Do you vape in public?

[Lambada Dave]

I work in a very corporate environment, so I stick to vaping outdoors, in the regular smoking spots. I do get a lot of questions about it, and am eager to show off my starter gear. I am very likely to sneak off to the washroom and vape, though. I would never have done that at work with an analog, but with my vape pen...

 

[wv2win]

I occasionally vape in public but using common sense and courteousness as a guideline. Of course I don't ever blow vapor in peoples faces, I don't excessively cloud up anywhere and I don't vape up an enclosed place with other people around. I usually just vape a little to get by being in a place (super market, mall) for a long time to get a little nic fix. Following these guidelines, which I think is just basically just being considerate to others in general, I have never been asked to stop vaping, to "put it out", or anything like that =)

Good example of how to vape almost everywhere but respectfully. Unfortunately there are vapers on ECF who believe you are a rude, selfish vaper who should be "drawn & quartered" for such behavior. "Sheep" do not like it when anyone strays from the pack.

 

[perazini]

i don´t vape where smoking is not allowed... don´t want to be an .......

 

[Kellysleep]

I do not see why we should not be able to vape in public! As long as you are not blowing it in peoples faces, blowing massive clouds, or in general just being rude about it! I know some people may have a sensitivity to vapor well they can do what I do when someone is bathed in there cheap dollar store eud' de toilet and it is triggering my migraine I MOVE AWAY from them! That simple there not locked in a car with me, I wouldn't vape on a plane so take away those two scenarios they have the freedom to move away from the vapor!

 

[Eivind211]

I do not see why we should not be able to vape in public! As long as you are not blowing it in peoples faces, blowing massive clouds, or in general just being rude about it! I know some people may have a sensitivity to vapor well they can do what I do when someone is bathed in there cheap dollar store eud' de toilet and it is triggering my migraine I MOVE AWAY from them! That simple there not locked in a car with me, I wouldn't vape on a plane so take away those two scenarios they have the freedom to move away from the vapor!

I am a former smoker, meaning I do not smoke, so I will not abide by the "rules" for smokers. I vape where I want, and when I want. I'm old enough to decide for myself if my actions will interfere with others, and avoid doing just that, to the extent I can. I do not ask permission to vape, and don't see that being wrong. The problem I see with other former smokers replying to this thread is that they are lumping vaping in with smoking. Too many people dancing around the rights of others, what about your rights?

FWIW, we do not smoke e-cigarettes, we use personal vaporizers. I don't understand why they are still called e-cigarettes, with all the negativity associated with the word cigarette, you'd think by now we'd have a better name for them.

 

[Destinydog]

I've snuck it in here and there...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[MattValley215]

My wife finds in extremely embarrassing. So I try not but, if most of you guys are like me its almost like....we're jehovah's witnesses. We just want to spread the good word, of vaping. So I like vaping in public because regardless if someone is shocked or intrigued by seeing me vape, they always end up asking me "What is that your doing?". Then I get the opportunity to explain to them the vaping phenomenon and its benefits!

 

[GaelicGrime]

After three "allergic" response posts, I can't hold back on this. Do you not take any medication for all the above allergies? I know we are living among the " all about me" millennials but for real? I'm sorry if I'm sounding rude here, but I'm not worried about peoples allergies. That is for "THEM" to take care of. Again, no disrespect intended but dayum, you are sounding like a bubble boy.

in the case of many allergens the "medicine" one takes is an epinephrine pen injection if they are capable, or someone else is AFTER exposure.

These pens must be replaced every few months, with a cost of ~$200USD per pen, and even those are no guarantee of a positive final outcome. You still need medical attention after this treatment, if you are still alive.

These pens must be correctly administered, and an overdose is pretty much as bad not enough, just a differing means to the same result.

As for allergy avoidance medicines, those are not always effective when it comes to fast acting exposure methods like inhaling, bee stings, etc. and can even cause more trouble by allowing an allergen to accumulate slowly so that when you have a sudden larger exposure, you are left in a position that an EpiPen(tm) is not enough, or you are compromised enough that it will not be correctly administered, etc.

I was born in the 1960s, "its all about me" is actually a foreign concept to me.

I take an approach that would be more commonly thought of as a hippie approach, "it's all about all of us", I find that when we all look out for each other, we are all better off, when any one person looks only after themselves, we lose the benefit of numbers, and end up fighting a dozen civil wars while the common enemy goes rampant.

