Agreeing With Rishi Over Vaping

Say it quietly but i have found myself agreeing with the Conservatives three times over the last few days, and all around smoking and vaping.
Firstly the plan to make it an offence for anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 to be sold tobacco products which effectively raises the smoking age by a year each year until it applies to the whole population and has the potential to phase out smoking in young people almost completely as early as 2040.
Then the plan to ban disposable vapes and again, i am fully behind it as used one time plastic vapes are dumped everywhere and we really need to cut down on the amount of plastic waste so again, pat on the back for Rishi and then much to my surprise, another one for planning to restrict the flavours of vapes which could appeal to younger vapers which i have posted on before.
The use of e-cigarettes has become more and more popular and there is a valid arguments that i find hard to argue against.
The first is that the e-cigarette companies are aiming their wares at the under 18 market with enticing flavours such as ice cream, bubble gum and candy floss which could attract non-smokers and worryingly youngsters, to try vaping and thereby introducing them to the nicotine addiction.
A YouGov study put the number of e-cigarette users in the UK at 3 million and most, like me, use flavoured nicotine (Juicy Peach, Spearmint, Cola and Coconut are my choice) but we have to find a midway between keeping any of those 3 million returning to cigarettes by removing the flavours that enticed them to vaping while not making it attractive to youngsters, mainly by not selling flavours that sound like they come from a sweet shop.
Obviously, three good decisions doesn't make up for the god-awful mess they have made, and continue to make, regarding everything else but i'm with you on this one Rishi but of course i will just deny it anyone asks me.

Finally A Good Idea On Smoking

I was a smoker from age 13 to 40 before i switched to vaping and as i have got older the amount of people i know who continued to smoke and have gone on to get lung cancer means that it is not a coincidence so i have some sympathy with the Governments plans to raise the legal age for buying cigarettes in England by one year every year in a crackdown on smoking until no-one can buy a tobacco product
Currently the legal age to buy tobacco is 18 in the UK so rather than banning them, increasing it annually will mean that anyone who currently smokes will be able continue to do so but the next generation will struggle to get their hands on them.
As a smoker i tried to quit many times and it is very, very hard because of the nicotine addiction so making it increasingly hard to start in the first place makes sense as does the plan to restrict vaping by making it less attractive and again, i find it hard to argue against their arguments
The first is that the e-cigarette companies are aiming their wares at the under 18 market with flavours such as ice cream, bubble gum and candy floss.
The second is that the 'safe' aspect of vaping will tempt people to try smoking who would not have necessarily have and i have already met people who have tried vaping, liked it and then tried a cigarette.
Disposable vapes are already being phased out by the end of the year so there are many things i dislike about the Conservatives but this idea is one i find myself nodding along to because smoking kills and there are many people i know who smoke who i would like to have around for a few more years yet.

Vaping Differences In Europe And US

Interesting developments i the World of Vaping with America taking a very different view to that of the Europeans.
While America announced a nationwide ban on flavoured vaping products which has led to its largest manufacturer, Juul Laboratories, laying off 650 workers, European public health bodies have continued with it's existing view that despite 39 deaths in the USA from vaping, it is a safer alternative to smoking tobacco.
The US ruling came after the government's health protection agency suggested there the deaths were due to lung injury among people who have vaped although almost all of the vapers used an oil called Vitamin E acetate which contains THC.
Public Health England have reissued guidance that states using e-cigarettes is at least 95% safer than smoking traditional tobacco products and point to the tighter regulation of vaping equipment in Europe than in the US including the ban on the use of THC and Vitamin E acetate oil in e-cigarettes which it argues, means that e-cigarettes in Europe are probably safer than their American counterparts.
What the ban does mean is that fewer Americans will switch from tobacco which will lead to more smoking and many thousands more cigarette related deaths which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently stands at 480,000 per year and 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure.
Ironic then that the ban which is aimed to protect after 39 deaths, could lead to a massive increase in deaths overall and that 39 deaths led quickly to a ban of flavoured nicotine but tens of thousands of gun deaths each year for decades... and nothing.

