I have a friend who has been using an e-cigarette for 10+ years. He doesn’t seem any less addicted to smoking as back when he was using old-fashioned cigarettes.
I understand e-cigarettes are supposed to help you quit… but has anyone actually had success with them? Or, is it more like trading one vice for another?
Current e-cig user here.
Honestly, as a smoker, it’s a godsend. The smoke goes away so quickly, it has higher nicotine than cigarettes when purchased the RIGHT way, and since I can now smoke inside, I can puff on it all day every day as I work from home!
In all seriousness, it’s worse imo. It sets the precedent from the 50s of smoking EVERYWHERE and now without any of the negative outward effects like smell or yellowing of the teeth/walls.
It’s honestly made my addiction worse. To each their own for sure, but in my experience it just made my bad habit SLIGHTLY healthier, but much more accessible.
It requires a significant amount of willpower to break the addiction, but for those of us that do not, definitely do not pick this up. It will not help. If you have that willpower, it is useful.
It seems useful for people who were addicted to cigarettes by providing a potentially less harmful alternative.
But, for the generation that didn’t have addiction to cigarettes prior to E cigarettes I wonder how many went on to pick up the addiction to nicotine they otherwise wouldn’t have, since smoking cigarettes seemed to be going out of style.
I do kind of wonder what the endgame of addictive product development is. I mean, if you assume that technology can both reduce negative side effects and make the product more-potently-addictive, absent some sort of social movement or something opposed to them, I would think that we would get closer to a point where there is stupendously-addictive stuff that has no intrinsic harm other than the addiction itself, but that the addiction could be crippling and extremely hard to kick.
Science fiction has explored the concept:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_%28science_fiction%29
Wireheading is a term associated with fictional or futuristic applications of brain stimulation reward, the act of directly triggering the brain’s reward center by electrical stimulation of an inserted wire, for the purpose of ‘short-circuiting’ the brain’s normal reward process and artificially inducing pleasure. Scientists have successfully performed brain stimulation reward on rats (1950s) and humans (1960s). This stimulation does not appear to lead to tolerance or satiation in the way that sex or drugs do. The term is sometimes associated with science fiction writer Larry Niven, who used the term in his Known Space series. In the philosophy of artificial intelligence, the term is used to refer to AI systems that hack their own reward channel.
Wireheading, like other forms of brain alteration, is often treated as dystopian in science fiction literature.
In Larry Niven’s Known Space stories, a “wirehead” is someone who has been fitted with an electronic brain implant known as a “droud” in order to stimulate the pleasure centers of their brain. Wireheading is the most addictive habit known (Louis Wu is the only given example of a recovered addict), and wireheads usually die from neglecting their basic needs in favour of the ceaseless pleasure. Wireheading is so powerful and easy that it becomes an evolutionary pressure, selecting against that portion of humanity without self-control.
There are tons of harmful chemicals and tar you aren’t inhaling by vaping, instead of by combustion with traditional cigarettes. Not sure if they’re worse.
Being that I now vape from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed simply due to accessibility, I’d say it’s worse.
Is vaping worse, or are you?
It’s not though. Your inhaling nicotine - which does not cause cancer or any other health issues - and water vapor. Probably burns your throat which can’t be too great, but no internal damage except from the mental standpoint of addiction.
Quick correction: the base isn’t water, it’s a combination of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine. Barring sensitivities, these are GRAS—Generally Recognized As Safe for human consumption.
Source: I make joose.
PS: Stay away from any flavours containing diacetyl.
Honestly I’m not yet in that camp. Sure for short term it is for a fact much better than analog smokes, but we know nothing of the long term.
Gotta remember: for quite a while, doctors recommended cigarettes. Sure tech and general knowledge have improved drastically since then, but the method of proving a hypothesis is still done the same way: testing.
I hope it is better. Maybe I’m just getting jaded in my age.
You could also argue that that doesn’t apply to everyone. I treat vaping like it’s smoking, and I have from the start.
On the health side, I don’t want other people to be exposed to my bad choices either in public or residential buildings. So, I only vape when I am far away from others out of respect for them.
From another angle, I don’t enjoy the residue buildup that would happen over time. Imagine that stuff building up on your walls, in your PC, on your counters and cabinets, etc. The vapour you exhale doesn’t evaporate like steam in the sense that it isn’t water.
