Disposable vapes are indefensible. Many, or maybe most, of them contain rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but manufacturers prefer to sell new ones.
To make a point about how wasteful this practice is—and to also make a pretty rad project and video—Chris Doel took 130 disposable vape batteries (the bigger “3,500 puff” types with model 20400 cells) found littered at a music festival and converted them into a 48-volt, 1,500-watt e-bike battery, one that powered an e-bike with almost no pedaling more than 20 miles. You can see the whole build and watch Doel zoom along trails on his YouTube video.
Yeah, disposable vapes should be made illegal, not only are they lowering the bar for cakes access because they’re cheap and accessible to minors, not only because they are an e-waste, but because it wastes valuable lithium, also those are perfectly chargeable batteries, is a bit fucked up that it’s more profitable to use rechargeable lithium batteries than something disposable
Those little colored flavored vapes are IMHO one of the worst vapes. Once they’re done, there’s no replacing the flavor. I see them often at the rehab I work at. I’ve seen some with replaceable flavor cartridges, but those are also bad due to the excessive plastic waste.
I’m all for vapes as a means to quit, but they’re also excessively used as a means of maintaining the habit.
I’m not a vape user, but the model is the kind of thing that just makes me so angry.
In a world that makes sense:
- small, mostly metal vape chassis
- rechargeable, replaceable battery
- built-in glass reservoir with charging valve
- vape juice sold in medium to large recyclable cans with standard interface to the charging valve
In a world where Profit is God (the real world):
- disposable chassis
- disposable battery
- if it’s refillable at all, it’s via non-recyclable, mixed material, mostly plastic, proprietary cartridges and you can save 5% if you subscribe online for refills, 10% if you pay yearly, $5 credit if you refer a friend on social media using hashtag #smoovape
- probably gives you turbo cancer because the juice is made in a repurposed Freon plant that was inadequately converted and they just don’t answer the phone when the FDA or EPA call
I think part of it is something else - ease of use and ease of access.
The “world that makes sense” product exists already:
https://www.elementvape.com/box-mod-kitsWhile I was vaping I mixed my own liquids though, as the cost savings was immense and I could easily lower the nicotine mg/ml on my own until I quit it altogether.
Yeah tbh I’ve never really seen anyone successfully quit through vaping. Nicotine pouches or lozenges are much more effective imo.
I’m sure there are plenty of exceptions, but like you said, the vast majority of people vaping are just maintaining.
Assuming non-wasteful delivery methods, I’d still call that a win as vaping is generally less harmful to the health of the user.
Quitting is of course preferable, but I support harm reduction policies in general
I did. It took a while because I enjoyed it so much, but it worked better than anything else. It simulated the smoking experience, tasted great and was a fun little device to tinker with. Sure it made me look stupid but in return I got healthier lungs.
Of course I was wrapping my own coils and used a mech mod, the concept of a juul made it so stupidly easy to vape without understanding how it works and just programmed everyone to use cartridges.
And here we are.
When used correctly to wean and taper, vaping can be really helpful as a quit smoking aid.
In my experience many of the people who haven’t quit are self medicating for attention or depressive reasons. Of the folks I know who vape about half were diagnosed with ADHD later in life (30+) and quit after finding a stimulant medication that worked for them. The rest are unmedicated and self medicating with nicotine and coffee or energy drinks. Self medicating is overlooked in virtually every discussion about nicotine and I’d like to see it considered more often when the topic comes up.
I just started vaping more AND smoking because I could vape in my dorm during winter…
There’s peanut butter in my chocolate!
There’s CHOCOLATE in my peanut butter!!!
On the other hand, I think cigarette butts are also quite polluting the environment too. So I am not sure what’s worse.