Vaping And Flavoured Nicotine Liquid

I began vaping in 2012 and i have long advocated them to smokers already addicted to nicotine but i have mentioned here many times how uneasy i am about how attractive they are to non-smokers and the under-aged.
Donald Trump, a massive idiot 99.99% of the time, may not know it but banning all flavoured nicotine liquid could turn out to be the best idea he has come up with yet, even if he has done it for all the wrong reasons.
The use of e-cigarettes has become more and more popular and there are two valid arguments that i find hard to argue against.
The first is that the e-cigarette companies are aiming their wares at the under 18 market with flavours such as ice cream, bubble gum and candy floss.
The second is that the 'safe' aspect of vaping will tempt people to try smoking who would not have necessarily have and i have already met people who have tried vaping, liked it and then tried a cigarette.
The quandary is that the UK's medicines regulatory body, Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, have said that e-cigarettes could help save 57,000 British lives over the next decade and they are undoubtedly a great way to give up the much more dangerous tobacco cigarettes but the reverse is also true that e-cigarettes, and the enticing flavours, attract non-smokers, and worryingly youngsters, to try vaping and thereby introducing them to the same dangerous addiction.
The best course of action is to not smoke at all and e-cigarettes are great for smokers who are addicted to nicotine already but there should be concern that by making vaping attractive with more and more enchanting flavours available, it undoes the main point of e-cigarettes which is to avoid addiction.
A YouGov study put the number of e-cigarette users in the UK at 3 million and most, like me, use flavoured nicotine (Juicy Peach, Spearmint, Cola and Coconut are my choice) but we have to find a midway between keeping any of those 3 million returning to cigarettes by removing the flavours that enticed them to vaping while not making it attractive to youngsters, mainly by not selling flavours that sound like they come from a sweet shop.

Safe To Carry On Vaping

After five deaths in the US from a severe respiratory illness which has been linked to vaping, British vapers are obviously concerned that the habit is not as safe as they thought.
As well as the fatalities, over 450 possible cases of vapers being hospitalised are being investigated US officials have said but Health Experts have come out to assure British vapers that they are are safe and blame the outbreak of respiratory disease in the US on lax controls and illegal fluid.
Public Health England have said that reports suggested that most cases in the US had been linked to people using illicit vaping fluid, bought on the streets or homemade, some containing cannabis products, like THC, or synthetic cannabinoids, like spice and that: 'Unlike the US, all e-cigarette products in the UK are tightly regulated for quality and safety by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency'.
The health charity Action on Smoking and Health, said that to date no serious side-effects had been reported in the UK and Prof Linda Bauld, a public health expert at Edinburgh University said that due to regulations: 'It seems highly unlikely that widely available nicotine-containing vaping products are causing these cases' and that 'All the evidence to date suggests that illicit marijuana vaping products (THC oils) are the cause'.
The advice from the experts would be then that as long as you stick to the proper e-liquids and don't start mixing in extra foolish ingredients, then you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

