Do you think E- Cig will make real cigarettes obsolete ?
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I gotta jump in here and comment, even though I normally prefer to get to the end of the thread first.
Smoking actually reduces health care costs by getting people to die sooner. The easiest way to think of this is a person will incur a certain amount of costs in their lifetime, and the older they get, the higher these costs will be. In the end stages the costs will be the highest. So if someone does not smoke, they still will die in the end and still rack up a lot of costs in the end as smokers do but will have lived more years and therefore will have incurred more health care costs.
Another thing is that even if this were not the case and smokers cost the government more in health care spending, these costs would be independent of taxation. So in other words, if you didn't have the tax, you would still have the costs. So this is still a money grab.
However, the truth is that taxation causes less people to die too soon by making more people quit, so it raises taxes and also ends up raising, not reducing health care costs. There really isn't any doubt about this.
In a way, we are living in the Wild West of vaping, where only a tiny percentage of people do it. If and when it becomes popular enough, you can bet that they will tax the crap out of it, to make it similar in cost to smoking. So in a way I have mixed feelings about vaping becoming too popular as we eventually will wake up the monster and we do not want that
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All they have to do is to ban the batts... More and more people are switching. Great news. This market is evolving, right now, the e cigs deliver better NIC content, more enjoyably than any analog brand ever could. Personally I can foresee the reduction of analogs by a sizable percentage. The market , producers of vaping tools, Mods, need to step up and responsibly offer mods for sale in a mass way. When we can find a quality mod and actually purchase it without a ritual or raindances, without the kind of ordeal we now face, then the e cig will be in a position to wipe out the analogs in the hearts and minds those who wish to evolve away from the dirt , foul stench, health threats posed so obviously by analogs. It seems the only top quality MOD to be a real manufacturer is (props given) Provari. I have purchased 2 , a V2 and a mini with no hassle, no wait, no sold out, at my leisure. I wish all the providers well, just , think of how it feels to have to search and search to purchase a product. a needed article that you would think makers would be scrambling to fulfill the need for. This is the future of vaping we are talking about and we need to reach a critical mass of users before the corporate vice clamps down. The more of us there are, the more power we have to object and resist.IMHO
I mean no flame against our worldwide suppliers, however, it seems that many offerings are only incremental as if we are one huge beta test. Where are the rebuildable attys?
I mean no flame against our worldwide suppliers, however, it seems that many offerings are only incremental as if we are one huge beta test. Where are the rebuildable attys?
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I think the vaping industry will continue to grow at brisk pace, but IMHO, Ecigs can't make analog cigarettes obsolete until further long term health studies are conducted. But... if big tobacco continues to feel threatened, they will jump into the vaping industry head first! There is too much money at risk for big tobacco to "sleep at the wheel"- as the vaping industry gains traction. We are beginning to see signs of this as lorrilard purchased Blu.
This exact sort of thing happened in the cell phone industry... as cell phone technology advanced and took a bite out of traditional telephone companies, we saw Sprint, ATT, and other telecommunication giants buy the entire cell phone business up.
I think it's quite sad that there are many towns and cities, and even some countries, that are banning or attempting to ban ecigs outright or severely ban where you can and cannot buy or use them. As the editor of yet another ecig online magazine, spinfuel.com, I get to talk to many ecig CEO's and PR people for the larger companies. They know regulation is coming hard and fast, and they now that it's only a matter of time before ecigs are taxed to hell and back. The problem for users is that while we are enjoying the product, and especially the cost of the product, when the cost is on par with analogs what will we do? I sure as hell won't pay the cost when it gets that high. Will anyone?
I sure wouldn't mind some regulation as to quality and purity of ingredients, but it drives me crazy to know that ecigs will be completely in the hands of politicians very soon.
I sure wouldn't mind some regulation as to quality and purity of ingredients, but it drives me crazy to know that ecigs will be completely in the hands of politicians very soon.
But to answer your question, lol, I do think analogs will be gone in a dozen years. Mayor Bloombergs actions will spread across the country, and as soon as some teenager makes an ecig video on YouTube that manages to go viral you'll have millions of kids vaping and their parents can hardly object to it. Lots of things can happen, and will happen, that will finally kill cigarettes.
Love the intelligence behind this post, scared that it'll come true...
Pink Floyd said it best: "Mama should I trust the government?".
Analogs will be here to stay forever. The convenience of using analogs can never be compared to e-cigs. You don't worry about forgetting to bring backups with you, liquids, batteries, etc. when you're on the go. You don't worry about running out of batteries, cartos, e-juice, etc. Only reason why people quit smoking is primarily because of health reasons.
