Now that I got that unintended long introduction out of the way about how I ended up vaping in the first place, I want to explain why it’s fucking awesome for someone totally addicted to nicotine. There are just so many reasons that make it more appealing than cigarettes. In fact the only downside I see to vaping is the slight and minor inconvenience of charging the damn things. I suppose you don’t have to charge a cigarette to smoke it?
Instagram Pics
Vaping and it’s ability to “chuck fat clouds” is wonderful for your Instagram pics. I’m serious. You can blow these beautiful clouds in strange lighting conditions, filter the hell out of them, and you’re left with a masterpiece of artistic photography.
The Smell and Taste
Cigarettes are fucking disgusting. Even though I smoked for about five years, I never did not find them disgusting. The smoke smells terrible. The smell lingers on anything it touches. My parents smoke and all I have to do is walk into their homes for a few minutes and I’ll leave reeking of cigarette smoke. They don’t even have to be smoking; it’s that prevalent in the atmosphere of their homes!
As for vaping? It smells great. This is slightly complicated though given the nearly endless varieties of vape juice flavoring. I’m sure some smell awful (and I’ve always found the fact that they have tobacco-flavored vape juice to be really strange) but with vapes you have options. You can find some fruity pineapple grapefruit flavored juice, or some coffee-flavored juices, whatever the hell you want you can find.
The Convenience
Smoking during the past twenty years has totally been shit on by society in general. Here in Illinois a law was passed banning smoking in workplaces; you couldn’t even smoke at a restaurant or a bar after that. This was great though; eating food in a smoke-filled restaurant was fucking awful. Even if there were separate sections for smoking, the smoke always diffused throughout the entire place. And after that? Laws and statutes banning smoking in hospital parking lots, in cars with children, and other various inconvenient minor things.
This makes having a cigarette a pain in your ass. If you’re at work you need to go outdoors, usually to a designated smoking area, sometimes off property, that might be far away from your work area. It might be cold out, or rainy, or whatever.
Not that vaping is clear-cut to do everywhere legally. It does fall into the category of ‘nicotine usage’ but it isn’t really smoking either. In fact I don’t know what the Illinois law even says in clear legal language. [SEE NOTE BELOW!] But my workplace lumps vaping in with smoking; you need to go to a smoking area to vape. No vaping while working! But the fun fact about vaping is that it’s very easy to hide. Smaller vapes can fit in the palm of your hand and don’t emit much vapor; I find myself totally disregarding the rules at work and vape wherever and whenever the hell I want. There is no stinky smell of burning plant material to out you and no open flame to create a legitimate safety hazard around fuel or other flammable materials. There is no constant plume of smoke giving your location away. Basically, even if vaping is lumped in with smoking, it’s stupidly easy to hide. You can easily vape in stores, restaurants, work places, and anywhere else without anyone noticing or really giving a damn. Just don’t be totally obnoxious about it that is.
[NOTE: I looked up the language of the “Smoke Free Illinois Act” and in the “definition” section provides this:
“Smoke” or “smoking” means the carrying, smoking, burning, inhaling, or exhaling of any kind of lighted pipe, cigar, cigarette, hookah, weed, herbs, or any other lighted smoking equipment. “Smoke” or “smoking” does not include smoking that is associated with a native recognized religious ceremony, ritual, or activity by American Indians that is in accordance with the federal American Indian Religious Freedom Act, 42 U.S.C. 1996 and 1996a.
Note that this doesn’t say anything about vaporizers. In short, at least in Illinois (your state laws can and will be different) vaping is perfectly legal, at least under the “Smoke Free Illinois Act”. I also don’t know if there are other laws in effect. This was the Big One though; the one to ban smoking nearly everywhere in public.]