I think it might be an individual thing. You have the choice whether or not you treat it like a cigarette. It sucks going outside in poor weather, but it makes me actually want to quit more.
Estimates put out after research by Public Health England suggest that vaping is 95% better for you than smoking. So unless you’re vaping 20x more than you were smoking you’re probably benefitting.
Use your willpower in a small burst to buy a low nicotine juice and literally throw away the high nicotine stuff. You need to actually toss it and never use it again. Yes, it costs money, but do you want to quit or not?
Now use the low nicotine juice for a set amount of time (say, a month) and then switch to zero nicotine juice. Try to keep the same flavors you’re used to already.
Eventually you will stop smoking because youre only getting the positive feelings from the habit itself and not the nicotine.
Same situation here, vape more than I used to smoke.
Only concern I have is long term affects, since we don’t actually know what they are yet.
Depends - it can be used to quit by controlling and lowering the nicotine content, but it could just be used as a harm reduction method.
While certainly not healthy, it’s significantly much less bad for you than smoking.
Burnt cigarettes have over 9000 different chemicals, several of which are addictive MAOI antidepressants. It’s not the nicotine hooking people to the level we see in smokers, it’s that, they’re having legitimate withdrawal symptoms from a legitimate drug dependency. Nicotine itself at the levels anyone takes it in is maybe a little more addictive than caffeine.
Ecigs, at minimum, have propylene glycol (GRAS) and nicotine which isn’t necessarily from tobacco, and even the nicotine is optional. Many have a couple other ingredients like vegetable glycerine (makes “smoke” clouds puffier) and flavorings, but even loaded up it doesn’t compare to the count in the first paragraph. Ecigs also don’t burn anything unless you’re doing it very wrong.
Also since I’m on the soap box anyway, when you hear fear stories about “vaping” they’re usually lumping in thc/marijuana which is effectively different even though it doesn’t need to be. Because it’s regulated if not illegal you’ll chance getting things like adulterated cartridges with oils in them, if you breathe in oil particles you’re getting pneumonia. So when you’re reading or hearing about some scary story it’s probably that and the one “reporting” is too lazy or too ignorant to make the distinctions they should.
That was the vitamin E acetate shenanigans from a few years ago that people were cutting with THC concentrate to make it look thicker/more quality than it actually was. Huge disinformation campaign somehow made nicotine vapes the bad guy even though it was entirely unrelated
This is what I did. Started at a “normal” nicotine level, then once I was used to that level and wasn’t getting any cravings (took a few months usually) I would lower my nicotine strength a little bit then repeat the process. It made it way easier for me to quit once I did. I barely got any cravings.
I vape now. I used to smoke a lot. I agree it can be effective but the end result may not always be complete withdrawal from nicotine.
While certainly not healthy, it’s significantly much less bad for you than smoking.
It’s much better, tbh, aside from the health benefits vs cigarettes. The stench is no longer there - at worse, it’s just this annoying sweet smell. No more cig butts that you have to dispose of all the time - I know use “pods” which, if I’m stressed, I replace after 5-6 days. If anyone’s a smoker, I’d recommend to switch to vape. But if not, I’d suggest they stay away from vapes/nicotine.
E-cigarettes is designed to replace cigarettes nowadays, not to help you quit smoking.
If you use them that way. You can also dial down the nicotine in them to zero to wean yourself off of it.
That’s what I did after 5 years of vaping. Gradually went down to 0.5% nic and finally quit in May.
Congrats! Good for you! That’s so hard to do.
I actually just made the experience worse and worse without adjusting the nicotine. Switched to unflavored, then switched to freebase, then my vape broke and I started using my shitty old vape. It became a chore to smoke so it was easy to stop.
Although, I’ve usually been pretty good at controlling my nicotine when needed, so I would not describe myself as some highly addicted even when I was vaping a lot.
freebase
Mfer are you smoking crack?
There’s two types of nicotine used in vapes freebase and salts. When vaping first started everything was freebase. In my experience it’s a slower come up and doesn’t hit as strong. Although I prefer freebase. Nicotine salts are easy to over do.
Huh, never knew that. Always just seen nicotine as nicotine. Usually when I hear freebase when referring to a substance as smoked though, it is typically cocaine lol
Keep in mind that ALSO comes in a salt form, which is the typical powder you see.
