I’ve added a few new links to the site today that are related to tobacco use and the benefits of quitting.  I hope that you’ll take the time to view these links, and that you’ll remain tuned in here and on my main blog for updates on the trip as it unfolds.  There will be a lot of interesting places, people and photos as well as my on-going experiences with e-cig use instead of analog tobacco products.

Stay healthy!

After 2 full days I’m not even through 3 cartridges yet!  So I’m finding that the 43 I got in my starter kit will likely last me a full MONTH!  Of course I’ll be ordering more cartridges and likely a couple more short batteries as I find that the batteries are the greatest liability, but having a charger in my car with one on standby all the time means that I have a spare on hand and ready to use when I need it.  Just swap the batteries and carry on with my day.  I can see though where a heavier smoker that actually took the time for a full cigarette before may feel compelled to take the same sort of time-out for an e-cig break, and if that’s the type of vaper you are you WILL have issues with the E8.  The batteries are short lived, supplying around 5 cigarette equivalent for the short version and maybe 7 or 8 for the long version.

I can see that I need to try a few other flavours, brands and styles, and as time and money permit I will certainly do that (of course also depending on shipping into Canada) but for the time being, I’m very happy with my E8.  It just works the way I expect it to, and I’m always willing to work with limitations on any product rather than let them work me (if you know what I mean!).

In the days ahead, I’ll continue to post on the after-effects.  Any signs of withdrawal symptoms will be noted.  And of course what I’m really hoping to report is that I actually start to feel better and healthier over a time frame similar to those that I know from other replacement therapies.  It’s the smoke that’s suspect of causing all the damages from analogs, and that’s where I’m hoping that the e-cigs will let me continue to enjoy the good parts of smoking, while letting my system recover from the bad parts.

If you’re following…  stay tuned!  If you’re considering trying one out – I know now that the E8 is a decent smoke and works as I expected it to.  Just keep in mind that it IS a smaller unit and that this fact alone will introduce some limitations.  But with a fresh battery and a good cartridge, I’m getting plenty of vapour and good flavour to boot.

Cheers

njw

More thoughts tomorrow as I start a new day – and day 2 of being analog free!

So let’s talk about this for a few minutes… Specific to Health Canada’s recent warning:

First on the list – e-cigs don’t vaporize tobacco.  They create a vapour of liquid nicotine, propylene glycol and other flavour ingredients.  You can’t publish a warning to anyone that carries any meaning if you don’t have the facts right to start with.

Next – and I’ll run into some people that won’t like this one for sure – I KNOW the risks.  You’ve spent a fortune proving that smoking IS killing me.  Now along comes a product that offers me the choice to stop smoking tobacco products and switch to inhaling a mist of specific ingredients that, on their own, are PROVEN to be magnitudes safer than the products that I inhale from a cigarette, yet you tell me that it may carry some unknown risks.  OF COURSE IT DOES!  But I know for certain that MIGHT is far better than WILL when it comes to something causing me health problems, and eventually DEATH!

I actually laughed at the part in the Health Canada warning that advised that e-cigarettes ’may pose risks such as nicotine poisoning and addiction’.  OF COURSE THEY WILL!  And if someone I know that is a non-smoker picks up an e-cig, I’ll smack them!  Nicotine Addiction is one of the main reasons that I still smoke.  And all of the ‘approved’ methods to cure me of that have failed!  And as for nicotine poisoning, have you ever swallowed a piece of nicotine gum!?  Swallowing a 4 mg Nicorette gum during a flight a few years ago caused me to be ill for 3 of the 6 days that I was visiting with my family.  Not at all a pleasant experience, and I’m quite sure that would qualify as a low grade nicotine poisoning.  To get the same level of nicotine into my system from an e-cig, I’d have to tear open the cartridge and start drinking the juice.  Not something I’m ever likely to do by accident.

Here’s another fact for you regarding nicotine replacement products.  Look at the recommended dosage for a pack a day plus smoker starting their programs. 

• Nicorette Gum – up to 15 per day at 4mg per gum.  Total daily dose is 60mg.
• Nicorette Lozenge – 8 or more per day for a minimum dosage of 32mg.
• Nicorette Inhaler – up to 12 cartridges per day!   I don’t have the dosage information for this one.

Now…  compare those to an e-cig:

Even at full strength, an e-cig cartridge contains 16 mg of nicotine, and is rated to last as long as 12 to 15 normal tobacco cigarettes.  So…  if you smoke a pack a day (20 cigarettes) the total MAXIMUM dosage of nicotine is below 30mg per day.  Seems that less is a good thing, even if just a little less. 

Now I’m the first to admit that there are indeed a number of unknowns here.  And I recognize that the folks at Health Canada have to at least warn us of the risk, but what I end up seeing is a failing model of ‘concern for the public health’ where a product that is tested and PROVEN deadly is still permitted to be sold on the market to the millions of people that are already addicts.  Let’s look at the past efforts of this mandate:

• HC have forced laws requiring warnings on the packages – INEFFECTIVE!
• HC have spent huge money on advertising to increase knowledge – YUP…  WE KNOW SMOKING KILLS
• HC have tested and re-tested tobacco products for decades – BUT STILL WE CAN BUY THEM!
• HC have most recently forced stores to ‘hide’ tobacco products – WE STILL KNOW THEY ARE THERE!

