What Is Vaping?

Google defines Vaping as: inhaling and exhaling the vapor produced by an electronic cigarette or similar device. Electronic cigarette in turn is defined as device containing a nicotine-based liquid that is vaporized and inhaled, used to simulate the experience of smoking tobacco. 

Nicotine based liquid is commonly referred to as “juice”, “e-juice” and “e-liquid”. Juice is generally made with propylene glycol (PG), vegetable glycerineM (VG), food flavoring and nicotine. All the makers we use offer juices that are only made with food grade pg/vg, flavors and nicotine. There are hundreds of juice makers offering flavors ranging from tobacco to fruits, candies, desserts, sodas and even champagne and cereals. Even if you think you will only like tobacco flavors, you will likely soon try flavors similar to your favorite food or drink.

Why Do People Vape?

There is really only one major reason why people vape, which is because it’s an alternative to smoking cigarettes. That being said, we’ve also seen a fair number of former dip users who have moved off of tobacco by vaping. If you haven’t vaped, you’re probably curious about why people make the switch. The short answer is that vaping is a great fit for recovering smokers.

Smokers, my former self included, loved a few things about smoking: nicotine; hand to mouth ritual; and blowing a cloud. Today you can buy hundreds of flavors in at least four different nicotine levels ranging from 0 – 12mg. Quite a few juice makers produce lines with nic levels up to 24mg, which kicks like a mule, but is perfect for some heavy smokers looking for an alternative to their smokes.

Hand to mouth. Social scientists have identified hand to mouth ritual as one of the routines that is a huge and satisfying part of cigarettes. Let’s face it, every smoker enjoys putting putting that cigarette between our lips and taking a drag. It turns out that scientists have documented this fact. Unlike the patch, nicotine gum, and other nicotine inhalers, vaping has that satisfying hand to mouth ritual.

It’s also satisfying to blow a cloud of smoke or vape. I’m not sure entirely why that’s the case, but there’s even a subculture around blowing clouds. This subculture regularly gets together to see who has built the best looking coil set-up (more on that in a later post), and who can blow the biggest clouds that travel the greatest distance.

The icing on the cake for all these former smokers who vape is the clearer lungs they enjoy after even a short period away from combustible tobacco. Our Tacoma electronic cigarette store has dozens and dozens of former smokers who all tell the same story about being able to climb stairs without getting winded; not hacking up tar and gawd knows what other chemicals every morning.

If you’re ready to trade your cigarettes for new Vaping technology, call Steampunk Vapory Lounge for advice. You can trust our vape experts to help put you into a starter kit that will help you move away from tobacco. We also sell beer, wine, hard cider and sodas to enjoy while you taste the dozens of juice lines at our Steampunk tasting bar.

~ Jim Oliver is a former smoker, full leaf tobacco chewer and current vaper and marathon runner.

Vape Deniers - Pt. 2 Heroin, Cocaine and Vaping, Oh My!

Representative VD is someone’s bat shit crazy uncle. He’s the guy who warned you that “kids get kidnapped at Spring Break and wake up in a tub of ice...missing a kidney!” Last week we looked at VD’s push to move people away from vaping and back to smoking cigarettes, so that babies and children are "protected." This post will examine VD’s claims that vapers are a step away from trading sex in a dark alley for a couple mils of juice.

VD cites as “Fact” that nicotine infused juice is as addictive as heroin or cocaine. There are two problems with VD’s tin foil hat wearing theory: 1) Vapers generally decrease the amount of nicotine they vape; and, 2) very, very few vapers look, or act, anything like Charlie Sheen in withdrawals when they're out shopping for juice. But crazy old uncle VD isn’t gonna let facts get in the way of his fear mongering. He’ll tell you that if vaping doesn’t cause spontaneous baby abortions right now, then the kid will be this generation's version of a crack baby - juice baby?

Like heroin (horse, skag, chiva, bombita, caballo, dope) and cocaine (coke, snow, nose candy, “C”, yeyo, Yey), vape (juice, e-juice, liquid, e-liquid, PG/VG) has street names and destroys young brains and lives. Seriously, they claim that vaping will cause permanent damage to adolescent minds, so we’re much better off if kids just smoke cigarettes.