Vaping Ban On Health Grounds

Something that nobody tells you when you switch from cigarettes to e-cigarettes is that because you are inhaling nicotine, you actually get more from the e-cigarette than you do from smoking a cigarette because you don't know when you have had a cigarettes worth and you just keep inhaling and the result of the extra nicotine is some very funky dreams.
Usually quite fun, they can be very vivid, lucid and weird dreams especially if you have a good blast before you go to bed but the flip side is the nightmares are also much more terrifying as i found out which can be very, very scary.
Apart from the weird dreams, generally e-cigarettes are considered harmless and the NHS are even considering offering them for free which makes he ban by San Francisco on health grounds a bit of a strange one.
Inhaling nicotine is not dangerous in itself especially when compared to the many poisonous chemicals contained in tobacco smoke and nicotine does not cause cancer unlike tobacco in normal cigarettes and doctors, public health experts, cancer charities and governments in the UK all agree that, based on the current evidence, e-cigarettes carry a fraction of the risk of cigarettes but it is the 'based on current evidence' where San Francisco have got the jitters.
The ban is to stay in place until their health effects are clearer which echoes the ban in Australia which is reviewing all the available evidence of the health impacts of vaping and e-cigarette liquids.
As vaping is still very new and the effects are unknown then it is probably correct that a full review is conducted but i have always had two other fears over e-cigarettes which are hard to argue against.
The first is that the e-cigarette companies are aiming their wares at the under 18 market. Hard to argue when you see flavours such as ice cream, bubble gum and candy floss while the second is that the 'safe' aspect of vaping is tempting people to try smoking who would not have necessarily have and i've met people who have tried vaping, liked it and then tried a cigarette.
The best course of action is to not smoke at all and e-cigarettes are great for smokers who are addicted to nicotine already but there should be the concern that they do prove attractive to non-smokers and the under-age and i have seen myself them act as a gate-way to real cigarettes.
Inconvenient for vapers but until the evidence points conclusively one way or the other, i can't blame San Francisco for the ban.

Vaping Not Safe But Safer

When i was a smoker i would only smoke low tar cigarettes as in my mind they were less harmful than normal cigarettes although i actually knew they were just as bad.
When i switched to vaping around five years ago i knew that although a lot less harmful than traditional cigarettes, i was still inhaling nicotine so they were not 'safe' despite the advertisements telling everyone that they were.  
No surprise then that a study by New York University School of Medicine has found that the nicotine in e-cigarettes may damage human DNA and lead to cancer.
'It's certainly concerning, and certainly gives pause if one were to say e-cigarettes were safe and could be used by all people without consequences' said Dr Roy Herbst, chair of the American Association for Cancer Research's Tobacco and Cancer sub-committee.
The researchers say that more work is needed, however, because research in animals can produce very different results in humans but that hasn't stopped the Royal College of Physicians stating that public health policy should encourage tobacco users to switch to a substitute nicotine product, such as vaping.
The reason the Royal College of Physicians are keen to see smokers switch to e-cigarettes is because their figures show that vaping is over 95% less harmful than smoking tobacco.
The only way to be safe is to not smoke or vape at all and the New York University School report may be alarming but if you vape your chances of developing cancer from it is at least 95% less than when you were puffing away on tobacco cigarettes.
It isn't perfect and doing anything that increases your chances of getting cancer by 5% is a worry but the study is set against someone who doesn't smoke and starts at a baseline of nil so it is worth remembering that by swapping to e-cigarettes you improve your chances of not getting cancer by 95% and that's immense.

Why Less Young People Are Smoking

With the Government budget tomorrow expected to pile as much as 50p onto a packet of cigarettes, figures released today from the Office for National Statistics show that less young people are lighting up with 20% of 18-24 year olds smoking compared to 25% five years ago.
Even among the age group most likely to smoke, 24- to 35-year-olds, about 40% smoke compared to 65% previously.
Of course its a good thing but i don't buy the Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Charity who say the results are due to a combination of effective legislation, policy and support for quitting.
In my dealings with teenagers, the most effective combination in the decline in smoking has been the exorbitant price of cigarettes and the rise of electronic cigarettes.
Where before the clouds of smoke above the smoking areas would cigarette smoke, now it is plumes of sweet smelling vapour and i have not seen a decline in the numbers huddled under the smoking area in recent years, just a change in what they are puffing on.
In 2015, three out of every 100 16- to 24-year-olds used electronic cigarettes, up from one in every 100 in 2014and in total 2.3 million people in the UK are using them.
The concern quite rightly is that Vaping could prove a gateway to smoking for teenagers and the fruit flavours of some e-cigarette liquid could make them more appealing to children.
The NHS recently agreed that while Vaping is certainly the more healthy option when compared to smoking, it still comes with it's own dangers so the best option is not to start but i say if you are going to start, go with the e-cigarettes because not only are they not as bad as cigarettes, they taste better and £10 a day for a packet of cigarettes compared to the £10 a month you spend on the nicotine liquid for the e-cigarettes will mean less strain on your finances.

