Yeah, there are talks of pledges being made with something like 2030/2035 being the aim to ban smoking completely, it’s coming, there is less protection for tobacco companies and more markets opening up.

Still think the government should legalise marijuana to make up on the losses of tobacco tax 😁

People who I work with that vape, seem to do it much more often than they actually smoked. Although they say it’s better for you than smoking, I’m not sure how this is measured when tobacco companies don’t list their ingredients or the way the nicotine (and other chemicals that are in both/either) is delivered differs from each other.

I think if I was giving up smoking I’d rather do the patches, this way you’re not adding another habit forming activity to the way you intake your drug. 

Just to make a purely anecdotal observation, from a former smoker…

when the pub smoking ban came in you could stand up and say ‘I’m nipping for a fag’ and the place would virtually empty as everyone decided to join you. In my local, the beer garden/back yard thing (handily now with a large covered area) would be rammed and there would be two old dears actually sat inside, because everybody I knew smoked

I don’t know anyone who smokes any more. Everyone has packed in the fags years ago. Loads of my mates vape, the same as I do, but I can’t even remember the last time I actually saw anyone pull out a pack of 20 and light up.

No way would this be the case without the easy availability of vaping products

People who I work with that vape, seem to do it much more often than they actually smoked.

I don’t think its ‘more’ or ‘less’, its just different. I vape more frequently than I used to smoke, but each time I do, its for considerably less than if I’d been smoking a whole fag, so I reckon it about balances out in the grand scheme of things

Although I’ve never actually smoked more than the odd cigarette when younger (never addicted) but I probably smoked hundreds of fags second hand from my chain smoking parents, smoking was everywhere in the seventies and eighties. Vaping, although not great is at least keeping the drug to the taker and not spreading it around. 

Well done to the OP for quitting smoking, get yourself signed up for a cycle event next year so you have something to aim for with building up your fitness and weening off the vape. 

Another thumbs up OP.As said buy a half decent adjustable re-chargeable vape, and good quality juice from somewhere reputable, and not a vape that emits plumes of steam, what a waste and you look like a rest burke, but not as bad as someone who smokes tabs.

Also add in small easy to reach goals, things like:

Ride for one hour without stopping, build this up in 10 minute increments over the days and weeks.

Start a diary, easy to do on the phone, about your progression and how you’re feeling. This can really help whem you’re having a bad day and you can look back to how far you’ve come. 

Keep it up. 👍

 are now a truly staggering £15.86 for a pack of 20

I’m pretty sure the Marlboro I was smoking in 2002 (there abouts) when I gave up were about four quid*, certainly under a fiver. Breaking a £20.00 note everyday for fags must be a shocker

* I remember that in the Budget they went up by quite a lot, 50p a pack something like that. It was part of the incentive to stop, certainly

they say “relatively harmless” – because compared to the rest of the shit in cigarette smoke it is *relatively* harmless.

Exactly. I think some people might be underestimating just how harmful tar and carbon monoxide in cigarettes are to someone’s health.

. I think some people might be underestimating just how harmful tar and carbon monoxide in cigarettes are to someone’s health

What are you on about? Everyone with half a brain knows that those  2 ingredients are a key reason smoking is so harmful 

but .. this thread is about vaping. And those 2 aren’t an issue with legal vapes.

@binners

if you are getting though 10 bottles of liquid a month that’s around 3ml a day. Whilst that’s apparently fairly average, imo it takes quite a bit of vaping to bang through that amount in a day no?

What are you on about?

I was agreeing with poly’s comment.

Maybe chill and have a fag/vape?💡

Vaping didn’t work for me – found it made my chest worse than it already was – coughing, more mucus, etc. Other than the odd one in desperation, I haven’t smoked straights in 18 years, and when I quit those, I quit tobacco completley for 6 years. Then ridiculously, I started rolling. I can stay off them for a few days, but always crumble. Know i need to stop, but haven’t (this time) got to the point of wanting to stop yet. I’m approx. 50g per week at the moment.

I was only ever periodic smoker, but I always enjoyed tobacco in both rollies and pipes. I will still have a pipe from time to time with another pipe smoker. But vaping has been a huge boon to me.

I have ALWAYS been a compulsive eater – as in, if it exists, then I eat it. I have poor impulse control, and every time I would get distracted (which was constantly), I would visit the fridge.

