Ok This Time It's 10 Years

I am new here and I am surely not the type to stir the pot, but something is bothering me. I see all these members with banners at the bottom explaining how much money they have saved thus far by not smoking, and vaping instead? I just have to shake my head and wonder what planet they come from.

Ten years ago I purchased a top of the line cigarette injector for $25. That same injector costs $35 right now, and it has been highly improved. I can buy top quality bulk tobacco wholesale on the internet, top quality filtered cigarette tubes, and produce world class cigarettes for just about $1.25 per pack. A few years ago it was less than a $1.00 per pack. These are first class top quality cigarettes, better than anything you can buy in any store. You can make them in any style or strength you like, regular or menthol.

A fumble fingered klutz with no practice can pump out one cigarette every 30 seconds, I can do 5 or 6 per minute, and I am kind of a klutz myself! I know poor people and rich people who make cigarettes this same way. Who still buys cigarettes in stores for $5 to $10 per pack? Seriously, who does that? Certainly not anyone with an IQ above 75.

Don't tell me it would have been to difficult for you to do, because messing with Mods, and e-juice, and batteries is far more time consuming and difficult than pumping out cigarettes on a tube injector. So my former habit cost me $1.25 per day for a pack. I can already tell that I will be burning far more than $1.25 in e-juice daily.

All I am saying is that vaping is more expensive than smoking for anyone with common sense, so stop bragging about how much money you saved, that is disingenuous. Brag about why you are doing it for your health.  

VAPING TESTIMONIAL
I smoked for over 50 years and it got to the point where I could barely breathe. I knew I had to quit but I also knew I had no will power to do so. Then 6 years ago I tried vaping and it literally saved my life. I still got my nicotine fix and could finally breathe easier and I was not inhaling all those harmful chemicals. I know taking anything into your lungs is harmful but vaping really is the lesser of two evils. And speaking of evils look at these statistics:
Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year
68,557 people died in 2018 of an opioid overdose
in 2017, 39,773 people in the US lost their lives at the point of a gun
In 2016, 10,497 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes
30,000 deaths were the result of domestic abuse world wide in 2018.
There are 2,200 alcohol poisoning deaths in the US each year.
so in the last year 631,027 died of unnatural causes, extrapolated over six years that is 3,786,162 deaths
1978 to 1995 a total of 37 Americans were killed by falling vending machines
There have been six confirmed deaths connected to vaping across the US
of these two were from lithium batteries exploding and not the vaping itself
and two were from people experimenting by adding dangerous chemicals to their e-cigarettes.
So in reality only two people died due to vaping.
and you pick vaping as a just cause. Really? where are your values and priorities?
more people die each year from choking or acts of stupidity than vaping.
Of all these causes you could get behind why are you picking the least dangerous and offensive one? I think it's time people learned to pick their battles.
so, 480,000 deaths by cigarettes and why doesn't the government care? Here's why, because for every smoker that dies a new smoker starts. And tobacco is such a cash cow the government doesn't want it to disappear. In Canada the average taxes on a carton of cigarettes is 65%, in the US the taxes are around 45%. That's a lot of free cash. But, if people switch to vaping there are no taxes associated with it. There are no health concerns, it is purely greed.
Here is the thing about statistics: you can make up anything you want or manipulate the facts to get your point of view across. Why? Because they can't be verified. So all the government does is use scare tactics and people are gullible enough to believe it. They have no scientific proof to back up their claims, it is all BS.
Vaping is a much safer alternative to smoking, so why don't they shut down the tobacco industry? MONEY!! MONEY!! MONEY!!
I will defend vaping over cigarettes forever.  

I joined ECF back in August of 2017. I was sixty-five years old and had been smoking 25-30 cigarettes a day for 40+ years. I began vaping at the same time win the hope I could at least cut down. I dual used for months, continually cutting back on cigarettes. I smoked my last cigarette on May 11, 2018 - I am coming up on my three year anniversary. When I began, I vaped 24mg nicotine. Now I alternate between 3mg and zero nic.