I don’t think he is…
I just saw your response to my comment, didn’t load earlier. Yes is fundamentally the same chemical reaction. Acid/base reaction that results in a salt. Makes a huge difference in the experience in my opinion, I find the salt form to be much closer to real cigs. But as you can see from the other commenter, people have different preferences.
Cool, is there any downsides to using the salt over the freebase form?
I think the main thing is that you can get a more intense nicotine hit, probably because it is easier to smoke higher concentrations, so I assume it is more addictive in that regard. It’s a smoother smoke and you don’t get that residual nicotine in the mouth that you would at high concentrations of the freebase. You can always just try it out, most vapes are compatible with both juices, although they might be optimized for one over the other.
You can, but the market has shifted almost entirely to single use salt nicotine devices (a la Juul) in a single strength so you really have to go out of your way for that.
Most of them are actually cigarettes company subsidiary, just look up some f1 sponsor and you will find them.
I successfully quit with vaping.
Switched to vaping not with the intent to quit, but to just get rid of the smell I get after smoking. While trying different flavors, in time I decreased the amount of nicotine every time I time I bought a new bottle. I then slowly started to forget to bring it with me when I leave the house until I vaped exclusively in my home and after a few more months decided to just throw it all away.
Very similar here. Smoking buddy at work was turning 40 and was like “If we don’t quit now, we never will!” so headed to a random vape shop. Bought a vape for lke £50, was on 1.2mg nicotine strength. First day was fine. 2nd day was tough. 3rd was also tough. 4th day I realised “oh shit, never going back to smoking…I feel fine. I can work with this.” So that caused me to panick but then thought ok, bought the same vape as a redundancy (so as to not have to fall back on ciagarettes).
Then, after 6 months switched to 0.6mg nicotine. 6 months after that, 0.3mg. 3 months after that 0.2mg (put my high school chemistry hat on, figured 10ml 0.3mg + 10ml 0.3mg + 10ml 0.0mg mixed up in a 30ml bottle = 0.2mg per 10ml). 1 month after that 0.1mg, 1 month after that 0.0mg - 1 month later, stopped entirely (you genuinely just start forgetting about it, it’s weird).
Went from 30 cigarettes a day to no nicotine and no vape in 18 months.
You probably added 10 years to your life with that. Healthier years too.
Yeah, I hope so. This infographic used to haunt me a little before I stopped:
I love those at the end how you can return to the risk levels of non smokers in really not that much time in the grand-scheme.
This is exactly my story. Nicotine free for years.
I also quit with vaping, but in a roundabout way. I used to smoke, but my wife would not have me smoking indoors, and my office was likewise no smoking, so I was on perhaps 10 cigarettes a day. I switched to vaping, and still couldn’t vape in the office, but my wife didn’t mind me vaping at home if I restricted it to one room.
Then COVID happened, and I ended up working from home. So… Even though the amount of nicotine I was using in the vape was low, I had nothing stopping me from vaping all the time, which is what I did. I actually began feeling just as bad in terms of lung capacity when vaping as I had when I was smoking, largely because I was vaping pretty much constantly whilst awake.
One day I just had a flash of self control, and. chucked my vape, batteries, coils and all the paraphernalia. That was late 2020, and I haven’t vaped or smoked since.
Weirdly, even though I ultimately went cold turkey, I do think switching to vaping from smoking helped me to quit. There was a marked improvement in my lung capacity and ability to smell during that time, and that gave me hope.
It sounds like you vaped for a while and then quit (congratulations btw). I smoked for many years and then quit, and that doesn’t mean cigarettes helped me quit, or that I quit with cigarettes. You quit the day you “decided to just throw it all away.”
FDA has said that they find no evidence vaping improves quitting outcomes for smokers.
They work just fine.
They get you off cigarettes. Problem solved.
You’ll just be vaping all the time, instead.
They were never for quitting everything. Just cigarettes.
If only there was some benefits from switching. Like financially or lung-capacity wise.
There are. Vapes are orders of magnitude less harmful than cigarettes.
thatsthejoke.jpg
Sorry. Poe’s Law. There’s plenty of people in this thread making that statement seriously.
