Sorry if I a bit off base… just want to get this off my chest.
</BEGIN RANT>
I keep seeing this type of statement over and over while researching and switching to PV’s. Vapors simply want to get tobacco smokers to move to vaping. I honestly know that this attitude isn’t because of a need for “I need more people like me”. I know that it’s because of a genuine concern for our fellow man/woman/person.
I personally have made a serious tobacco quit attempt once, that lasted 3 days and that was about 15 yrs. ago. Even after spending 2 weeks in the hospital and losing 1 kidney, I was back to hitting the tubes within 3 hours of discharge and back to a 1 pack a day in 1 week. That was 2 years ago. I got my 501 on the 11th and have gone from 30 tobacco tubes a day to 1. Not clean off the analogs… yet… but pretty good for me and I am working on it.
Anyhow, after a recent pass-by conversation with a friend. I have been musing this very topic for a few hours. And I realize what I say here is going to be taken apart and scrutinized… but here goes. The musing of a recent vapor mostly converted…..
Rather than mince words, let me get to the point of the matter of which I write/theorize/muse.
To put it bluntly… the resistance you ultimately seeing when having a person try your PV and switch to vaporing is the simple inclination for people to want to control their own fix. The fix the way they want. And fix with whom they want.
Face it… you’re a nicotine user. And you are talking to a nicotine user about switching their method of nicotine intake. If you think about it for a moment and put yourself in their position, you will realize what you are asking them to do.
To emphasize one of those thoughts you are having if you are contemplating the above, I will put it to a real world example:
Would you buy a pack of smokes only to hand it off to someone and have that person control the smoke you want? Your answer is very likely to be “no”.
We’ve all seen or been people seeking to “bum” a smoke only to refuse the smoke because it wasn’t close to their brand. In fact smokers reading this in all probably have been the “bumming” XXX smoker offered a XXX and just ending up waiting to get our own tobacco preference unless of course we were without means (i.e. college student, out of work, laid off, between jobs) in which case we would take what we could get.
But by offering a person to “try” your PV, what you are doing is essentially:
1. Offering them a different brand. This is problematic unto itself as you as either a former or soon to be former tobacco smoker know.
2. Offering them a smoke which has a limited window of availability. Replacing the product will take the offered person time acquire their own personal source. After all, the alternative nicotine source is only there as long as you are with them… at which point you take your PV with you. You may as well offer them an alternative brand made by a person 91 miles off the coast of Florida. After all with shipping… it takes about the same time to go to Canada or Mexico and get Cuban cigars as it does to get e-cigg supplies for many people.
3. Offering to share your most personal and intimate mouth germs with them. This is just a basic hygiene thought going through people’s minds. Seriously… when was the last time out of the poor days of college that you passed a smoke back and forth with someone you weren’t sleeping with? I don’t know about you… but I don’t really want to swap spit with someone unless they are VERY close to me… my own brother is off this short list, hell my own mom can find her own smoke to hotbox, frankly… my significant other (wife in my case) would be on the short (i.e. 1 person) list… but she doesn’t have a nicotine problem and I wouldn’t want her Bogarting my e-juice anyway.
So, what are we left with? We found a potentially less harmful method of getting nicotine that most certainly tastes better and makes us feel healthier and is less expensive than retail purchased cigarettes. And we want to show others the same path we have found. We are just being generous and caring people by demonstrating and sharing all the things we have learned through trial and error. And our personal research can help our fellow people, provided we share our experience freely and openly. RIGHT?!?!?? Well, yes and no.
In the case of nicotine users. The adage “You can give a man a fish… and he will eat for a day. But if you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.” Simply does not apply. The reality is that most nicotine users are utilizing cigarettes as their nicotine source. Most are also buying 1 pack at a time (because they will quit tomorrow) as evidenced by the local store where cigarettes are sold mostly by the pack (hence pack displays not carton displays). As such that nicotine source is readily available there is no need for preparing or “stocking up” to ensure a supply after all… they are going to quit tomorrow.
You are asking the person who is currently using a product that they “can quit tomorrow”, to accept the fact they can’t quit and to prepare for their future needs. You would be better served in your time to ask a lion to plant grass so the zebra he eats in 5 years can get fat and therefore would make a better meal. Wouldn’t that be a wise decision on the part of the lion? Yes. But for the lion… not a very relevant position. He eats what he sees now, he doesn’t accept, know or understand the fact he must eat again someday. Offering a person e-ciggs as an alternative to cigarettes (which they are going to quit tomorrow) is really about the same.