Reduced Brains In Dope Smokers

You can always tell someone who has been smoking weed for any length of time because they are just that little bit slower in the way they respond.
Only a fraction of a second in most cases but enough of a delay to alert us that we are dealing with someone who has lost a few braincells through a certain kind of herbal cigarettes.
New research has now borne it out that using marijuana may be related to certain changes in the brain related to a smaller volume of grey matter.
'We found that there is not only is a change in structure, but there also tends to be a change reflected in the connectivity' said study author Francesca Filbey, an associate professor in the School of Behavioural and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas who explained that the connectivity could be compensation for the loss of grey matter
'All we can say is that we do see these differences in people who use marijuana, Filbey said explaining that 'We also saw that the younger you are when you start using marijuana regularly, the greater the changes in the brain'.
Of course it is not 100% reliable to surmise that the person you are talking to is a bit slower on the uptake due to marijuana smoking which has reduced their brain volume, they just may be a Sun reader or a UKIP voter who have naturally reduced brains anyway.

Renaming E-Cigarettes

On first reading that the Royal Society for Public Health were having another pop at e-cigarettes i was all ready to launch into yet another 'why are they trying to bash something that is so much less dangerous to public health than smoking' but by the end of the piece i found myself in agreement with it.
THE RSPC warn that calling them 'e-cigarettes' keeps them linked to real cigarettes and they worry that people, children especially, will try e-cigarettes and progress onto trying 'real' cigarettes, something i have seen myself so it does happen.
They want them renamed as 'nicotine sticks' which isn't really very catchy, vapourisers would be my call, sounds a bit Doctor Who and they call themselves vapers and the action of puffing on it vaping anyway.
There second point i also agree with, by making vaping seem cool, they therefore attract non-smokers into vaping and then we are back into the first point of people upgrading to real cigarettes when the whole point of e-cigarettes is as an alternative to smoking cigarettes.
So i am with the RSPC's call to take the cigarette part out of the name and crack down on advertising that could attract non-smokers into trying the many vapourisers out there and i would even go a step further.
Where i buy my nicotine from, they provide the usual tobacco flavours alongside others such as bubble gum, ice cream and cola flavours which is where i would be looking if i was not a proper grown up person.
The best thing is to not try smoking in the first place, it is expensive, dangerous to your health and you will spend the rest of your life trying to stop again and worrying that every time you get a sore throat that it's cancer.
That said, i was told the same thing and it never stopped me and if i was 14 again i would still be taking that first step although probably with an e-cigarette first.

Smoking Coffee

Some people start their day with a cup of coffee and a cigarette but i have seen a video of students finding a way to combine the two into one time-saving act by smoking coffee.
The videos showing teenagers rolling coffee beans or grounds into cigarette papers and then lighting up and smoking it.
Obviously cheaper than tobacco but when i was at college back i the 80's we were breaking open tea bags to mix with our dwindling supplies of tobacco and smoking that. 
While smoking a mix of Golden Virginia and PG Tips isn't the best tasting thing, it never did us any harm but i can't vouch for lighting up a Rizla full of Maxwell House but if you suffer problems breathing, dizziness, rapid  heartbeat or vomiting then you should probably stop.



 