Maybe add a /s although I hate having to add an /s.
I’d say they work if you want to quit and also actively do so. They don’t work for quitting if you just replace cigarettes with e-cigatettes. That’s like an alcoholic that’s drinking wine instead of beer and wonders why he’s still an alcoholic
Actually, vapes were created to get you smoking MORE because you can smoke them inside. They indeed get you off of smoking cigarettes, they did for me, I probably vape 1.5-2x more than I ever smoked.
My husband just traded one for the other. We’d like to think it’s “healthier”, but who knows. Definitely stinks less which I appreciate.
I did the same thing, about eight years ago. By day three, I wasn’t coughing up phlegm anymore. By day five, I could climb stairs without getting winded. After about a year, my dentist told me that my gums were way healthier.
Is it beneficial, when compared to not doing it? Most probably not. Is it far less damaging than inhaling tobacco smoke? Absolutely.
Research shows it’s around 95% better than cigarettes.
As someone who smoked a pack a day until last year and switched to an e-cigarette yeah, they can definitely be helpful in quitting. I have a few friends who switched over and slowly lowered the nicotine levels until they had non nicotine and kept it for the oral fixation. Personally I switched just because it’s a lot cheaper, and I don’t have plans to lower nicotine anytime soon, but I’ve even felt better using just the ecig compared to normal smokes.
He’s not smoking.
Pure nicotine is about as harmful as caffeine. Some people will want to quit it altogether, others find it useful. It’s all good.
According to my cardiologist, nicotine is the part of cigarette smoke that has a detrimental effect on the heart and arteries. Way more harmful than caffeine.
Make him give you the evidence. Here’s a systematic review of nicotine side effects and heres the RCP report on vaping.
Physicians who spread fear about vaping are killing people. They should go back to medical school and pay more attention in their epidemiology classes.
Physicians who spread fear about vaping are killing people.
A major point of that article is that the
health draftsdeaths from vaping in the US are caused by substances that are banned from the UK. So maybe doctors in the UK might be spreading false info, but it sounds like doctors in the US might have a point!That’s not true at all. There was one US cannabis outlet using vitamin E acetate as a diluent in error. It’s lethal when heated and not a standard component of any e-cigarette anywhere at all.
It may not be true at all, but it’s in the source that you posted.
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Link your evidence and I will critique it. I can’t do anything with this hand-wavey nonsense.
There’s a lot of really terrible anti-vaping research out there (as there is in any field). Like the one that claimed vapers were more likely to have heart attacks which was withdrawn after reviewers and editors demanded they state which happened first, the vaping or the heart attack.
It is a difficult area to study, no doubt. If you’re relying on observational studies which show an association but cannot determine whether there is a causal arrow, or even which direction it points in, you need to be very careful about how you interpret it. You can’t rely on the authors or the headlines. Pub Peer is often a useful first port of call to find any concerns raised, a citation search is also useful.
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If you don’t care enough to have compiled the evidence, how can you justify expressing a strongly held opinion on a public forum? Just spew out any old bullshit headline as long as it confirms your prejudices? Regardless of how many millions of lives are on the line?
That’s not good enough. If you make a serious claim, back it up with your sources, or just don’t do it.
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You have no idea what you’re talking about and spreading misinformation. I developed brain cancer a while back. Ask the doc if I can vape. She says sure. Year later I can barely walk from the extreme nerve damage cause by the vape. And yes there are reasons why I’m 100% sure it’s the vape. Even Australia has a national ban on them. Yes they did help me to stop smoking but at a steep price. But no lol some random guy on the internet thinks he knows more than doctors, just like the vaccine denialists on Facebook. It would be ironic if it weren’t so fuckin sad.
I’m sorry you went through that but a temporal link is not causal evidence. There are millions of people convinced MMR vaccine caused their child’s autism too, but it did not.
Australia does have an extremely wrong-headed approach to vaping. It will kill millions.
“I farted and then it started raining. I’m 100% sure my fart made it rain”.
Yea nicotine is harmless lol, it’s almost as if they didn’t get caught lying to congress about that very thing they knew was a lie. And you’re repeating the shit for them, for free. climate change is harmless too. see how fucking stupid that sounds?
What the fuck are you on about.
I’m responding to a question with my personal experience. What the fuck are you on about?