So… what’s a caring individual to do? The solution is simple and easy…. Don’t “share”… Give… it’s called “generalized reciprocity” or for movie goer’s “Pay it Forward”. And here is how I am going about it:
I am currently buying a USB pass-through (inline battery 501 style), some empty carts, some attys, a few 10ml sampler packs with various flavors in various nicotine concentrations and bunch of 3ml bottles (from bluemistvaping.com). I am going to split out the 10ml sampler packs to the 3ml bottles and use some of the juice myself, and keep some in the 3ml bottles for sharing. The pass-through will be charged and put into a cloth pouch with some filled carts, 2 attys and some 3ml bottles to match the carts and a “how-to” tri-fold made by me. This will create an “e-cigg” starter kit. Money wise… with what I am not giving to big-tobacco… this isn’t a big deal; I still budget for smoking 30 tubes a day.
The first “planned” recipient is a friend of mine who is currently on the patch, and in the past 6 patch attempts that have lasted at most 5 weeks has failed to quit cigarettes. I have known and worked with her directly (and daily) for 10 years and she has not been successful in many quit attempts. Chantix was her most successful quit attempt and she went 2 months without a smoke but invariably she returned to tobacco. In fact we nicknamed Chantix to “cig-a-wretch” because it made her want to puke after smoking; she quit Chantix because of the nausea it caused after she smoked. If she fails in this attempt at the patch… I will give her the “packet”. This approach will:
1. Give the person alternative taste experiences. This doesn’t mitigate problem 1 above. But the reality is… moving to e-cigg is a “Brand Switch”. So it is what it is.
2. Give the supplies for at least 2 weeks of e-cigg smoking without any personal financial risk to the packet recipient. Thus mitigating problem 2 above. The tri-fold will give info on how to get more e-juice… and point them to this forum…
3. Allow the person to have their own personal equipment. Thus mitigating problem 3 above.
In a nutshell that’s my take on the whole “I've been trying to get <insert smoker here> off analogs.” statements I see. Maybe I’m off base… maybe I’m just flat wrong. But, in general… I’m going to take the “pay it forward” approach.
</RANT>
</BEGIN RANT>
I keep seeing this type of statement over and over while researching and switching to PV’s. Vapors simply want to get tobacco smokers to move to vaping. I honestly know that this attitude isn’t because of a need for “I need more people like me”. I know that it’s because of a genuine concern for our fellow man/woman/person.
I personally have made a serious tobacco quit attempt once, that lasted 3 days and that was about 15 yrs. ago. Even after spending 2 weeks in the hospital and losing 1 kidney, I was back to hitting the tubes within 3 hours of discharge and back to a 1 pack a day in 1 week. That was 2 years ago. I got my 501 on the 11th and have gone from 30 tobacco tubes a day to 1. Not clean off the analogs… yet… but pretty good for me and I am working on it.
Anyhow, after a recent pass-by conversation with a friend. I have been musing this very topic for a few hours. And I realize what I say here is going to be taken apart and scrutinized… but here goes. The musing of a recent vapor mostly converted…..
Rather than mince words, let me get to the point of the matter of which I write/theorize/muse.
To put it bluntly… the resistance you ultimately seeing when having a person try your PV and switch to vaporing is the simple inclination for people to want to control their own fix. The fix the way they want. And fix with whom they want.
Face it… you’re a nicotine user. And you are talking to a nicotine user about switching their method of nicotine intake. If you think about it for a moment and put yourself in their position, you will realize what you are asking them to do.
To emphasize one of those thoughts you are having if you are contemplating the above, I will put it to a real world example:
Would you buy a pack of smokes only to hand it off to someone and have that person control the smoke you want? Your answer is very likely to be “no”.
We’ve all seen or been people seeking to “bum” a smoke only to refuse the smoke because it wasn’t close to their brand. In fact smokers reading this in all probably have been the “bumming” XXX smoker offered a XXX and just ending up waiting to get our own tobacco preference unless of course we were without means (i.e. college student, out of work, laid off, between jobs) in which case we would take what we could get.
But by offering a person to “try” your PV, what you are doing is essentially:
1. Offering them a different brand. This is problematic unto itself as you as either a former or soon to be former tobacco smoker know.