 

[GaelicGrime]

Then you are telling everyone that vaping and smoking are the same thing and equally as dangerous. Not the perception that we want the uninformed to believe. It is more than possible to vape most places but in a respectful manner and one that reinforces the benign nature of vaping.

There is a point at which they are the same thing, "off gassing something that **could potentially* cause harm immediately, or in the future"

The very fist time a person has an allergic/anaphylactic reaction to a juice the entirety of "government" will rush to do something about it, just like they did when the allergy to peanut mold was suddenly discovered.

I remember having airliners scared to death of having a single peanut on the air plane, almost as bad as the hysteria which follows any terrorist act, etc.

The best course of action would seem to be "vape with respect, caution, and concern for others" so that you are not the person who causes some child (the first peanut incident was a child IIRC, and the outcome was positive, eventually, but harrowing) to discover they have an allergy to something.

Working together we can avoid government heavy handedness much easier than when we have some people taking the attitude "I don't need to watch out for anyone except myself, I have a god given right to vape wherever I choose, whenever I choose, etc."

All it takes is one headline about someone being hospitalized and one less freedom is enjoyed by all.

Freedom comes with responsibility. If you take the responsibilities seriously, you keep the freedom, if you ignore the responsibilities, the governement will decide you are not capable of having the freedom and will act accordingly.

Sudden events, whether terrorist, medical, or accidental are almost universal signals to government to act, anything that can be done to sanely avoid a sudden event is in the best interest of EVERYONE from the vaper to the bystander to the person at home watching the event unfold on TV.

Look at the number of kneejerks over the years that have been reversed, alcohol prohibition, in the USA, seems to be the only one I can find evidence of being a fairly rapid and easy reversal, everything else seems to have taken many many decades if not a century or more.

 

[GaelicGrime]

So everyone should be restricted from doing anything that might cause an allergic reaction in anyone?

Why do many public places, airplanes, etc. restrict certain products now?

It is probably not sane to take an all or nothing approach, but it is certainly better to take a personal approach NOW, than to have the government take a kneejerk response next Thursday afternoon.

If it were simple to determine what potential allergens any person had an issue with, and when they may run into those, I suspect most people would take that route.

I strongly dislike having issues with foods and scents, TRUST ME it is more a pain in my .... than yours.

Sometimes walking into a bakery to get a cinnamon roll is something I can't safely do because of the lemon tarts just removed from the oven.

I can't taste the awesome desert or dinner my wife just ordered because the risk is not worth the potential trouble.

I can't just full face enjoy a sniff of a new perfume or cologne etc. because again, the risk ratio is a bit too high.

Then there is the fact that I **LOVE** citrus, and it hates me with a potentially lethal passion.

However I am old enough, and have had enough experience that I can tell in advance when I am likely to have an issue, and be appropriately cautious.

To be honest my mother spent most of my life forgetting that I had an issue with citrus at least once a year. This is partly due to the fact that as a child the allergy was an annoyance, and one I played loose with, what kid wants to be the only one who can't have a pink lemonaid, or a grapefruit with a mint candy straw at the fair, etc.

I was 19 years old before it became serious business, possibly because of those previous years of playing loose, possibly because of a back injury at that age, possibly because I was older, even the doctors were a bit puzzled at the time.

How can a 5-6 year old who has possibly never been exposed to an allergen, and or does not have enough experience to recognize when they are going to be potentially in a trouble zone, or their parents who are probably terrified of an accident, be expected to sanely and rationally avoid all trouble zones?

Again "all or nothing" is a bad approach, however erring on the side of caution, and awareness of ones surroundings is a solution everyone sane should be able to live with.

 

[GaelicGrime]

There are certainly a ton of legitimate allergies out there, but when it came to smoking, it seems that every other person claimed to be allergic to smoke. I wonder how these people ever left there homes back when smoking was allowed everywhere. The fact is that a majority of these folks aren't allergic, they are just annoyed.

This whole discussion is moot. In the very near future I am certain that vaping will be banned everywhere that smoking is, and maybe even some places where it isn't. I went to Vapefest DC this weekend. The entire first floor of the Hyatt was covered in a thick cloud of vapor. Many vapers are obsessed with producing big clouds. That's fine, it's part of the hobby, but even when smoking was allowed everywhere, cigars still weren't allowed in most establishments because of the massive amount of smoke and the strong, although pleasant, odor. I doubt any of us smoked cigarettes to produce thick clouds of smoke. When smoking was allowed everywhere, buildings installed ventilation systems and smokeaters to help get rid of the smoke. Those systems are now gone. When smoking was banned, many businesses fought it, but times have changed. We have seen many businesses beat the government in banning ecigs in their establishments.

