I became a member on ECF when I started vaping a few months back. I never even realizes there was a smokeless tobacco forum! Well, I just wanted to share my story from how I found snus then vaping, then went back to snus.
It all started back around april of last year. My wife and I were both smokers and after numerous attempts to quit cold turkey, I had enough and decided to start looking at alternatives. One day after work I stopped by a gas station and instead of buying another pack of smokes, I got some Camel Winterchill snus. I had used camel snus on occasion before but never made it my dedicated nic source. I went though a couple cans of it and a couple other brands (Marlboro and Skoal snus) before I came across a swedish snus forum one day while reading up on my new habit. Swedish snus sounded MUCH better than its American counterparts. Even before I learned that snus users hated how sweet American snus was, I though they were much to sweet. I could deal with camel but both Marlboro and especially Skoal tasted like it was 1 part tobacco to five parts sugar YUCK!! After reading about swedish snus I checked local taboacco stores but none of them had even HEARD of swedish snus and insisted there was no difference between it and the American crap they tried to sell me. I was determined to get ahold of this Swedish goodness so I went online to buy a few cans. Very great prices on the few I was looking at. I added them to cart and proceeded to checkout. I got to the shipping screen and realized that my shipping cost was 3 times what my order subtotal was! WHAT?!?! And this is when I learned about the atrocity known as the PACT act
luckily in my search for an explanation and possible solution to buying online, I found a link to the General brand snus website and found the "find stores" search. Low and behold, there was a local cigar shop chain that carried General and one was about 20 minutes from me. I made my first trip and bought 4 cans. Original portions, white portion, white portion mint, and white portion wintergreen. The first two made me want to gag immediately! I was a menthol smoker and never liked the full tobacco flavor. I new I liked the camel wintergreen flavor so that was next. It was great! but the pouches kept splitting open in my mouth at this point I thought all my hard work was for nothing. I went through the entire wintergreen can (with only about 12 or 14 preforming flawlessly) and finally cracked open the mint expecting the same results but I was pleased when I made it through 24 pouches without the first split pouch. I WAS HOOKED! I used Snus for about 3 or 4 months but then decided to see if I could quit nicotine all together.
Fast forward to February of this year. Ive been nicotine free since about September. WOOHOO! All the while, one of my best friends is heavy into vaping. Buying and collecting PVs and going through 30ml bottles of juice in 2 or 3 days. Whenever we went over he had something new and my wife started getting curious. She was tired of smoking and wanted an alternative. She got an eRoll starter kit and I, with the intention of using only 0 nic e-liquid, bought one also because I loved the wide variety of flavors. She was hooked instantly with her 12mg juice and I was disappointed with my 0mg juice. I wanted a throat hit
. I caved and bought some 6mg juice but that wasnt good enough either so I tried 12mg and it hit the spot. Well, im hooked on nicotine again...great. We enjoyed vaping though and knew the health risks were extremely low. We quickly upgraded from the eRoll to eGo batts and vivi novas to big batt PVs with carto tanks and dripping attys and all that. Even attended some local vape meets and had a grand time. About a month ago my wife was out and about when her battery died and she had forgotten to take her spare 18350. She caved and smoked a stink stick that her friend gave her. I was disappointed but understood. We continued to vape but my wife gradually became a victim to the convenience and lack of maintance of cigarettes while I continued to vape. At this point, my wife is back to smoking regularly again (bummer). The friend I mentioned earlier who was my only vaping buddy took a job out of town working 4 or 5 days a week and only coming home for a few days. His vaping subsided greatly because being in construction, he didnt want to take his 500+ dollar PVs out to the field and risk breaking them. He went back to smoking while at work and vaping at home. This only lasted a short amount of time before he too fell victim to the convenience and switched back to smokes. The cheese stands alone...Now I am the only one out of all my friends who vape outside of my brother in law who uses solely as a nic delivery system rather than the hobby that myself and my wife had turned it into. As the flames died down, I became less interested in finding new flavors and my current all day vapes were growing old. I tried rekindling the fire by visting my local vape shop (that just so happens to have opened about a month after we started vaping) and trying some new flavors. It just didnt do it. At this point I looked back on my last few months of vaping and pondered all of the malfunctions, defective units, time spent cleaning,etc, and thought "wow, this is a lot of work". I decided this past weekend to go back to snus. I fought myself over it but I finally made the decision. I wanted take another look at finding swedish snus online but came up with the same outrageous shipping everywhere I went. I did a store locator search on Generals website to see if any new locations had been added and to my surprise, the Sheetz gas station chains in my area were stocking General nordic mint!!! My first thought was no more hour long round trips to the cigar shop to get my General fix! I went to the store and got a can of nordic mint (cool name) and was kind of disappointed when he handed it to me in a rectangular shaped can and saw that it only has 12 portions!! Im used to General white portions having 24 . I also prefer the round shape to the rectangular but thats just preference and doesnt affect taste obviously. The portions are longer than the white portions and while they taste good they are much sweeter than my old friend General white portion. Well, Im back on the snus bus for now. We will see if its a long trip or a short one before I decide to kick the habit again. One things for sure...I need to sell this vaping stuff to try to recoup some loss :/ off to the classifieds!