The Dangers Of E-Cigarettes

The use of e-cigarettes has become more and more popular recently and there are two valid arguments that i, an e-cigarette user, find hard to argue against.
The first is that the e-cigarette companies are aiming their wares at the under 18 market. Hard to argue when you see flavours such as ice cream, bubble gum and candy floss.
The second is that the 'safe' aspect of vaping will tempt people to try smoking who would not have necessarily have and i've already met people who have tried vaping, liked it and then tried a cigarette.
Tied into the second argument is another reason that doesn't seem to have been aired, it will make smoking cool again. 
As e-cigarettes are allowed to be advertised on television, the companies are benefiting from hitting a wide audience and it is this, coupled with celebrity endorsements, that concern me.
Advertising works and if you can get a celebrity to help shift your product then more the better and something we do see now is celebrities endorsing e-cigarettes and newspapers pictures of celebrities vaping.
A quick Google search bring up pictures of Jenny McCarthy, Kate Moss, Simon Cowell, Katy Perry, Jack Nicholson Lindsey Lohan, Leonardo de Caprio, Paris Hilton, Sean Penn, Britney Spears, Johnny Depp, Charlie Sheen, Robert Pattinson, Jimmy White, Tom Petty and even Alan Titchmarsh using e-cigarettes.
The UK's medicines regulatory body, Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, have said that e-cigarettes could help save 57,000 British lives over the next decade and they are undoubtedly a great way to give up the much more dangerous tobacco cigarettes but i do have one concern over that they may make smoking cool again.
E-cigs do help people to reduce or quit cigarettes, i haven't had a real cigarette for almost 15 months since i took up vaping, but as well as helping smokers cut out a dangerous addiction, it also works from the other end as well and introduces non-smokers to the same dangerous addiction due to their 'safe' label.
The best course of action is to not smoke at all and e-cigarettes are great for smokers who are addicted to nicotine already but there should be the concern that the cool image and images of celebrities vaping will prove attractive to non-smokers and may even act as a gate-way to real cigarettes.

UK Government Tobacco Links

 “I believe that secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics. It arouses people’s worst fears and suspicions about how our political system works.” Prime Minister David Cameron, MP, speaking in February 2010

Lynton Crosby is an adviser to the Government, he also owns a lobbying firm CT Group and the job of a lobbying firm is to try and influence decisions made by officials in the government. One of his customers is Phillip Morris the cigarette manufacturer.
Sounds dodgy immediately but it gets even more sleazy.
Lynton Crosby was hired by the Government as an adviser and this week the government revealed that it was overruling it's own Health Ministers to shelve plans to introduce plain packaging on cigarettes.
Last week it was announced that e-cigarettes are to be classed as medicines and the e-cigarette companies subject to tough new tests before they can sell their wares, a decision that benefits the tobacco companies who are seeing their profits hit by the adoption of e-cigarettes.
All very reminiscent of the Blair/Ecclestone affair when Bernie Ecclestone, then in charge of Formula 1 motor racing, 'donated' a million pound to to the Labour Party and months later, Tony Blair, then Prime Minister, changed Government policy to Mr Ecclestone's advantage: Formula 1 would be exempt from the general ban on cigarette advertising at sporting events.
Is there anybody out there in a position of authority who isn't screwing us over for a profit?