Our crazy uncle’s proposed Washington State law (HB 1645 and companion SB 5573) also points out that vaping is a gateway drug that leads to tobacco just like marijuana is a gateway to heroin (horse, skag, chiva, bombita, caballo, dope) and cocaine (coke, snow, nose candy, “C”, yeyo, Yey), and gangster rap.  And if that’s not bad enough, “vape smoke” contains embalming fluid and heavy metals and is even more dangerous than cigarettes! Seriously, these are “facts”, recounted like they are true, in these bills.

If all of the above isn’t bad enough, kids can get into that vape liquid stuff and overdose and die and break the hearts of everyone in their family, and, and... Does anyone doubt that there are way, way more dangerous chemicals, drugs and bottles of booze in the average home?

Finally, VD and his disingenuous buddies point out that vaping has all this risk of smoking and no benefits. After all there is “no long term” proof that vaping helps smokers quit. Bulllshit. Sort of. First off, there are plenty of Vapers who no longer smoke. Check out #Improof. Secondly, VD is playing games with words: vaping is relatively new, and there are a number of studies showing vaping is a great alternative to smoking, but being new there cannot be any long term studies. It’s like looking at a beautiful baby and saying “well, there’s no long term proof that she’s gonna amount to anything, and she might turn out dangerous, so we should just get rid of her before she does something bad…”

Don't listen to crazy VD, and don't throw out the baby with the bath water. The kid has potential. Besides, here’s what actual experts at the Palgrave MacMillan Journal of Public Health Policy have to say: “We conclude that electronic cigarettes show tremendous promise in the fight against tobacco-related morbidity and mortality. By dramatically expanding the potential for harm reduction strategies to achieve substantial health gains, they may fundamentally alter the tobacco harm reduction debate.” 

Our next blog will discuss the new Prohibition and how helping people quit smoking can make you a felon.

~ Jim Oliver is a Partner at Durflinger Oliver & Associates.

Vape Deniers - Pt. 1 Smokers Turning To Vaping an "Alarming" Trend

Remember that one kid you knew back in the day who couldn’t tell the truth about anything? The kid who always one upped you with some ridiculously impossible story? Well, that kid got elected to office in Washington, and he doesn’t want you to vape. Worse, he’s gonna tell huge lies, so that he can pass laws making it harder to quit smoking. Since that’s a tough sell, he’s hiding his growing nose and saying he’s doing it “for the children.” Let’s call this clown Vape Denier, or “VD” for short.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to write a series of blogs breaking down VD’s Bill (HB 1645 and companion SB 5573) into bite size pieces of his dishonesty and absurdity. Let’s start with the “Findings”, which are the statements of “facts” that justify a new or altered law.

VD and his cohorts “found” that the use of vaping devices by cigarette smoking adults has “risen at an alarming rate”. So, a massive group of people running away from using cancer causing tobacco is alarming? Um, okay, VD, you’re an idiot. More and more studies are confirming what every Vaper and vape shop owner already knows: vaping is a better alternative to cigarettes and can help people quit smoking altogether.

Unfortunately, VD lives in an alternate universe where facts matter less than bogus “Findings”, so the proposed Bill glosses over the number of lives saved when smokers switched to vaping. VD instead “Finds” that nicotine is horrible for developing babies, so we should eliminate an alternative to tobacco and make their mothers consume 1,000 chemicals including dozens of carcinogens with their nicotine. VD should “find” a way to remove his head from wherever he misplaced it while writing this Bill.

VD doesn’t live in our world. He’s so blinded by his irrational fear of vaping that he would send people back to smoking cigarettes. That’s the real world. But VD doesn’t care how the real world works. And VD doesn’t care if his failed policies move smokers back to coughing, feeling winded and dying of cancer.

Our next visit together will look at Vaping as a gateway to cigarettes as powerful as heroin or cocaine.