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It can help, yes. But if you don’t want to quit, it will just be trading one for the other.
What I can say is that vaping is at the very least, less harmful than cigarettes. You don’t get a lot of the combustion by-products you do with cigarettes.
It’s not less addictive, and I’m not going to claim it’s healthier, just less harmful. Addiction to nicotine in any form is still an addition. Vaping doesn’t do anything different than cigarettes when it comes to nicotine. Its still an addictive substance, and the only real benefit you get from vaping (in terms of quitting) is detailed control over the concentration of nicotine in what you’re ingesting. This won’t matter if instead of vaping for 5 minutes per hour at 6mg, you’re vaping 10 minutes per hour at 3mg.
In the end, it’s entirely up to you. Vaping is a tool that can give you the control to accomplish the task of quitting, if that’s what you’re intending to do. If you’re just looking for something less harmful, but don’t have the drive to actually try to quit, it’s just going to substitute one for the other.
Well said. I’d managed to quit from cigarettes using a salt nic vape. It was a bit involved though. I learned how to make my own e-juice and properly dose nicotine (very important!). I titrated my dose down gradually over about 6 months until I was off nicotine. And then kicked the oral fixation by making a conscious effort to vape less. It worked alright for me. I wound up picking up the habit again a couple of years later after going through an extended period of shit just going wrong. Trouble is, I can’t do what I did last time because you can no longer order concentrated nicotine through the mail anymore. At least in the US
yep, legislation for the children is basically restricting a lot of high concentration stuff from being ordered at all.
Where I am (canada), we can’t get anything over 20mg/ml at all, unless we have a manufacturing license to buy anything higher. There are some shops that make their own e-juice that can mix whatever concentration you need. Here, that would be dashvapes in Toronto (though I’m sure they’re not the only one), and will go down to as little as 0.5mg/ml IIRC, since they have a manufacturing license and they have the high concentration liquid to mix it as much, or as little as they want.
I’ve been more or less stuck at 3mg for a while myself, I refuse to go higher, I just need to restrict how often I pick up the vape to get anywhere, since the oral fixation is very real and keeps me reaching for my vape… that’s the bit I need to get under control.
Hey! Me too! :) Loved making my own ejuice… That SUCKS about the mailing restriction :(
It worked for me, but the intent was to quit. Your friend isn’t trying if it’s been more than a decade. I started at a higher nicotine, and slowly got lighter nicotine options. Once I got to 0 nicotine, it was mostly just breaking the physical desire to do something when my hands were free or while driving. I think I only bought one bottle of 0 nicotine and moved on.
Same, I switched from smoking to vaping a pretty high nicotine juice at the height of the vaping craze. Slowly worked my way down to 0 nicotine and finally was able to drop the vaping. I haven’t had a vape in over a year and haven’t had a cigarette in about 5 years. I still get cravings but they pass and I’m fine. I was a pack per day smoker for 20 years, e-cigs can absolutely help if your intent is to quit.
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For me, it was a very effective way of cutting down on my nicotine intake, as others have described, by mixing my own ejuice.
I vaped for 10-12 months with diminishing nicotine, then quit altogether. I 100% would recommend for smoking cessation.
I do wonder about those who demand an end to an nearly-harmless substitute for dirty tobacco - are we really willing to sacrifice ‘good’ for ‘perfect’?are we really willing to sacrifice ‘good’ for ‘perfect’?
It’s not about sacrificing good for perfect, but rather sacrificing good for profit.
I suspect the big drivers of the push to demonise vaping are funded by Big Tobacco. So yes, we may be sacrificing a good alternative to protect tobacco profits for a few more years.
Aren’t there vape companies owned by tobacco companies? I know Vuse is. Tobacco has been on decline for a while now and lot of them are pivoting into other areas.
Funny enough, it’s also aspects of the US government. There was a huge tobacco settlement across multiple states. The states opted to receive their settlement funds over a period of decades. The payout amount is tied to the number of cigarette smokers, NOT the number of vapers.
AND THEN, a bunch of state governments leveraged those predicted future funds into short term loans that they used to plug budget holes.
Enter vaping. The number of cigarette smokers begins to nose dive.
Enter an unholy union of cash strapped state governments and big tobacco money, and the perfect catalyst in a tiny number of stupid teenagers getting sketchy fake weed from China and dying from it. WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF UNTIL CHILDREN!! Boom, bans.
