too, but I’ve not used them yet. Why? I stepped up to the Inferno with a tank! My God, what a pleasure!
No one really knows in an absolute way, although it’s simple to deduce. E-cig juice consists of water, glycol, nicotine, and flavor, and doesn’t have the thousands of byproducts produced by burning tobacco. If I were a non-smoker, I wouldn’t start vaping e-cigs. They’re currently an alternative to smoking, and if you don’t smoke, you don’t need an alternative.
They are not recognized by the FDA as a ‘stop smoking’ device (because no one has yet been willing to fund the very expensive clinical studies), therefore the advertising is aimed at ‘for those times and places you can’t smoke a cigarette.’
Of course, a lot of people do successfully use them to quit smoking.
Cigarettes contain something over 4,000 chemicals. Ecigs contain just a few; nicotine, flavoring, and propylene glycol (a very common additive to food, tooth paste, shampoo, cosmetics, medicines, etc.) You decide – 4,000 chemicals or half a dozen.
Yes, but of the 4,000, is there really just one that’s a killer – nicotine? I’m not being argumentive. I really just don’t know. Does the fact that you’re still inhaling nicotine mean that you’ve decreased the danger by around 10% or 30% or 80%? I understand, Balthisar, that no one has performed the necessary studies, but somebody must have an idea. Do doctors generally say: Jesus, at least go to e-cigs, they’re only about half as bad as smokes? Or do doctors pooh-pooh them? They seem like a great idea if they reduce the bad effects by at least half. There’s a guy here at work who’s tried every quitting scheme available, failed, and has finally given up trying. It seems he’d be a good candidate if they cut the risk by a significant percentage.
Nicotine isn’t what kills you, it’s the COPD, CHF, and cancers you get from all of the other goodies in a smoke. Nicotine is certainly not healthy, but is nicotine gum safer than a cigarette? Of course.
Your guy sounds like me last year. I had zero intention of quitting smoking, and the e-cig was purely for bars, planes, and other places. It just…happened. I don’t know how to explain it. After a period of time, the nice flavors you can get are just better than a cigarette. Even the tobacco flavors are better, because you can actually taste the tobacco, and not the urea and “ash” taste you get with an analog. Perhaps some more folks will check in and give us their results, but I have seen a dozen different people have success- Including one person who’s child passed away after quitting the analogs. If THAT doesn’t break you, nothing will, but he is still good (as far as cigs go 
).
Nicotine is known to cause vasoconstriction (makes your blood vessels and capillaries tighten up, restricting blood flow), and “hardening of the arteries”, which can raise blood pressure. It is also known to accelerate the heart rate. Now, if you’ve got peripheral vascular disease, or diabetes, or other disorders that involve blood vessels, like Reynaud’s, that’s a very bad thing - it can actually help cut off the blood supply to fingers and toes, which can make them die. If you have a cardiovascular condition, that’s a pretty bad thing - it can lead to heart attacks and strokes. If you haven’t got a cardiovascular condition, that kind of stress on the blood vessels and heart can make it more likely that you’ll develop a cardiovascular condition.
Now, what other substances cause vasoconstriction and increased heart rate? Lots of them. Cocaine, amphetamines…and caffeine. We’ve determined as a society that these effects from cocaine and amphetamines are too strong to risk. Caffeine, obviously, we haven’t found the risk to outweigh the benefit. Where does nicotine lie on that spectrum? According to some researchers it’s about the same as caffeine.
See Can Tobacco Cure Smoking? - A Review of Tobacco Harm Reduction, presented to the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection for more details, including cites of studies.
Now, other people argue that, and think the people making the presentation were shills for the tobacco replacement manufacturers, cherry picking studies that went “their way”. I’ll be honest, I’ve never chased the paper trail any further.
I’ve only talked to two doctors about the ecig, and both were very wary. One was my SO’s personal physician, and she refused to even consider endorsing the ecig to help him quit cigarettes. Her opinion was very behaviorally based, saying that the oral fixation and hand to mouth and inhalation behaviors required of an ecig would work against him, to keep the addiction going. The first time he didn’t have his ecig, she opined, he’d go right back to tobacco. She wanted him to quit smoking entirely and all at once, to extinguish all the elements of the addiction.
She’s not, and has never been, a smoker.
The other doctor I talked to very strictly off the record. He uses an ecig, and used to be a smoker. He said he’d never let his patients know he used one, and he couldn’t recommend them in practice…because of the lack of studies and regulation. In his professional opinion, he’d be guilty of malpractice for suggesting a device to deliver a drug (nicotine) which was not approved by the FDA. But he loved his, and stopped smoking entirely from the first vape.