I gotta jump in here and comment, even though I normally prefer to get to the end of the thread first.
Smoking actually reduces health care costs by getting people to die sooner. The easiest way to think of this is a person will incur a certain amount of costs in their lifetime, and the older they get, the higher these costs will be. In the end stages the costs will be the highest. So if someone does not smoke, they still will die in the end and still rack up a lot of costs in the end as smokers do but will have lived more years and therefore will have incurred more health care costs.
Another thing is that even if this were not the case and smokers cost the government more in health care spending, these costs would be independent of taxation. So in other words, if you didn't have the tax, you would still have the costs. So this is still a money grab.
However, the truth is that taxation causes less people to die too soon by making more people quit, so it raises taxes and also ends up raising, not reducing health care costs. There really isn't any doubt about this.
In a way, we are living in the Wild West of vaping, where only a tiny percentage of people do it. If and when it becomes popular enough, you can bet that they will tax the crap out of it, to make it similar in cost to smoking. So in a way I have mixed feelings about vaping becoming too popular as we eventually will wake up the monster and we do not want that
You said it!
Wow! Where do you live? I vape in restaurants all the time and never had a problem. But then, I don't vape an e-cig that looks like a cigarette while expecting to be treated like anything but a smoker. Socially, e-cigs aren't even close to being the exact same thing as cigarettes. I can vape almost anywhere without any of the hostility I'd get with a cigarette. Only some local ordinances treat them the same. The general public sure doesn't.
About the learning curve, I don't think it's insurmountable. That's one thing the crappy e-cigs like Blu are good for. They open people's eyes to the possibility that vaping can work. Once that happens, people become more receptive to the idea of a learning curve. If they bother to do a little research, they end up here. Then, as long as they don't get overwhelmed with information, or ramrodded into thinking they need a $200 Provari for good results, they can end up with a device that's pretty easy to learn. Even if it's a Volt, it'll be enough to get them off analogs. Once that happens, they ain't going back, so the learning curve becomes much more tolerable to them. The flip side to that is that some of the e-cigs out there are so bad they put people off of the whole idea. Most of those people will continue to smoke.
But cigs aren't going away. Young and rebellious people will always be attracted to them. People who have a hard time scratching up $5 a day and could never afford a carton at a time won't be able to swing the initial cost or willing to risk it. Smokers who had a bad experience with gas station e-cigs will keep smoking, and the tobacco industry will do its best to equalize the costs of smoking and vaping.
When gov't imposes "sin" taxes, they always need the pretense of the tax discouraging a harmful activity, or mitigating the social costs of the sin being taxed. No matter how flimsy, for political reasons, they always have to pretend that the tax has some other purpose than simple money grubbing, even if that's all it is.
Unless they come out with some reasonable data showing nicotine, or one of the other components of juice, is harmful, they're going to have a tougher time politically justifying tax parity with cigarettes. This is where the tobacco companies come in to twist arms, spread money around and lend cover to the politicians. Tobacco companies would love nothing more than to see vaping treated exactly like smoking, both in terms of social acceptance and taxation. They won't be able to demonize e-cigs the way analogs have been demonized, but they have a lot more influence with politicians than with the general public.
Analogs won't become obsolete. Not because of anything to do with people. The health Nazis, BP and BT will make sure e-cigs don't replace smoking in the U.S. They depend on cigarettes for their daily bread even more than the tax grubbing governments.
Cloud Wizard:6261830 said:
Agreed. Also this post made me ROFL. Gotta love those vitamin enhanced smoothies. LMAO.
That's old news. It's already been done and is done. No alteration required. It's perfectly legal in some states. Anything, from a coke can to a car antenna to a toilet paper tube can be altered for drugs. Nothing scary about it.
And if your aunt had testicles, she'd be your uncle. E-cigs aren't tobacco products because of social reasons. They were declared that by law. Once they were declared such by law, they become subject to tobacco taxes, regardless of any stigma. What needs to happen is conclusive proof that e-cigs are harmless and a viable alternative to smoking. Better yet, they need to be proven to be a cessation method. You don't see tobacco taxes imposed on nicorette gum, even though they are no less a tobacco product than e-cigs. The only difference is that the law calls nicorette a cessation product and calls e-cigs a tobacco product.