Even More Convenience
Vaping supplies last a lot longer than a pack of cigarettes do as well. A single pod and bottle of juice lasts me about two to three weeks meaning I don’t need to continually restock my nicotine supplies. Consider the pack a day smoker; sure you can buy a carton of 20 packs and this might last you 20 days, but that’s a huge expense. A pack a day smoker who doesn’t stock up must stop at a shitty gas station whenever they run out and buy another pack, usually every day. This is a total pain in the ass that vaping skips right over. For the price of two or three cartons of cigarettes you can stock up on enough vape juice to last you nearly two months. Which I suppose is a good segue into the next topic…
It’s Cheap as Fuck
Once again consider the pack a day smoker: $8 per day, $56 per week, $240 per month, and $2,920 per year. This isn’t a trivial amount of money! Smoking is ridiculously expensive, made this way by the hefty taxes on the products and by the price gouging of cigarette companies who can price gouge because you’re addicted to their product and will pay nearly anything to get the nicotine fix. This was actually the main reason I quit smoking in the first place: I’m too cheap to smoke. It’s too much money wasted. And it’s the main reason I would never get addicted to cigarettes ever again.
And now consider vaping. A bottle of juice might cost, and let’s be generous here, $30. This lasts me two weeks but your mileage may vary. Still, this breaks down to only $15 a week — about the price of two packs of cigs. This equates out to about $800 per year, a third of the cost of smoking. Once again, if you’re going to be addicted to nicotine, you’d save a ton of cash by vaping instead of smoking.
I’ve recently started to make my own vape juice. I bought nicotine, the ‘filler solution’ and some flavoring. In total this cost me $35 and some rough math tells me all of the supplies should allow me to make around 40 weeks of vape juice. For $35! This is basically nothing! You can never get the expenses down to zero unless you can somehow source your own nicotine, but still these are crazily low numbers to support a raging nicotine addiction on.
There is also the fact that you need to periodically purchase pods, and while the costs of these will add up, you’d still be nowhere near the $3,000 expense of smoking. Just a rough guess, but I’d say a yearly supply of vape pods might total around $100, or you can be a heathen and use the same pods over and over until they cease to work.
Health Reasons?
So these are bit less clear cut and I can’t find any clear medical shit to say vaping is healthier. This page right here from the John Hopkins Medical Center seems to sum up the health effects nicely. In fact most medical places seem to insist that vaping is “bad for you” but can’t give any details as to why it is; section two of the article even says this gem: “People need to understand that e-cigarettes are potentially dangerous to your health.” My emphasis on potentially dangerous — we don’t know how dangerous these things are. Really I don’t think it has been studied long enough to even have good data. To discover cigarettes caused cancer required decades of good data and vaping hasn’t been around long enough to provide this yet.
That being said vaping has had a bad rap the past year with people actually dying from it. (Part one of the link above beat this into the ground. Which is a bit dramatic and missing the point entirely.) The media ran with this hype and scared a ton of people but the real problem it seems was from people using shitty, illegally-purchased, black market pods for smoking THC. Something about a buildup of vitamin E acetate in the lungs or something. The best way to avoid dying from vaping is to not use shitty, street-bought pods or juice. I mean that makes perfect sense so it shouldn’t really be news, but here we are. And the public still doesn’t seem to know much about this fact. In short: as with any other chemical/substance, don’t vape with shit you buy off the street!
I assume vaping will be healthier than smoking because it seems logical that it should. Obviously logic doesn’t make it true, but I think it points in the correct direction. Smoking is terrible for your health and vaping would have to somehow beat it to be worse long-term. I just don’t see this happening. While it might not be good for you, it shouldn’t be nearly as dangerous as smoking.
Smoking involves inhaling burning plant material. It’s never a good idea health-wise to inhale anything that is burning. I vaguely recall hearing that cooking on a charcoal grill too freqnetly is bad as the smoke from that causes cancer. In house fires smoke is a big killer, because humans aren’t meant to inhale fucking smoke. Smoking is literally this with the burning process changing and altering the already shitty chemicals in tobacco to even more dangerous chemicals.
One thing that does seem to be bad about smoking/vaping is the nicotine. Duh. Nicotine raises your blood pressure and heart rate so if you’re inhaling it nonstop (like smokers/vapers do) you’ll probably have a consistently elevated blood pressure/heart rate which isn’t good for your cardiovascular system. Once again, if you’re going to full-send a nicotine addiction at least skip the burning carcinogenic materials and keep yourself as clean as possible. Vape juice is about as simple as it can be — nicotine, propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, flavoring — and would appear to be miles better than cigarette smoke. Sure, it’s not as healthy as not inhaling anything into your lungs at all, but no one is perfect.
Maybe I should’ve tried to get some affiliate marketing for this post? Rake in some of that sweet Big Vape money. Oh well.
Everything Sucks 
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