I could go on…  and on…  sure, they’re getting the message out there, but is it REALLY doing any good?  Are my tax dollars doing something really useful or just helping to pay for the health care costs related to all of us that continue to die slowly while inhaling killer products that are KNOWN to be killer products?

So I would like to invite all of these government agencies to do something REALLY useful with all of our money.  Come up with a program and TEST E-CIGS.  Prove them safer than tobacco and perhaps even get us making them here in Canada.  Get the tobacco companies involved.  Create jobs – or at least minimize the impact of a change in tobacco sales on the workforce.  Sure… tax my e-cigs.  There – I said it!  Yes I would be willing to pay a 20 to 30% tax on my e-cig products if it were proven they were safer and they had a solid obligation to uphold certain health and safety standards that may not currently be enforced in China.  Of course this is also based on the fact that current e-cig products are 70% or more CHEAPER than tobacco cigarettes.  If they were made here, sure I’d pay more, but in the long run, I would hope that the end cost for a ‘pack’ of e-cigs would be lower by at LEAST 50% than tobacco products.

Then give me the CHOICE to have a safer, cleaner, endorsed product that I can still use to actually ENJOY my nicotine addition, without the costly, deadly, and smelly side effects.

I know I’m speaking to a small audience here, but hey…  I still need to express my opinion and hope that at least one other person reads and agrees with what I’m saying here.  Who knows…  maybe someone up at Health Canada may read this and start a new train of though on this topic.  Could happen!

Regardless of all of this, as long as I can find a supplier, I will order, and use, an e-cig product!  Of that I am certain – because even if there are risks to my health in doing so – I am 100% certain that it will be a smaller risk than I face today as a tobacco smoker.  And there ARE studies right here in Canada that are starting to say the same thing.

So Vape On my friends… and tell everyone to keep the pressure on Health Canada, WHO, US FDA and anyone else that tries to prevent us from making the choice to lower our risk factors.

Cheers!

njw

Assume that each ‘smoker’ in these numbers consumes 15 cigarettes per day.
Assume that each e-cig cartridge delivers on the specs and replaces 15 cigarettes per cartridge.

if 1 smoker is 15 butts per day; that is 5,475 butts per year per smoker.

if there are 47 million smokers in the US alone (2006 stats); they generate 257 BILLION butts per year. 

If one quarter of those smokers changed to e-cigs;

365 cartridges per year per smoker = 11.75 million cartridges disposed of, and since these are cold plastic the are easier and more readily disposed of in proper trash receptacles or included in normal garbage.

We would reduce the number of butts that are being discarded by 64.3 BILLION!

Try for just a moment to visualize a mountain of 64 Billion cigarette butts!  Imagine how much this would reduce chemical pollutants in ground soil, waterways and other common areas of disposal.  And imagine how much tar and other toxic materials are trapped in that pile!? 

Now…  consider this as a global issue.  There are estimated to be over 1.1 BILLION smokers in the world today.  That’s more than 16 Billion butts daily, and more than SIX TRILLION Butts per year!  The e-cig can and hopefully will lower the number of contaminated butts that we dispose of by a very large number.  And several of the the brands that I’ve read details on claim to use recycled materials for parts of their e-cigs. 

And one more consideration…  Fires.  Smokers that carelessly discard hot butts out the car windows cause a large number of fires annually (I’ve read reports that claim anywhere from 10% to 25% of forest fires are caused by smokers!).  And fires caused in homes account for several billion dollars worth of damage annually.  There’s more than just the lower risk associated with not burning tobacco here folks… there a LOT more damage that smoking causes that could be greatly reduced.

Just more food for thought on this, the last day of June!  Have a GREAT July!  Oh… and I’m hoping to see my order at Blu get flipped over to shipped in a few days.  So stay tuned!

Then, a little gust of wind blew ashes and few hot embers down the front of my shirt.  One ember even hit my hand on the steering wheel.  A moment of panic of course follows while you have to check to ensure that you haven’t got anything burning, and then back to the focus on the road.  Or, while it didn’t happen today, I’ve had a few scary moments with entire LIT cigarettes falling from my fingertips and dropping into my lap while zipping down a road filled with other perhaps equally distracted drivers!  It actually scared me to think how many times I’ve been lucky to not run into someone during one of those moments.

And of course, again today, the realization that I may be tossing away even more than I had realized in waste.  The actual number of drags I pull off a lit cigarette while driving seems to vary from 4 to 6.  I think that the other half of each king size smoke is going out the window.   And the stupid reflex of lighting up during a short trip, or only a short distance from your destination only to have to crush or discard half of a smoke.  As I consider the day today, the entire $9 pack that I consumed, and the situations around each of those, I am quite certain that I wasted no less than $4 worth of product.  That’s the equivalent of 2 full days of e-cigs!

So I’d like you to consider what you consume, and think carefully about how much you waste in any given day.  If that alone is not enough to make you want to save money on a product that is far less likely to kill you – directly or indirectly – then I’ll be surprised indeed.

More food for thought…

I saw the videos of President Obama signing the Tobacco Bill today.  I’m still looking for good information on the actual impact of this Bill, and I’m sure we’ll all be watching to see follow-up reactions in the e-cig world.  Here’s hoping that this won’t make it any more difficult to get these products.  I have to admit, that in the short time I’ve known about them, I’ve become quite a strong advocate, and have already told a fair number of others that will be watching my progress with great interest, and will hopefully begin to move away from Tobacco as well.

More in the days ahead!  I have to get some sleep now.  G’night!