The vast majority of nicotine used in e-cigs is extracted in China from Chinese tobacco plants. Tobacco companies don't make a dime off it. They can't corner the market on tobacco in China. If they managed to get Chinese nicotine banned from import, their wouldn't be enough tobacco plants in the country to furnish the nicotine for e-cigs, patches, etc. The government controls how many tobacco plants are grown in the U.S. and it's highly unlikely they'd raise that quota to satisfy the demands of vapers. If imported nicotine was banned, synthesis would be the only alternative.
This is true, but who is going to pay for enough science to convince the gov't and the public. This is the two-edged sword in the recent court declaration that e-cigs aren't drug delivery systems. If e-cigs had been declared a drug, BP would be conducting clinical trials and financing the science to prove their safety and efficacy. Only BP has the money to do that. BT could do it if they wanted to, but they don't have the motivation unless they can monopolize the e-cig industry. BT could never make from e-cigs the kind of profits they make from cigarettes unless they were the only players in the e-cig market.
There are entire websites, that can't be mentioned here, that do exactly what you are saying can't be done. The hardware exists for use on an otherwise standard e-cig, including an eGo. Don't tell them what you are claiming. They apparently have quite lucrative businesses doing the impossible.
I think the incidences of people making those associations are grossly exaggerated among vapers. There's a certain amount of unfounded paranoia on the subject. Not that it doesn't happen, it's just not as common as many vapers perceive it to be. It is a good reason NOT to vape a cig-style e-cig in public. The more people recognize that an e-cig doesn't necessarily look like a cigarette, the better off we'll be.
Your fingertips to God's ears. It would help if vapers would do their part and not vape cig-style e-cigs in public. Too many of them want to vape something that looks like a cigarette, then wonder why people treat them like a smoker.
That ignores the fact that, even though a smoker may die sooner, the health costs of their final years is likely to be more than the final years of an older, but otherwise healthy, non-smoker. A 60 year old smoker who spends his last years being treated for cancer, or undergoing a lung transplant, or having 3 heart attacks, will rack up a lot more costs than an 85 year old non-smoker who dies of pneumonia or complications from a broken hip.
Yeah, you'd have the costs, but there would be no way to offset them. Supposedly, at least a portion of the taxes are supposed ot offset the health care costs. Another portion is supposed to prevent future health care costs with anti-smoking campains. That arument is like saying I don't need a job because I'd have expenses whether I was working or not.
The point is, even if it WAS nothing but a money grab, it's not exactly a profitable one and certainly not so profitable that the gov't. would be motivated to make sure cigarettes are never banned. They won't be banned because the law prohibits banning them, not because the gov't makes so much money off of them. If the gov't makes any money at all off them, it's relatively trivial. The tobacco industry, the Anti-nicotine industry and the pharmaceutical industry all make more money from cigarettes than the government does.
There is plenty of doubt about this. There are other costs attributable to smoking. Some of them don't have anything to do with end care or age. There is lost productivity and medical costs from increased incidences of bronchitis and other respiratory problems. There are costs associated with the loss of a breadwinner in a family. There are intangible costs as well. To assume that it's cheaper for society to have people die before they get old neglects any value of the elderly and any contribution they make to society. Let's just put anyone over 60 on an ice floe. Think of the money we'd save.
The monster's already awake. You'd have to have been snoozing yourself not to have noticed it. Government is not the impetus to raising taxes. Any profit to the gov't from tobacco is peanuts, if it exists at all. The government was going to raise the taxes on RYO tobacco. Congress proposed a raise from $1.25/lb to $4/lb. Then, the tobacco companies swarmed in with their lobbyists and the proposed $4 tax became a $25 tax. If taxes are raised to parity with tobacco cigarettes, you can bet it'll be the tobacco industry repeating what they did to RYO, not the government trying for some money grab. The government just doesn't make enough money on tobacco to worry about it. One mindless and needless military weapons contract could be scrapped and they'd save more money than they profit from cig. taxes.In a way, we are living in the Wild West of vaping, where only a tiny percentage of people do it. If and when it becomes popular enough, you can bet that they will tax the crap out of it, to make it similar in cost to smoking. So in a way I have mixed feelings about vaping becoming too popular as we eventually will wake up the monster and we do not want that
That's the problem. BT is the biggest single enemy of e-cigs. Worse than BP, the gov't or the anti-nicotine brigade.
People who think that Lorillard's purchase of Blu will somehow benefit the industry are incredibly naive. BT will push regulations so that only the biggest, most heavily capitalized companies will be able to comply. They'll advocate for tax parity between cigarettes and e-cigs. Lorillard would love nothing better than regulations that required all e-cigs to have the same form factor as the Blu. They'd be tickled pink if laws were passed to require sealed, tamper-proof cartridges in regular and menthol only, and sales only in B&M stores already licensed to sell tobacco.
