Five for you. My brother is a vaper and he did it to give up smoking but now he fucking vapes in the god damn house and I can't get him to see it's just as fucking rude and annoying.

Plus, Coastal Mississippi/New Orleans metro is REALLY humid and that vapor just HANGS in the air for hours.

I was reading somewhere that vaping was actually a lot worse than regular tobacco smoking, because people take longer hits and tend to smoke it for longer periods of time than you would just going out on a smoke break at work or something. I plan on quitting smoking myself soon, but the "switch to vaping bro" alternative seems like a bad one.

A little off topic but I was walking back from the store picking up a pack of cigs and a hoverboard guy almost hit me, going downhill. It wasn't a big deal to me, but he was pretty out of control and ate shit, luckily on the grass and not the lightrail track on the other side of the sidewalk where a streetcar was going by. It then occurred to me that there's a Segway/hoverboard school like a block from there which is why I see so many of them. That's like teaching your kid how to bike by pushing them down a hill!

My brother started using e-cigarettes several years ago when they were first coming out, he had smoked for decades previously. To this day he still has the half pack of cigarettes he never finished wedged by the seat in his car, as soon as he had the e-cig option he never touched the real ones again. He had tried a lot of other things to quit and it never stuck, what he found he wanted was the actual action of smoking. The other thing he liked is the fluids come in both flavors and strengths, he found himself desiring less and less nicotine concentrations as time went on. Also his breathing and lungs got a lot better without all the tar and smoke, he lost his persistent cough too.

I doubt it is better than not smoking at all, but it seems a lot easier on the respiratory system than burning organic matter is. And in my brothers case it was exactly what he needed to quit, patches or gum wouldn't cut it as it wasn't just the nicotine he was hooked on.

That's good advice. My plan was to quit smoking when my wife turned 30 (I was 28) and then things went tits up in that relationship and I went up to at least 2 packs a day (I'm 33 now) so I'd like a good way to quit. My solution has been buying the cheapest cigarettes at the store instead of American Spirits, just like I started drinking the cheapest beer to get off really high ABV IPAs and such to prevent hangovers. But I'm throwing my money away really, on the cigarettes anyway. A lot of the time I smoke less than a quarter of one and toss it out simply because I needed a nic fix. I work in a housing project that doesn't allow it, so that's sort of what I do at work, take out the garbage and smoke so I've gotten it down to that 20-second cigarette thing like in Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, which is funny, but I'd like an alternative.

A friend of mine just started on the patch after smoking cloves for as long as I knew her and she keeps texting me about patch this and patch that, probably because she has no oral fixation. I've got some more research to do before I come up with a decision, but I'll look into it and do some more research!

@IZ: I was 33 when I started vaping, smoked off and on in HS, and then ~1.5 packs a day every day once I turned 18.

I found that I was way less addicted to the actual nicotine than I thought I was and that the ritual of it and tactile sensation of the entire process was a way bigger deal. I started at half the nicotine dosage everyone recommends for that level of smoking, and quickly halved again. Before long, you notice how the slow uptake (compared to the spike you get from combustion) makes your cravings less severe.

This is why it works really well for getting you off cigs. It's not going to taste the same, and how the vape feels is different than cigs... but it will hit all the buttons your brain cares about while tricking you into needing less nicotine.

As for health concerns... vaping is one of those slow news day scapegoat subjects. I would take anything you read about it that has a negative spin with a grain of salt. It's without the slightest doubt 100x less harmful than cigarettes, and two really powerful industries with a long history of regulatory corruption are actively lobbying for and would absolutely love to have the FDA shut it all down.

I'll grant haters that the community really sucks and that some people use vaping to act like shitheads... but that's true of anything. Seriously man, do your homework and try it out. As a guy who has trouble with self control, it's improved my life immensely. One less thing to struggle with is not a bad thing.

Oh, and the shops around downtown Portland are garbage. I mean, you often strike me as an odd guy yourself so you might like it... but I advise you find a place out in the burbs somewhere.

bro mind if I vape in here?