Given how incredibly positive vaping has been for me, I am in shock at recent events. I was down to two working mods. I have ordered four mods, some tanks and a bunch of coils. I am still able to buy some eliquids where I live - but many of my favorites from Halo have been discontinued. I still have some outstanding hardware orders that I hope get delivered.

The treatment of vaping in the media has been a one sided disgrace, and propaganda works. Over the years when I have mentioned to people that I quit by vaping, they respond, ‘so you quit smoking by picking up a habit that is even more dangerous’.

I am set for at least a year. Fortunately I have kicked my addiction to nicotine - I recently vaped zero nic for a month. If I was just starting out, it would truly be panic time, and I would go back to cigarettes for sure. I suspect that many will do just that. Happy I started when I did.  

I know I'm not a popular user on here like Baditude and all them, been I figured I'd post my story since I've been away.

I've been vaping for the past 9 months, and within the past month, I have unfortunately started to smoke cigarettes again.

In the past I have had problems with depression and anxiety (it started about 3 years ago) and I was on Lexapro and xanax for over a year. Everything was great and I was able to go places and socialize. I stopped taking it a almost 2 years ago thinking I was fine enough to stop. I was, until about 3 weeks ago, all this anxiety started rushing back out of nowhere. It didn't help that I got some sort of flu that was going around but have since recovered from that. At this point, I am afraid to leave my house. I have been having a hell of a time going to work, which was never an issue a month ago. I have had to take time off for the flu and for my anxiety and depression. I broke down at work in front of my boss (not something I'm proud of) and told him I have had these problems in the past and that I need to get back on my Lexapro. So at the beginning of this week, I went to my doctor, which I had a VERY hard time doing as I wanted to pass out and throw up the entire time. She got me back on my meds, but with any kind of anti-depressant it takes a while for it to build up in your system.

I have already taken 4 days off of work, and I'm still afraid to leave my house to do any basic task like going grocery shopping or even just driving (I start to have a panic attack anytime I get stopped at a stop light in traffic.) I'm afraid of losing my job, but I think I can do the FMLA stuff but I'm having doubts on whether what I'm experiencing would allow me to do that. I'll have to read up on what I can do, but I'm just so afraid of losing my job, which would devastate my girlfriend and I know I would get looked down upon by everyone I know. I've been so stressed about it that my body feels my vapes are inadequate and I unfortunately picked up a pack of cigarettes and started smoking again. I'm just so scared right now and I feel like I'm in a rut that I can't get out of.

I know it's not the end of the world, but my mind is telling me that it is, and it's worrying me so bad  

I'm not here that often so I thought I'd post this anniversary even though I have 6 days to go. Close enough.
43000+ cigarettes not smoked. Vape on.  

Apart from the problem of getting juice in the future my problem now is that total strangers are starting to come up to me and just say ¨that .... will kill you¨ or something similar. It is really starting to annoy me.

It doesn´t matter that I haven´t had even one cig in over 3 years (after 40 years of smoking) and save over $3000 a year. Nothing matters because they have watched the nightly news and know best.

I am not a conspiracy type person but it makes my think of the expression "follow the money."

I make my own unflavored juice but I think this is just the beginning. I think I will put away another years worth of nic.

I hope you all are having a great day.  

I always wanted to make this thread. Here I go, 'cuz I've had it up to "here"..........

I'm a member of a lot of different forums that aren't vaping (or even smoking) related. And let me tell you, people freakin' HAAAAAAAAAAAAATE vapers.

It's seems like out in the real world it's not nearly as bad because people aren't anonymous. But on the non-vaping internet, it's totally different. Smokers and non-smokers alike believe and parrot all the stupid lies the media has spread over the years...all of them. They did a great job at brainwashing (as they always do).