Vapers don't have the product loyalty that will allow Lorillard, or any other tobacco company, to expect 30-40 years of revenue from a single person. Every pack of Blu that Lorillard sells is another person who won't be buying Newports, or Blu either, for the next 30 years. To the extent BT gets into e-cigs, it's purely an act of desperation and they'll use every bit of their political clout and influence on regulatory agencies to keep e-cigs from replacing cigarettes
I doubt it. There will be always some people who will smoke analogs, even if they make them illegal.
Not by law. If your aunt has a sex change operation, under the law in most states, he'd still be your aunt until he applied for a change in status. And if his birth certificate was issued in Idaho, Ohio, Tennessee he'd always be your aunt as they refuse to change the gender marker on Birth Certificates for any reason (Texas will only do it under Court Order).
Ecigs are classified as a tobacco product by the FDA for purposes of regulation. Nicorette, and many pesticides are also classified as tobacco products but are not subject to any significant taxation as a result. FDA classification a a tobacco product has no bearing on their tax status.
The Internal Revenue Code, which is the law that determines the tax status of tobacco products does not currently have a classification under which Ecigs would fall. It would take specific action by Congress to add Ecigs and so far most such attempts by states to impose taxes on them have already met with failure as those attempting to pass such bills have had a hard time overcoming people's natural aversion to tax increases once a small amount of common sense is introduced into the process that breaks the connection between ecigarettes and analogs and staunches the stigma.
The US is still the 3rd highest producer of tobacco. And BAT and RJ Reynolds still hold very lucrative importation contracts for tobacco with the Chinese (as well as India, Brazil, Africa, and other sources). They might not produce it, but they still control it and profit off every use of it inside countries, such as the US, in which they hold those import contracts.
People have already tried it to see if it could be done. And it can be. But it's absolutely pointless and extremely inefficient. Plus, it's not odorless like nicotine so the vapor still gives away that there's a drastic difference.
I didn't say it wasn't possible. I've been a MM activist for well over 20 years and am quite involved in that world. It's something that people only do because it can be done. It's not likely ever going to supplant bag vapes or brownies as an every day delivery method for normal use. A place I am involved with had to stop carrying them because the carts would die while half full because the hardware just can't handle it well. When that happens when they're filled with a buck or two worth of ejuice that's bad enough. When they die it with $100 of medicine still in them, people get .......
Scientists. There's still plenty of them out there who do things just for the sake of gaining knowledge.
There's also the health care industry, groups like the American Cancer Society, and numerous other entities who would be more than happy to find and prove the value of Ecigs. Profit potential would make it go a lot faster of course. But that's not the only way science happens.
Happened to me 4 times last week. And that's just the people who actually said something.
I'm still fairly new to vaping. A year ago, I didn't have a clue what an Electronic cigarette was. If I'd have seen someone with a Provari or a Darwin then, "smot poker" would have come to my mind a lot faster than "that's someone using an alternative nicotine delivery device".
The incidences aren't exaggerated. But the paranoia of it happening is likely overblown. Most people just need "Oh, it's an ecigarette" and they're placated. Certainly none have screamed that they were going to have me arrested.
And I have used my Ecig (A lavatube with a DCT tank) in front of police. Ecig use isn't widespread here and I've never seen anyone using anything other an Ego type and that only a couple times at the mall (where a Kiosk sells them for 3x times what you can get them for online along with 30ml bottles of juice for $45/ea) and even still they didn't bat an eye at me using it.
Damn skippy! It's a lot better to take a few seconds and explain what an ecig is than to worry that someone might think it's something that it's not. Those 4 people who said something last week now all know what an Ecigarette is and the next time they see one, they'll know the difference and if they're with someone who is also ignorant of the difference and they say something to them rather than the person using it, they can explain it to that person as well.
A few spare moments of education is a hell of a lot better than a lifetime of fear.
No! I got into vaping because I saw a Blu at Walgreens. I wanted to quit smoking so decided to try it. It was only after trying one that the method and performance became more important than the form factor.
As long as people think of Ecigs as something alien, they're going to be wary of them. Mini's help bridge that gap between the familiar and the alien. I've converted a lot more people by giving them a few drags off a disposable Blu than I could have ever even convinced people to try a Provari.
And people seem a lot more comfortable walking up to a stranger and asking about something that looks like a cigarette but isn't than they are about walking up and asking about something that, in their ignorance, could be anything from a pipe bomb to a medical device for some horrible affliction.
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