Nicotine itself is highly addictive but not terribly harmful. All the harmful shit is in the tar and other crap in cigarettes.
I personally used vaping to totally quit cigarettes. It was excellent. And now in my state vaping is effectively banned. We have to turn to black market mods and shit. It’s horrible, and in 40 years it’s going to be a massive “how the fuck did we let this happen” part of our history along with subprime mortgages and zero tolerance laws.
I switched to vaping because I’d just met my now wife and she hated the smell of smoke and all the associated stuff that goes with it, partly because she’d just come out of a bad relationship with a chain smoker but also because it’s just not nice for non smokers anyway.
That was about 10 years ago and I still vape. I’m will aware that I’ve just swapped one addiction for another but I don’t consider myself a smoker - haven’t touched a cigarette since, and genuinely never wanted to for a very long time now. My lungs still feel a lot better, I can run and do excercise without feeling like my lungs are imploding.
A lot of the studies done on vaping it should be noted use old fashioned kit and unrealistic use case scenarios (such testing until a coil gives out - a coil would usually last someone at least a week) -but even taking that into account I’ll take my chances with vaping. I tried all the other methods of giving up smoking and none of them worked for me so this is the closest.
As I side note, I am against disposable vapes and think the law should crack down on sales to underage people. A solution would be to only sell in established vape shops and require ID with every sale. I’m not naturally hard-line about this sort of thing but the school vaping thing is well out of control and is need of sorting out
I’d been smoking cigarettes for 11 years and just switched to vaping 2 months ago. My lungs feel much, much better. I can walk up multiple flights of stairs/longer distances without getting winded. My mouth also no longer has that eternal burnt paper taste, especially when I wake up in the mornings.
So for the purposes of what I switched to vaping for - to ease back on destroying my lungs - vaping/e-cigs work. I used to smoke 2 packs in about a week and a half. I’d say the amount I vape now is the equivalent of 1 pack every month (I don’t constantly hit it throughout the day).
I have no doubt that inhaling vapor with that density is still not good, but it’s better than what I was doing previously.
As for helping to quit the habit entirely, I think that’s the opposite of their goal. All these fruity flavors they keep coming out with seem like they’re designed to be popped like candy.
I quit smoking/vaping last year after 22 years of that. Vaping helped my lungs, to a certain extent, because I started having so many other issues from vaping, I switched back to cigarettes before quitting for good. I quit using Defumoxan, which is a brand name for generic pills with Cytisine as active substance. I’ve been recommending it to anyone wanting to take back their life from nicotine addiction. At least where I live, you can get it without prescription.
Just curious since I just got into it… what other issues did you have? If you’re comfy with saying, of course.
I started having pangs in my lungs around the heart area (like a stinging pain) which went away when I didn’t vape for a day. Also, while not having a wheezing breath, I did feel strain on my lungs. It got bad enough that I went back to cigarettes as those only made me cough (well, amongst other side effects of course).
I am currently using e-cigarettes as a former smoker
I would say:
- if you aren’t smoking already, there isn’t really a good reason to start
- if you are smoking and sort of kind of want to continue, e-cigarettes are most likely healthier than analog
- if you are smoking analog and want to quit, there are better ways to quit for sure - I don’t feel like committing to quitting just yet, however when I do feel committed, I will go with the tips outlined towards the end of the Huberman Lab - Nicotine’s Effects on the Brain & Body & How to Quit Smoking or Vaping podcast
From now on I’m going to refer to cigarettes as analogue vapes
- if you aren’t smoking already, there isn’t really a good reason to start
This is why I was glad to see all the legislation beginning to come out banning disposables. I swear 95% of disposable users I see are kids who’ve never smoked, and disposables are just the alcopops of the smoking world - cheap, sweet, and used as a gateway in rather than out.
We already have laws banning sale of vapes to children. Why can’t I, an adult, have a sweet flavored vape? I can legally buy weed gummies and flavored alcohol. Flavor bans are ridiculous.
I think they should be stricter on people who give or sell them to minors. Maybe they should start charging parents every time teens are caught vaping, until the source is found. Add more pressure, make it more difficult to ignore than it is to deal with an angry teenager.
