I wrote this a long time ago.
Now brought up to date a little.
The electronic cigarette is taking a very firm foothold and it’s not surprising.
When we decided to quit our filthy habit we all had good and variable reasons to do so. No doubt a long way up the list were ones like, “it’s killing me” or the slavery or the smell or the nagging.. just choose your own.
First things first I’m anti E-Cigs ok? Therefore I’m not suggesting we should turn towards them. Why? Well, for the simple reason that despite what a lot of people will say we were never really nicotine addicts at all and the E-Cig will, I’m sure, eventually demonstrate that. Also E-Cigs maintain a market for the tobacco industry of course.
Do you want to stop smoking? Want to smell better? Want to have your cake and eat it? Try vaping then. It might need a new word in the dictionary, the act of taking atomized nicotine vapour into the lungs but it is here and it’s real and you can do it in pubs and on the plane.
Ok, there are issues regarding legality, taxation, clinical drug trials and medicinal nicotine but these are just hurdles not walls. The NRT manufacturers must be shitting their pants at the moment for two scary reasons.
Number 1, as we’re lead to believe, if smokers smoke because they’re addicted to nicotine and every puff just feeds the constant but gradual reduction of it in the body then the E-Cig conquers the world. It’s smoking without the smoke. The nicotine craving is fed instantaneously, straight to the brain in a puff, it’s not particularly expensive because it is the tobacco that’s taxed not the nicotine and it’s “therapeutic” nicotine (ho ho) so it gives us our feed but it’s not actually bad for us. Every argument for smoking and continuing to smoke is covered by the e-cig and what possible reason can there be for continuing to smoke traditional cigarettes?
Transfer your addiction to e-cigs and you never need to spark up again or apply a patch or chew some gum or take any nasty drugs.
You can now smoke for the rest of your life but without ingesting compounds and chemicals of combustion. Ok, you're still taking nicotine but everyone's got to have a vice or two.
The smokers win, the e-cig manufacturers win but the government and the NRT guys lose big-time.
Number 2, we’re not addicted to nicotine at all. Ok, we get a little hit but it’s nothing to write home about and it staves off that low feeling associated with withdrawal. If we were really addicts we’d smoke the second we awoke and wouldn’t be able to function without our hit. We’d chew nicotine gum or summat if we couldn’t have a fag but we don’t. We tend to get up, mooch around, smoke our first fag then get on with the day. Most daily fags are triggered by breaks, getting in cars, getting off buses, hunger, finishing something, about to start something, commercial breaks etc etc and then given a social evening we smoked like a chimney. In those days when we were allowed to smoke in pubs our consumption rate had absolutely nothing to do with falling nicotine levels in our bodies”!
The startling fact that so many of us just wake up one day and say, “sod it, I’m giving up” and then do exactly that is a very poor argument for any sort of addiction. How can a change of heart ever cure an addiction? Unless? Wait, no, you can’t possibly mean?
So, if it’s nothing to do with nicotine and the e-cig and its nicotine and the act of drawing vapour into the lungs isn’t feeding your habit what is..?
Is it just a habit? If so it’s easy, gradually reduce the nicotine content of the smoking liquid and before you know it you’re vaping flavoured liquid (already available), no nicotine but still feeding the compulsive habit but pretty much in a un-harmful way.
Then you realise that your smoking habit didn’t actually have anything to do with nicotine but who cares, the smokers win, the e-cig manufacturers win but the government and the NRT guys lose big-time.
Unfortunately you still have the compulsive habit though...
However, I am very pro-choice and there appears to be a growing list of successful quits appearing from the continued growth of the ECig.
If we try for a minute to ignore the spammy and affiliate nature of ECig marketing is there a bone-fide quit aid hiding underneath? ECig websites, unlike the spammers, are very quick to point out that ECigs are most definitely NOT an aid to quitting, presumably because to claim so would require clinical trials that the manufacturers have no intention yet of taking part in.
Just because they can’t be sold as a quit aid doesn’t make them not a quit aid. After all, NRT is sold as a quit aid yet bizarrely doesn’t help people quit. Go figure!
I can’t imagine the leap from fags to ECigs is that great and I can picture a straightforward switch.
If the cartridge strength is reduced to zero and if people are then just vaping nicotine-free then does it just become a simple act of stopping vaping one day or is the vaping habit maintained with just as much dependence as tobacco?
What happens the day the battery dies or it breaks or it's lost? Does the vaper buy 10 fags instead or are fags history for them?
I must say, at the moment I’m totally perched on the fence with insufficient data to turn to!