Many thanks to Spit and WhyNot. I guess doctors must hate even having the question come up. How do you respond? After reading a thread like this one, ecigs seem like a good idea for a lot of people, but, absent hard data, a doctor wouldn’t want to even suggest to a patient that they exist. I can imagine a doctor being between a rock and a hard place: on the one hand, for some people, such as my friend, who’s now in his fifties and has been smoking for over 35 years, it’s got to be the best alternative; on the other hand, it’s the best alternative based strictly on anecdote, and as one doctor in WhyNot’s post suggests, it doesn’t at all break the hand to mouth behaviour, and there’s no evidence (other than anecdotal) to suggest that ecigs are a viable long-term replacement to smokes, or a reliable method of quitting. You’d think there’d be a study or two by now. These things have been around for a while.
OK, so I got a couple of bottles of juice from eliquidplanet, which I’ve been using for two days now. This stuff is HORRIBLE. I don’t know if it’s thicker than the Volcano juice or what, but it doesn’t burn well => it’s hard to draw on => it doesn’t produce much vapor => the throat hit is almost nil. This happens with both juices.
I’ve got juice on order from Volcano, but I don’t know if I can deal with this eliquidplanet garbage in the meantime. As in, I’ve caught myself considering buying cigarettes. But it’s been a month now since I’ve smoked, so I really don’t want to blow that.
I bought these juices because I wanted to drop down the nicotine strength, but Volcano only offers 16mg and 8mg, so I was looking for an intermediate step. The juices I bought are 11mg. But the nicotine strength shouldn’t have anything to do with vapor production or throat hit, should it?
I successfully quit smoking completely 15 months ago with the help of ecigs. I could really ramble on about the topic, but I’m going to try to keep it as brief possible. I’ve only very minimally skimmed this thread, since I don’t have a lot of time right now, but I wanted to offer you a few suggestions since I know the angst you’re probably going through. (so forgive me if I’m repeating anything already mentioned, and keep in mind that what worked for me might not work for you)
The first thing I learned about ecigs was that, while they helped a lot, they weren’t nearly enough for me on their own. They are great for replacing the whole ritual and oral-fixation thing, but the only active ingredient is nicotine, and contrary to popular belief, tobacco has a myriad of active and addictive substances other than nicotine, which is why it can be so hard to quit.
There is a great ecigarette forum that has some very interesting, and very long threads, whose conclusions were nicely summarized here, if you just want the cliff notes. (That site has a wealth of information on everything ecig and tobacco related and the people there are very knowledgeable and helpful.)
Bottom line: Quit tobacco completely if you can. But if you can’t, the key is to replace smoking with something much safer. Tobacco on it’s own, if cured, prepared, and ingested properly is not as bad as it’s usually made out to be. What’s really bad is burning it, and even worse, inhaling the smoke. It’s the smoke, not the nicotine or tobacco itself, that’s the real killer and that will greatly affect your health and quality of life.
What worked for me was supplementing ecigs with a orally dissolvable tobacco called Stonewall or Ariva - both brands are made by Star Scientific and from the research (.pdf) I have done (.jpg), they are the safest form of tobacco there is. They both have the same ingredients, but Ariva is a smaller/weaker version that comes in a larger selection of flavors. (I recommend trying the “Java” of either kind, and staying away from the “Natural” flavor Stonewalls, eww) Arivas weren’t strong enough and didn’t last long enough to please me, but because they basically cost the same as Stonewall, I recommend going with the Stonewall and breaking them in half if you find a smaller portion works for you. If you’re lucky you may be able to find them locally, but since I can’t, I order them from lilbrown.com
WRT eliquids, I went through the same issues you did. I spent a lot of money buying many liquids from many vendors before I found something approaching acceptable. What I learned after all that is that you are never going to find a liquid that tastes even close to a cigarette, so fuhgedaboutit. The good news is that you will eventually realize that cigarettes taste nasty anyway, and you can somewhat duplicate the good parts of the flavor while eliminating the bad parts.
The two best commercially available eliquids I was able to find were the “Torque56” and the “Freedom” from halocigs.com (for both taste and vapor production) - but these days I mostly mix up my own from scratch, or tweak the vast stockpile of subpar store bought liquids I amassed by adding flavoring(s) to them. The main flavoring I use for all purposes is called “Desert Ship” (heh, their way of saying “Camel”) made by a company called FlavourArt and distributed by a few different vendors, one of which you can find here. That stuff can make almost any liquid taste better. Add some of that to either of the Halo liquids I mentioned above for a really good vape.
Alright, this is already much longer than I planned on, but hopefully some of it was helpful. BTW, before I go, I also want to mention that neither ecigs or dissolvable tobacco are a daily habit for me anymore. I probably use one or the other on most days, but I regularly go without either for a day or two here and there. The ecig, I don’t even take with me when I leave the house. The Stonewalls, I usually bring along in case I feel like one, but often I just don’t. With cigarettes, I always had to have a pack on me at all times. There was never a day for over 20 years that I went without, except for a couple very brief and unsuccessful attempts to quit cold turkey/patch/gum.