e-cigarettes As Medicine

Almost a year ago i switched to an e-cig or 'nicotine delivery system' as the leaflet which comes with my monthly order of nicotine liquid calls its. It isn't the same as smoking a real cigarette but close enough to have won over 1.3 million users in the UK alone and it has the added bonus of not exposing me or anyone in my immediate vicinity to cancer.
It is a fair assumption that the vast majority of 1.3 million Brits who now regularly use e-cigarettes are former smokers and as nicotine is almost entirely harmless (although highly addictive), you would have thought the medical industry would be delighted but not so the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) who are pushing for e-cigarettes to be classed as medicines and the e-cigarette companies subject to tough new tests before they can sell their wares.
Now i have some sympathy with the people who argue with me that e-cigarettes may not be the wonderful things us 'vapers' say they are.
They say we are just substituting one addiction for another which is true and that e-cigarettes can be used as a stepping stone to 'proper' smoking and that the fruity flavours may encourage children to 'vape' and then smoking.
I have yet to hear of anybody who has made the opposite journey and gone from non-smoker to vaper to smoker but it is plausible and i agree that the flavours such as tutti fruity, ice cream and toffee popcorn could entice children to try them out so i do have sympathy with that argument.
My problem is that by classifying e-cigarettes as a medicine, the plethora of small retailers who sale the nicotine and the vaping accessories will be forced to pay millions for the required testing and the licence to sale the nicotine liquid which will close many sites, leaving only those with the deepest pockets to continue which in turn will make it harder to buy the stuff and force many ex-smokers back to cigarettes. 
Seems rather a backward step to reduce the availability of something that has stopped so many people from smoking but therein lies the rub.
The 1.3m ex-smokers no longer buying 'proper' cigarettes leave a huge dent in the profits of not only the tobacco companies but if they are using e-cigarettes to quit, they are not paying out for Nicotine Replacement Therapy such as patches and gum.
In the UK in 2011, nicotine replacement therapies were worth £120m, tax on tobacco products swells the Government coffers by £9bn annually and tobacco companies profits are down (Imperial Tobacco announced that tobacco net revenues are down 5.9% in 2012) so while the publics health may be improving, these three would be the big losers by more people taking up e-cigarettes.
The government, tobacco industry and pharmaceutical companies will never admit to trying to reduce the proliferation of e-cigarettes because it needs the taxes it rakes in from you killing yourself.
The MHRA on the other hand can say that as e-cigarettes are used as a stopping smoking device, they should be classed as a 'nicotine replacement therapy' product and be subject to the stringent demands made on other NRT's.
The MHRA it should be noted is an official arm of the UK Government who have regular meetings with the tobacco industry and recently scrapped plans for plain packaging on cigarette packets after one company threatened to close its UK factory unless it relented on the plan, and the MHRA has strong ties to the pharmaceutical industry where it receives most of its funding and it is also the case that many of the MHRA’s senior staff have connections to the pharmaceutical giants which led to a House of Commons Committee report 'The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry' that concluded that: 'These close working relationships over decades have meant that industry views have been much more prominently represented than the interests of patients and consumers.'
So there you have it, the three who would most lose the most from a wide take-up of e-cigarettes are trying to thwart the wide-scale take up of e-cigarettes and if that means denying people addicted to a damaging substance the opportunity to transfer that addiction to a product most medical professionals rate as harmless then they will.
Profits once again trump everything.

e-cigarettes

I am not in anyway affiliated to any e-cigarette manufacturer or earn commission or are paid by the e-cigarette industry for using and advising their products, but i should be.
I have been using e-cigarettes for around 9 months now and if got paid by the person that i have driven to the e-cigarette business i could afford to start smoking again.
It is surprising the amount of people i see standing around puffing on a fake cigarette with a glowing red light at the tip now and as i was a guinea pig for e-cigarettes, many friends and colleagues waited to see how i got on with them before diving in themselves.
Now there there is a small collection of us who stand around the bike sheds blowing out nicotine tinged water vapour and more joining all the time and i pass on my experience which is don't go for the smaller pen type ones such as the 510, you won't get enough of a hit from that and you will be forever charging the battery and go for a big one such as the Ego or the Riva.
What seems to happen is that most people (me included) start on the small ones and then find out about the bigger ones later and end up buying one of those so save yourself paying out twice and go straight for the bigger one, the battery lasts 4 times longer, has a better throat hit and you get twice as much vapour as from a 510 style cigarette.
As Imperial Tobacco announced that tobacco net revenues are down 5.9%, it seems that smokers switching to e-cigarettes are actually affecting their profits.
The whole reason for this post is to give some advice to anyone, and there seems to be lots of them about, who is considering packing up smoking and trying e-cigarettes and my advice is to do it but be choosy.
The last time i posted about e-cigarettes i got comments from people linking to their own e-cigarette sites and they were all the 510 small type which are about the size of a real cigarette.
My own experience is that these are not very good and if i hadn't deleted them i could have listed them here as ones to avoid so save your money and go for these types straight away, this is the one i and my colleagues use and this is the bad boy you should be looking for. Good luck and if the e-cigarette retailers turn up leaving messages and links to their sites, ignore them, they are mostly pushing the types to avoid if you seriously want to stop.
Just to make it simple for British readers, here's the one i use but there are plenty of others available.