With a vape, I can concentrate better for hours on end, and feel no compulsion to eat. This has been important as, after my cycling accident in 2018, I went from 78kgs to 94kgs, and felt like hell. Since I made a deal with Mrs SR to exchange the eating for vaping, I have dropped to 82kgs and am still losing.

I feel better in every way, and have even started to move more.

And as far as all my reading has led me to believe, nicotine as a drug is really no different to caffeine. Its biggest problem has always been its delivery method.

Why do you do that knowing that it kills slugs and snails and plants 😕  Correct, because it is mostly harmless.

Good, glad we got that silly little non point point out of the way.

it’s a pretty poor analogy – salt is essential to human (and all animals) life.   Alcohol is perhaps a better analogy.

disposable vapes seem to have become especially unpopular with judgemental **** – presumably because some stupid **** through them away in nature, as they do with NO2, used jonnys, beer bottles/cans, syringes etc.  Whilst a reusable one is probably better for the environment – perhaps the cost, repeated physical purchase process and visible waste are better incentives for those who genuinely want to cut down rather than infrequently buying liquid refills.

@binners

if you are getting though 10 bottles of liquid a month that’s around 3ml a day

@tpbiker – I said it lasts me over a month, but just looking at my orders, that’s actually every 6 weeks. It sure beats 20 B&H a day, that’s for sure.

I’ve reduced the nicotine content down to 0.3mg. I’m just bloody glad I’m a non-smoker. I’m well aware that vaping is largely an unknown quantity, but I know with just how I feel that it’s a damn site better than smoking. Everything’s relative

Well done OP. I’m in a similar boat, I drive a lot for work so I used to buy a pack of tabs so I had something to do to ease the boredom, this descended into having a sneaky one at every opportunity. I’d smoked on and off for 20+ years but never got into 20 a day territory. It wasn’t doing me any favours health wise either.

I decided to try a disposable vape instead just over 3 months ago and I haven’t even thought about spending £15 on a pack of tabs since. I need to get hold of a reusable one as I’m not too happy about the environmental impact of the disposables. Long term I’d like to eliminate the vape altogether but that’s a way off yet.

who is arguing smoking is good for you?

Read back.

it’s entirely the point when discussing smoking cessation.

It’s not. No-one died from quitting smoking. Plenty of folk died from not quitting smoking (again, see above) and plenty of folk died from quitting and/or not quitting other substances. Quitting alcohol is horrific if you’re dependant.

The way to quit smoking is to stop going into the shop going “20 fags please.” Everything else is habit and excuses.

All the experts acknowledge that the bad stuff in cigarettes is the thousands of chemicals produced at highly toxic levels. Not the nicotine itself.

So, yay?

I assume smoking rather than vaping or chewing nicotine gum.

You assume correctly. Vaping wasn’t overly commonplace when my dad started smoking aged 12.

My dad lost his mind like throwing a switch. He was at home one evening watching a quiz show on TV and answering all the questions. Then he started seeing things crawling up the walls, clawing fibres out of the chair arms and shat himself.

He was in hospital for two years, which is a story in itself, and then in a care home for another two. His extremities were necrotic and some were amputated.

All 100% down to smoking. Remind me again what smoking for 50 years costs? Ten quid a day… that’d pay for my house.

Vaping is certainly one of more, if not the most, effective ways to give up or cut down smoking, we are fortunate that to date our authorities haven’t fallen for the moral panic about vaping that has happened in some states and have appreciated the dangers of the precautionary principle.

My costs are at most £150 per annum.

The way to quit smoking is to stop going into the shop going “20 fags please.” Everything else is habit and excuses.

im not sure exactly what your point is, but that’s the sort of thing my ex-smoker in laws say, and then they extend it to heroin etc too.  They quit* so others can too.  Smoking is in part a habit and in part an  addiction; it may be easier to break one than the other.  It’s widely recognised that simply telling people to stop something whether it’s addiction or habit is not an effective way to achieve it.  Vapes typically don’t address the addiction (and *may* actually make it worse) but substitute the habit, for a similar but less harmful one.  Vapes could be a good way to get off your nicotine addiction (and join the throngs of judgemental pricks!) but that will take the will power – and perhaps a recognition of why you smoke, which might need some tough inner reflection.  

*after about 20 years and several attempts – at a time when they had good motivation to do it and “life was good”.