2. Offering them a smoke which has a limited window of availability. Replacing the product will take the offered person time acquire their own personal source. After all, the alternative nicotine source is only there as long as you are with them… at which point you take your PV with you. You may as well offer them an alternative brand made by a person 91 miles off the coast of Florida. After all with shipping… it takes about the same time to go to Canada or Mexico and get Cuban cigars as it does to get e-cigg supplies for many people.
3. Offering to share your most personal and intimate mouth germs with them. This is just a basic hygiene thought going through people’s minds. Seriously… when was the last time out of the poor days of college that you passed a smoke back and forth with someone you weren’t sleeping with? I don’t know about you… but I don’t really want to swap spit with someone unless they are VERY close to me… my own brother is off this short list, hell my own mom can find her own smoke to hotbox, frankly… my significant other (wife in my case) would be on the short (i.e. 1 person) list… but she doesn’t have a nicotine problem and I wouldn’t want her Bogarting my e-juice anyway.
So, what are we left with? We found a potentially less harmful method of getting nicotine that most certainly tastes better and makes us feel healthier and is less expensive than retail purchased cigarettes. And we want to show others the same path we have found. We are just being generous and caring people by demonstrating and sharing all the things we have learned through trial and error. And our personal research can help our fellow people, provided we share our experience freely and openly. RIGHT?!?!?? Well, yes and no.
In the case of nicotine users. The adage “You can give a man a fish… and he will eat for a day. But if you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.” Simply does not apply. The reality is that most nicotine users are utilizing cigarettes as their nicotine source. Most are also buying 1 pack at a time (because they will quit tomorrow) as evidenced by the local store where cigarettes are sold mostly by the pack (hence pack displays not carton displays). As such that nicotine source is readily available there is no need for preparing or “stocking up” to ensure a supply after all… they are going to quit tomorrow.
You are asking the person who is currently using a product that they “can quit tomorrow”, to accept the fact they can’t quit and to prepare for their future needs. You would be better served in your time to ask a lion to plant grass so the zebra he eats in 5 years can get fat and therefore would make a better meal. Wouldn’t that be a wise decision on the part of the lion? Yes. But for the lion… not a very relevant position. He eats what he sees now, he doesn’t accept, know or understand the fact he must eat again someday. Offering a person e-ciggs as an alternative to cigarettes (which they are going to quit tomorrow) is really about the same.
So… what’s a caring individual to do? The solution is simple and easy…. Don’t “share”… Give… it’s called “generalized reciprocity” or for movie goer’s “Pay it Forward”. And here is how I am going about it:
I am currently buying a USB pass-through (inline battery 501 style), some empty carts, some attys, a few 10ml sampler packs with various flavors in various nicotine concentrations and bunch of 3ml bottles (from bluemistvaping.com). I am going to split out the 10ml sampler packs to the 3ml bottles and use some of the juice myself, and keep some in the 3ml bottles for sharing. The pass-through will be charged and put into a cloth pouch with some filled carts, 2 attys and some 3ml bottles to match the carts and a “how-to” tri-fold made by me. This will create an “e-cigg” starter kit. Money wise… with what I am not giving to big-tobacco… this isn’t a big deal; I still budget for smoking 30 tubes a day.
The first “planned” recipient is a friend of mine who is currently on the patch, and in the past 6 patch attempts that have lasted at most 5 weeks has failed to quit cigarettes. I have known and worked with her directly (and daily) for 10 years and she has not been successful in many quit attempts. Chantix was her most successful quit attempt and she went 2 months without a smoke but invariably she returned to tobacco. In fact we nicknamed Chantix to “cig-a-wretch” because it made her want to puke after smoking; she quit Chantix because of the nausea it caused after she smoked. If she fails in this attempt at the patch… I will give her the “packet”. This approach will:
1. Give the person alternative taste experiences. This doesn’t mitigate problem 1 above. But the reality is… moving to e-cigg is a “Brand Switch”. So it is what it is.
2. Give the supplies for at least 2 weeks of e-cigg smoking without any personal financial risk to the packet recipient. Thus mitigating problem 2 above. The tri-fold will give info on how to get more e-juice… and point them to this forum…
3. Allow the person to have their own personal equipment. Thus mitigating problem 3 above.
In a nutshell that’s my take on the whole “I've been trying to get <insert smoker here> off analogs.” statements I see. Maybe I’m off base… maybe I’m just flat wrong. But, in general… I’m going to take the “pay it forward” approach.
</RANT>
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