If anyone from Vapeescape stumbles across this post then some nicotine as commission for the hundreds of pounds of business i have put your way would be gratefully accepted and guarantee future recommendations. You're welcome.   

Nicotine Fuelled Nightmares

I don't mean to keep banging on about my giving up smoking, plenty of people have done it before and not gone on about it, but it is day 19 and i have been on the e-cigarette with the strongest nicotine fluid, 24mg, and so far so good but there has been one side-effect that i wasn't aware all nicotine users go through until today.
Apparently, because you are inhaling nicotine, you actually get more from the e-cigarette than you do from smoking a cigarette, mainly because you don't know when you have had a cigarettes worth and you just keep inhaling.
The side-effect is you do get some very vivid, lucid and weird dreams thanks to the extra nicotine in your body, especially if, like me, you have a good blast before you go to bed.
Over the past few weeks i have woken up more than once from a realistic dream and spent the first few waking moments wondering if something had really happened or if i had dreamt it. Friends who have used patches or e-cigarettes reported the same thing happened to them also. 
It was kind of fun but then the other night i had a nightmare about something slithering out of the bedroom wardrobe and it shook me so much that i could actually feel myself tensing for days afterwards whenever i had to open that wardrobe door.
Then last night another nightmare where something was trying to smother me in my sleep and my husband had to wake me up as i was shouting for him in my sleep. I woke up panting and fighting for my breath. So realistic that it was scary and i had to go into the kitchen for a sit down and a hot milk for a while afterwards.
I have never suffered from nightmares, especially not ones that stay with me for days afterwards and i am going to have to drop down the strength of nicotine i use but what a weird, wonderful and terrifying experience. Much more effective than cheese before you go to bed but an insomniac at the best of times, being apprehensive about going to sleep probably isn't a good thing. 

How To Use E-Cigarettes

Day 12 and still no cigarettes so for me the e-cigarette is working but oh it was close because without a few minor adjustments to how you use them, the e-cigarettes are a bit poor and i was ready to throw them away on the second day until an old hand at the vaping game told me the proper way to use e-cigarettes, and it isn't how the manufacturers tell you.  
When you first get your e-cigarette kit you get the three main components which are the battery, the atomiser which is the bit that does the burning and an empty cartridge which is just there to show you where the cartridges go.
Also contained are the full cartridges which slot onto the atomiser and contain the nicotine soaked fibres which the atomiser burns and releases the fumes which you inhale.
Each cartridge lasts the equivalent of 5 cigarettes apparently and then it is back online to buy more or you can buy nicotine liquid that you drip onto the fibres and off you go again.
That's how they are supposed to work but a new cartridge will get you 5 or 6 good draws and then you are back to filling up the cartridge again which is what i was doing until i was shown the 'oither' way.
Grab that empty cartridge and instead of dripping the nicotine fluid into the cartridge, drip 2-3 drops straight into the atomiser, put the empty cartridge back on and inhale.
You not only get a much better 'draw', but it lasts a lot longer than the cartridge and you don't need to pay for the ready filled cartridges.
Hopefully, if you are not getting the full affect of the e-cigarette and are wondering if you are doing something wrong and has typed in 'How to use e-cigarettes', which is exactly what i did and didn't stumble across any sites that advised 'direct dripping', they may come across this post and find a way to keep going on the 'giving up smoking using e-cigarettes' route that i am presently on and would probably have given up on if i had to rely on the cartridges. 