*I* think the discussion is far from moot, I have hope that with careful approaches and thought about potential future repercussions, we can avoid the government getting out of control. This means that the vast majority of vapers need to take personal responsibility for their actions, and think about the potential repercussions of those actions with a mind toward possibly avoiding an issue that **COULD** (not WILL) turn into a public kneejerk event.

I agree, many people were annoyed by smoke, not allergic. However the number of people who were in a life threatening situation in the immediate time frame was much lower than vaping could potentially be.

That coin has morphed into a multiple sided dice like object with this new information. There are already a number of people who must avoid certain foods, scents, flavorings, etc. and regulations on some of those, even if it is only that they must be fully disclosed (I am all for complete disclosure, that is VERY unlikely to come from the flavorings suppliers on their own) in bold print of a certain relative size, etc.

EDIT:
Not saying that any person is or is not considering their actions and the knock on effects, just the general "vast majority of vapers need to be..." as opposed to "that person needs to be ..."

The general public will be the ultimate judge, the fewer people who call their legal representatives, the less chance of legislation, the more freedoms we can all enjoy, etc.

 

[GaelicGrime]

Yep -- There are legitimate allergy sufferers, but also hypochondriacs. I would add that very sick people that suffer from breathing disorders usually know how to take care of themselves. If someone has an allergy to penicillin,(as I do) they usually have that on their records with their doctors. I only say that because if I had a more serious allergic reaction due to inhaled substances, I think I might wear a mask. Just saying, very nice post Ravensfan. Well put.

Wearing a mask is a great idea, however saying that I have to take another breath and say that I know people, myself included, for whom masks are of little worth, even if I get a middle-high hazmat mask (I tried painters masks when I worked in a garage where they were available), the particles which give me the most trouble are small enough to pass through many of those. If one can smell the irritant through the mask, it is likely still a potential problem. Especially vaporised, they are designed to be difficult to avoid, that is what makes the flavors we enjoy so much enjoyable.

We get to the point of asking children to wear a hazmat mask, or even to have a self contained full hazmat breather, and that is something I know from personal experience will not happen often.

I did not take my allergy seriously as a child, I did not take wearing an eye patch after some eye surgery (at age 2-4) as seriously as I wish I had, both cases my parents eventually gave up fighting with me as long as I complied above a threshold because otherwise I was more miserable than I had been with the issue.

I did not take several other things seriously, and my experience is that no child or their parents ever takes things as seriously as that child may wish later in life, unless there is a life threatening experience to base the seriousness on.

There is always the class of mentally ill people (hypochondria is a mental illness) who will throw a wrench in any works they get close enough to. These people are also not generally likely to have a true anaphylactic response to something they are not actually allergic to as I understand it, and the first medically trained person to arrive and do simple diagnostics will spot the faker.

 

[GaelicGrime]

Good example of how to vape almost everywhere but respectfully. Unfortunately there are vapers on ECF who believe you are a rude, selfish vaper who should be "drawn & quartered" for such behavior. "Sheep" do not like it when anyone strays from the pack.

I feel like that was potentially pointed in my general direction.

I am not asking for anyone to be drawn and quartered, I am asking that all of us stop to be considerate of others, and the potential for immediately life threatening problems which accompanies this particular issue already.

Most people over a certain age are aware of the scents and flavorings and ingredients they need to avoid, and can in the presence of a polite and considerate other, make a choice which avoids kneejerks.

It is those sudden events which cause instant kneejerks which are the most problematic in the long run. Avoiding those takes extra care and consideration from the person seen by the kneejerker as causing the issue in the first place.

I would bet that even after a serious event (fatal or even long term medical attention required is a wild ball and I am not treading that gator infested swamp) with a more positive outcome, a vaper saying "I did not know, I am so sorry it caused you grief, and for your reference, here is what I know of the ingredients in that vape so you can know what to look for" would go a long, long way toward building a bridge and ameliorating the initial kneejerk.

There will, of course, always be exceptions to that, especially among the parents of a child who had to take a trip to the doctor or hospital (worse, still not the worst) because of something in the air, and those are certainly going to be more damaging if the "offender" is brash and callous, than even a weak attempt at building a bridge, knowing that it may be destroyed right now anyway.