Good luck! (and please forgive the “flow of consciousness” post)
My friend who bought a Volcano Magma from this thread has a pack of cigs in his console. I rolled one of them between my fingers and could hear the crunching of dry tobacco over his speakers. He’s had the e-cig for 2 weeks now, and that’s how old his pack of cigarettes are. He’s also spent a LOT of money trying to use it for other things…and I do have to admit that the Spit’s friend has given lots of good suggestions.
Anyhow…Jax and I went out for lunch and he pulled his e-cig out. Someone asked if he was smoking and other people said that he wasn’t smoking and wanted to know how he liked it. He didn’t have spare carts so didn’t share, but he sure bragged it up.
I just came back to this thread and realized that in that long rambling post of mine, I didn’t even answer the one question you posed. Sorry!
No, nicotine strength doesn’t really make a difference in vapor production or throat hit. Vapor production depends on a few things. First, the hardware type/voltage, and how well it’s feeding liquid to the atomizer coil. After some experience, you will figure it all out and turn into a veritable ecig mechanic.
The content of the liquid is the other major factor. The two most commonly used ingredients are propylene glycol(PG) and glycerin(VG)(don’t ask). Some liquids are based on one or the other, but a lot of liquids these days use both mixed together. VG produces more vapor than PG, but PG is widely accepted to give a better throat-hit. So most liquid makers try to find a good ratio between the two to optimize both characteristics.
My own opinion on the matter of throat-hit(TH) is that it is mostly determined by the heat of the vapor. The heat of the vapor also depends on several factors. Again, the hardware voltage and atomizer type, the liquid and it’s boiling point, but also important is the technique you use when you inhale. Vaping the same way you smoke isn’t usually effective for producing vapor and TH - you have to take much longer and slower drags than you would while smoking. Try it, and see if you don’t get instantly better results.
There’s also the matter of your method of inhalation. Some people learned to smoke by inhaling into their mouth first, then inhaling outside-air into their mouth to carry the smoke into their lungs. Other people inhale directly from the cigarette to their lungs without first holding the smoke in their mouth. Most people aren’t aware of how they do it, and also aren’t aware that there’s any other way to do it. You just do it like you’ve always done it, and think everyone else does it the same way. The point is, a direct-to-lung inhale or at least a partial one (it takes some practice) will give you MUCH more TH. Vapor tends to cool down a lot quicker than smoke (and starts off cooler in the first place) so when you hold it in your mouth even for a second, it will get cool and you’ll hardly feel any TH at all.
Hope this helps!
Yeah, I figured out early on that it’s better to inhale directly through the e-cig than to drag-then-inhale as I always did with cigarettes.
The liquid I was complaining about is VG. I read somewhere earlier today that sometimes the manufacturer doesn’t always let liquid “age” correctly, so taking the stopper off the bottle and letting it sit exposed to air for 24 hours can help. I’m doing that with one bottle, but I’m using the other. Interestingly, in the last few hours, as the juice level in this bottle has dropped, the vapor production and throat hit have been improving. Weird.
I also ordered new batteries, and I went with manuals this time. Hopefully that will help as well.
That’s weird, GESancMan, I have never had a problem with them at all. The tobacco flavored were especially good.
I don’t buy the whole “let liquids breathe” deal. But I know for a fact that you definitely should shake well before use. This will often improve the flavor, vapor production, and probably the nicotine level consistency, because the ingredients will partially separate over time.
As for the batteries, yeah, manual batteries are a lot better for the control they give you, and they tend to have less problems since the battery is sealed and can’t get liquid in them. Auto batteries use either a microphone or a vacuum switch, and both have a much higher failure rate when compared to sealed manual switch batteries.
(Edit) Oh yeah, and the microphone switched auto batteries will activate in your pocket under certain conditions, such as in a car with a loud stereo or at a concert - not good!
I finally bought a portable manual battery a few weeks back ( I had previously used a manual corded USB pass-through), and I have to say it has good & bad points. I like being able to get a longer draw. It seems to have more power.
However; I am not a big fan for using it while trying to do something else. For instance, I liked to smoke when I was playing video games, or working on the car/house/etc. This is easily done with an auto, but with a manual- not so much.
So now I carry both around.
Letting the juice air out for about 20 hours seems to have helped with vapor & throat hit, and now it even sort of tastes like it’s supposed to (cola). Before, it was rather nasty, like some sort of plant that I couldn’t put my finger on. I’m still not sure I’ll buy from eliquidplanet again, though. We’ll see.