Quitting Smoking With E-Cigarettes

I began smoking aged 14 and as i'm 43 now, and if my crude finger counting is correct, that makes it 29 years that i have been sucking goodness knows what chemicals into my body.
Like almost everyone who starts smoking at a young age, i only began because i thought it looked cool and there was an element of danger about it as we posted a younger kid to act as a look-out as we stood behind the school art block. Getting caught would mean a caning from the headmaster and a letter home but i managed to avoid that fate but those few puffs around the back with the cool kids led onto a 20 a day habit that has stuck with me since.
I have tried giving up a few times, even managed it for 7 weeks once with a stopping smoking group where i got given a 'I've Quit' mug which came in handy in the morning for my coffee and cigarette when i started up again.
I have used patches, throat spray, lozenges, chewing gum and almost every type of quitting aid there is but deep down inside i never wanted to quit because i enjoyed the cigarette breaks at work. A chance to get away for 10 minutes every few hours, a reason to stand outside on your own and have a few minutes peace. So i knew i wouldn't quit but it made me feel good that i was trying, however half-arsed and fruitless i knew it was.
Things seemed to have changed with the e-cigarette though and i see more and more people stood around puffing on the things with the brightly coloured LED light and blowing out plumes of smoke, or vapour.
I made a few enquires but everybody had different ones and some that were dismissed as rubbish were raved about by other people and i admit the disposable 10 motives one i tried from TESCO was great for about 10 puffs and then i may as well have been puffing on a lolly stick as much use it was but i am reliably informed the cheap, shop bought ones are all the same and i needed to buy a proper kit so much reviewing of websites and forums later and i have ordered one.
There are much better reasons for stopping and if you ask anyone they will state they are doing it for their health, the expense or the smell it leaves behind on clothes and it is the craving that keeps them smoking.
For me it is the fag-breaks that keep me hooked so e-cigarettes could be the key for me to carry on slipping away outside for 10 minutes every few hours and blow smoke about.
How cool they look i don't know yet and looking cool is important because if it wasn't, most smokers wouldn't have started in the first place if they are being honest.

Blame Drinkers, Not Smokers

In an effort to reduce the amount of people smoking, the Government are offering free nicotine patches to smokers at a cost of £250M.
Obviously this is a good thing as smoking is not a healthy habit and i have to grudgingly give Dave C some credit for this initiative although i doubt i will be taking them up on their offer. I try to give up annually and have worn patches and found that they didn't work for me but i do know people who have given up whilst wearing them.
What i would like to do is dispel the often repeated misinformation that smokers drain costs on the NHS for treating smoking related illnesses because according to the Centre for Health Economics, the cost to the NHS for treating smokers is between £1.4bn and £1.7bn.
Granted that is expensive but tax from cigarettes raises £9bn annually for the Government so that argument is a non-starter because the NHS bill is safely covered 6 times over by smokers.
If you want to point fingers for self inflicted illness, Alcohol Concern state that alcohol misuse costs the NHS up to £3bn a year and is implicated in 33,000 deaths every year and one in six people attending accident and emergency units has alcohol-associated injuries.
The Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) claims that tax receipts from alcohol in 2008-09 raised £730m which means that it is drinkers and not smokers who should be accused of draining the NHS.
Maybe the Government should be aiming its schemes at drinkers, also not a healthy habit and much more costly in terms of treating and the resulting social consequences.

Cigarettes & Coffee & Chocolate

Every year my new year resolutions are to cut back on smoking, drinking coffee and eating chocolate or rather i should say my old new year resolutions because a new study by a US team for the Journal of Neuroinflammation have found that coffee could play an important part in preventing neurological disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer's.
That's a third of my guilt banished so as i pour myself another mug of Nescafe, let's see what we can do about the other two.
Eating dark chocolate could help control diabetes and blood pressure, Italian experts say. Wahey. Researchers found eating dark chocolate each day for 15 days lowered blood pressure.
Ok, this is going to be a toughie but any benefits from smoking doctor?
According to a report in the journal of Psychopharmacology, nicotine absorbed from cigarette smoke shortens reaction time and improves short term memory in a wide variety of cognitive tasks.
There we go, i am not just drinking coffee, eating chocolate and smoking from now on but actively improving my short term memory, reducing my blood pressure and taking preventive action against neurological disorders.
Ok, so i am also spotty, wheezy and twitch constantly but it is a cross i must bear for my new health regime.