 

[junior28186]

i vape in publilc but not where regular cigarette is not tolerated
except at my job!

 

[Phillip215]

I only used my cig-a-like battery when on the go. I have used it in Sushi restaurant and they don't care. But if I were to vape in an American restaurant, I think they will make a big fuss about it.

 

[wv2win]

I feel like that was potentially pointed in my general direction.

...........................

Actually, no, it was not pointed toward you. It was pointed towards those who state "don't vape where you can't smoke" or "vape only where you can smoke" or 'those who vape openly are the reason for vaping being banned'.

It's this "black & white" mentality and in the last example, ignorant mentality that I was referring to. Providing the perception that vaping is the same as smoking is a perception that only diminishes the acceptance of vaping as an effective and benign alternative to smoking. Vaping openly most places but in a respectful and courteous manner is the path that has the best potential for gaining support for vaping in many of our opinions.

 

[Southern Tina]

Ok, I'm sure to be bashed for this comment. But, I never smoked ( I vape for a different although valid reason) but I can't take standing by smokers cause it makes my clothes/hair stink. I'd rather wait if that was my only resort.

 

[Jman8]

I am not asking for anyone to be drawn and quartered, I am asking that all of us stop to be considerate of others, and the potential for immediately life threatening problems which accompanies this particular issue already.

From what you are saying, and knowing that our opposition is prone to tactics that are designed to decimate, wouldn't it be in oppositions best interest to take up vaping for one day (could be 0 nic, really doesn't matter), and become as obnoxious as heck with it in public. All with idea, that their obnoxiousness will lead to that one major headline, and yadda yadda yadda, no more vaping anywhere ever again, because of this one case that undid it for everyone else?

The things that these threads always seem to ignore are:

• how well organized / funded our opposition is, and how easily they will manipulate events / public narrative
• how very little bans/restrictions have to do with what any vaper, anywhere is currently up to
• how very little cigalikes (the most popular PV around) produces vapor that lingers, therefore no clouds
• how bans are justified as being in place. Go ask a community that banned it, and report back here what they say. Did they say, "it was because of some rude vapers?" I'm guessing not.

Go to a hearing or watch video for one, and realize that rude/obnoxious vaping is not the issue, and likely never will be for blanket rule being passed. We act on a forum like it is us that are plausibly leading to these bans. We walk on pins and needles when we postulate ideas about fellow vapers using there PVs in public. If I were opposition, I'd laugh all day at that. Heck, it humors me a bit being on the same side as vapers. It humors me because it seems so way off from how/why these bans are popping up in the reality we share. Hard to say it has 'absolutely nothing to do with how we are vaping in public right now' but is closer to that than the reality of it has everything to do with tactics our opposition is involved in to decimate the industry.

In my experience, of which I am still batting 1.000 in my public vaping (which I am willing to everywhere), I have no issues. I rarely vape around people in public because in almost every conceivable indoor place I've been to or can think of, there is plenty of room for not vaping near anyone. Grocery store? Check. Hospital? Check. School campus? Check. Name a place, any place, and I'll be able to vape there indefinitely. My vapor doesn't linger, and if history is any guide, no one will ever notice I was vaping there.

Moreover, when people do notice, because I am choosing to openly vape in a crowded place (like I did in a restaurant a few weeks ago), it shows up as a non-issue. As in no one in the enclosed space appears to care, even a smidgeon, that I am exhaling non-lingering vapor into the air.

But here's the part where I get told that someone may silently care and go write their congressperson or someone with allergy may be impacted. To which I will then remind everyone reading this that most of the time I do it in public, you wouldn't even have faintest clue that I did. And if a ban were put into place, I'd still vape, and you still wouldn't have the faintest clue. Not even a smidgeon.

 

[rollcoil]

...In my experience, of which I am still batting 1.000 in my public vaping (which I am willing to everywhere), I have no issues.

+1 Jman8.

I've never had anyone object. I bet 90% of the people opposed to vaping have never even seen one in real life.

 

[edithwinvich]

I do in the car, but I don't in restaurants, stores, not anywhere really outside of driving, or at my mother's especially - she's all for me trying to give up smoking, but vaping is a totally foreign concept to her. Oh, and of course I do in my local smoke shop while browsing, it feels ok there of course!