On occasion, when it fits, I'll either mention that I'm a vaper or, if someone brings up being a smoker and having to/wanting to quit, I'll throw a suggestion their way to consider switching to vaping and hooooly COW you would think that I mentioned the most terrible thing a person could ever mention, ever!

People will attack with all the usual lies...
That 'll kill ya! What're you stupid?! Those batteries blow up ALL.THE.TIME! Are you crazy?! Didn't you hear about all those people dying from vaping! (referring to "EVALI" and black market cartridges....LAST YEAR).
That's just as bad as smoking, probably worse! You better quit NOW!
Didn't you hear? That stuff has antifreeze in it, stupid! ...on and on and on. And it's no use arguing, their minds are set and it's all "facts" because why would the media lie? Right? And after all, it looks like smoke, so it's gotta be at least just as bad, right?

Meanwhile here at ECF we're vapin' away, some of 10+ years, most of us probably at least 5 years, without issues at all. Many of us even with stories of how vaping either saved our lives or improved them greatly (with some doctors even agreeing ins some cases).

But you can't tell them that. NO SIREE! THEY KNOW the truth! You're just an idiot who knows nothing and inhales poison! They heard it on the news, the talk shows, social media, blah, blah, blah. That makes them experts!

They would probably be a lot more open to me talking about and suggesting illicit drug use than [GASP] vaping nicotine

It's a real shame and I just don't see this changing because it's not just misinformation, it really is brainwashing.

So I gotta hand it to ya, American Media,
you did a GREAT..JOB! Congratulations!
You earned every dollar you made from it, I'm sure, you losers.

Well, that's the end of my rant.

Thank you, and have a happy 2021

VAPE 'EM WHILE YA GOT 'EM  

Maybe this isn't the right thread so I apologize if it isn't. I've been using Vision Spinners for the past six years. Yep. Six years off cigarettes. I can't find Vapros Spinners anymore and am looking for a replacement. I like the pen style batteries and have tried a couple of replacements: The Aspire CF and EVOD. Not cutting it for me. Just not getting that throat hit.

Yeah, I'm old school but I like the feel of the pen style in my hand. Any suggestions? Money isn't a factor.  

At first I was not too concerned about a flavor ban because my wife and I use no flavoring and I mix my own... But now Romney and some dude named Jeff have a bill on the floor that includes banning refillable cartridges. That scared the holy bejesus out of me. It sounds like they want all e-cigs to be like the "Mojo" (a disposable closed system).

The frustrating part about this current situation is that all of this seems to have started from some black market THC cartridges, which has absolutely nothing to do with vaping. PG is used in children's asthma medication and nicotine is really not much more dangerous than caffeine, but everyone out there thinks that e-cigarettes are killing people.

I think our first mistake was calling them "e-cigarettes" instead of something like "nicotine delivery device"... The name "e-cigarettes" just causes those that are clueless group them in the same category as cigarettes. Big Tobacco and Big Pharma are probably loving this right now. Smoking kills 450-500k people per year, as far as I know vaping has killed 0, but sure, go ahead and put severe restrictions on vaping. I know it saved my life, 12 years ago I could not manage walking up a flight of stairs, every time I laughed it ended in a coughing fit. Then e-cigs came along and all of that changed.

I wish there was some way to educate the public, especially our government officials.  

I thought I'd drop in and say hi. I joined about 9 years ago, quit smoking around 6-7 years ago (?), and eventually just fell out of touch.

I'm still vaping, and I'm glad to see it's getting easier all the time. I don't really have a favorite of anything other than tanks (Nautilus). I just mix a single flavor I found (Heisenberg) and base, and buy a cheap replacement mod whenever I lose one. Life is simple and good.

I've spent like $100 dollars this year, so I'm still ahead in terms of money.

For the old folks: For context, I was active here back when Provaris were a really hot item.

So anyways, for those struggling to stay off the cigs, keep at it. It gets better! I don't miss it (although I do like the smell as long as it's outside).

K.

PS. Pandemic sucks. If there are any fans of text games, check out the link in my signature.