:takes pull off of something that looks like a lightsaber prop and exhales giant cloud of mist only a foot away from your face:

Vaping is significantly safer than smoking prima facie. It will take time to find the adverse effects, if they exist, but it isn't crazy to suggest that ecigs end up being a significant tool in decreasing smoking related deaths. I'm secretly betting that they get the Nobel Prize one day (they would have to get cheaper). Interesting smoking thought: smokers have never been shown to self administer nicotine. This is why gum /patch assisted cessation rates suck.

With the vape I found it extremely easy to just say fuck this and go back to smoking cigs. The patch has always worked the best for me.

The great mystery to me is how the ecigs are here at all. For decades, people speculated on how much safer this technology would be from just burning the tobacco. First time I heard of this was reading Pearson and Shaw's Life Extension book in the early 80's. The general consensus was that it would be impossible to get a new drug delivery system through the FDA for a recreational drug, especially given the history of that drug.

What actually happened was the US market was flooded by chinese imported products. This has been going on the years. I put this to a friend of mine who designs medical stuff and who's familiar with the regs: his one word answer was "payoff". To that I have no additional information. But it's worth considering that while the tech is sound and is a whole lot healthier than burning, nobody's minding the store when it comes to what's in the products themselves.

@Monkey that's good advice! I live near the tobacco shop next to the paris hentai theatre across from the dantes, so I might try that out first, since they're cool, but I have venture out into the suburbs quite frequently too!

Not sure vaporizing some mysterious flavor juice made by the barrel in a Chinese back-alley will end up less carcinogenous than burning leaves.

Less tar and coughing, sure, but that's a short-term symptom

IZ: try this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP253aySonY

lolololz! Whitest Kids You Know AND a Gay Joke! Wheeeee..

Why not just not smoke anything? Because it's all disgusting garbage and you're wasting your money and killing yourself.

Whether or not e-cigs and vapes are "safer" than regular tobacco, aren't you still getting a big dose of nicotine which can fuck up your cardiovascular system?

nicotine is harmless, you big tobacco shill!

Yeah people shouldn't start smoking in the first place, but once you start it's extremely hard addiction to kick. To nonsmoers think of it like this: you leave your phone charger at home when you go to work. You'll probably figure out a way to escape to get a replacement even though you don't really need one and it won't kill you if you don't. But you'll probably do it anyway; that's kind of what nicotine addiction feels like.

Oscar, to be sure, it was a Chinese invention (Hon Lik). Really neat story.

@Oscar
A couple Pharmacorps threw their weight behind pressurized inhaler systems in the 90's. They never did too well (probably because you needed a prescription) but you can still get them.

Also, one of the first big (and still the best selling) eCig brands blu has been owned since one tobacco company or the other since forever. It's currently owned by RJ Reynolds.

The irony is that what really got the more recent trendy phase going was the shitty products the tobacco guys were putting out. It's kind of no wonder the proposed FDA regulations would destroy the entire market except for the shittiest, least safe products, which happen to be owned by tobacco companies.

I always, always think conspiracy people are stupid.... but it's so obvious. One of the requirements products have to meet in order to be sold under the regulations is literally "brought to market BEFORE 2010". You know, before anyone sold anything anybody might actually want to buy.

Captain Badass McHardcore here has the answer and don't you spineless softies forget it!

I started smoking kind of late compared to a lot of people: in college I had a job that was at once customer service heavy but also allowed for as much freedom as you wanted, as long as you just didn't come back or something or steal from the store. So I'd regularly be stuck with people saying they'd be right back and I'd be stuck with a line of douchy college kids while they were out smoking, and I had no excuse to leave.

I should've quit when they first banned it from bars in Madison, Wisconsin sometime in 2004 or maybe 5. Smoking in the summertime's as fun as coldlamping with a lukewarm OE in the winter, but the combination of the two is no fun, leaving a bar to smoke in zero degrees temperatures, not to mention the fact that your drink could get Cosbyed up if your friend didn't stay behind and watch it, so it was incredibly isolated, freezing and I just wondered why I was out there in the first place. But Oregon's more temperate, so it's very enabling. Like I said above I needed a reason to quit like I needed a reason to live when I was younger; that's no excuse you're right, but it's hard to just kick, so a healthy(er) alternative is a good thing. Fuck, you're probably better off smoking a pack or two a day and eating vegan than you are eating fast food every day, but you don't hear me preachin'.

Quitter.

You sound a little edgy.