It all started back around april of last year. My wife and I were both smokers and after numerous attempts to quit cold turkey, I had enough and decided to start looking at alternatives. One day after work I stopped by a gas station and instead of buying another pack of smokes, I got some Camel Winterchill snus. I had used camel snus on occasion before but never made it my dedicated nic source. I went though a couple cans of it and a couple other brands (Marlboro and Skoal snus) before I came across a swedish snus forum one day while reading up on my new habit. Swedish snus sounded MUCH better than its American counterparts. Even before I learned that snus users hated how sweet American snus was, I though they were much to sweet. I could deal with camel but both Marlboro and especially Skoal tasted like it was 1 part tobacco to five parts sugar YUCK!! After reading about swedish snus I checked local taboacco stores but none of them had even HEARD of swedish snus and insisted there was no difference between it and the American crap they tried to sell me. I was determined to get ahold of this Swedish goodness so I went online to buy a few cans. Very great prices on the few I was looking at. I added them to cart and proceeded to checkout. I got to the shipping screen and realized that my shipping cost was 3 times what my order subtotal was! WHAT?!?! And this is when I learned about the atrocity known as the PACT act
luckily in my search for an explanation and possible solution to buying online, I found a link to the General brand snus website and found the "find stores" search. Low and behold, there was a local cigar shop chain that carried General and one was about 20 minutes from me. I made my first trip and bought 4 cans. Original portions, white portion, white portion mint, and white portion wintergreen. The first two made me want to gag immediately! I was a menthol smoker and never liked the full tobacco flavor. I new I liked the camel wintergreen flavor so that was next. It was great! but the pouches kept splitting open in my mouth at this point I thought all my hard work was for nothing. I went through the entire wintergreen can (with only about 12 or 14 preforming flawlessly) and finally cracked open the mint expecting the same results but I was pleased when I made it through 24 pouches without the first split pouch. I WAS HOOKED! I used Snus for about 3 or 4 months but then decided to see if I could quit nicotine all together.Fast forward to February of this year. Ive been nicotine free since about September. WOOHOO! All the while, one of my best friends is heavy into vaping. Buying and collecting PVs and going through 30ml bottles of juice in 2 or 3 days. Whenever we went over he had something new and my wife started getting curious. She was tired of smoking and wanted an alternative. She got an eRoll starter kit and I, with the intention of using only 0 nic e-liquid, bought one also because I loved the wide variety of flavors. She was hooked instantly with her 12mg juice and I was disappointed with my 0mg juice. I wanted a throat hit
. I caved and bought some 6mg juice but that wasnt good enough either so I tried 12mg and it hit the spot. Well, im hooked on nicotine again...great. We enjoyed vaping though and knew the health risks were extremely low. We quickly upgraded from the eRoll to eGo batts and vivi novas to big batt PVs with carto tanks and dripping attys and all that. Even attended some local vape meets and had a grand time. About a month ago my wife was out and about when her battery died and she had forgotten to take her spare 18350. She caved and smoked a stink stick that her friend gave her. I was disappointed but understood. We continued to vape but my wife gradually became a victim to the convenience and lack of maintance of cigarettes while I continued to vape. At this point, my wife is back to smoking regularly again (bummer). The friend I mentioned earlier who was my only vaping buddy took a job out of town working 4 or 5 days a week and only coming home for a few days. His vaping subsided greatly because being in construction, he didnt want to take his 500+ dollar PVs out to the field and risk breaking them. He went back to smoking while at work and vaping at home. This only lasted a short amount of time before he too fell victim to the convenience and switched back to smokes. The cheese stands alone...Now I am the only one out of all my friends who vape outside of my brother in law who uses solely as a nic delivery system rather than the hobby that myself and my wife had turned it into. As the flames died down, I became less interested in finding new flavors and my current all day vapes were growing old. I tried rekindling the fire by visting my local vape shop (that just so happens to have opened about a month after we started vaping) and trying some new flavors. It just didnt do it. At this point I looked back on my last few months of vaping and pondered all of the malfunctions, defective units, time spent cleaning,etc, and thought "wow, this is a lot of work". I decided this past weekend to go back to snus. I fought myself over it but I finally made the decision. I wanted take another look at finding swedish snus online but came up with the same outrageous shipping everywhere I went. I did a store locator search on Generals website to see if any new locations had been added and to my surprise, the Sheetz gas station chains in my area were stocking General nordic mint!!! My first thought was no more hour long round trips to the cigar shop to get my General fix! I went to the store and got a can of nordic mint (cool name) and was kind of disappointed when he handed it to me in a rectangular shaped can and saw that it only has 12 portions!! Im used to General white portions having 24 . I also prefer the round shape to the rectangular but thats just preference and doesnt affect taste obviously. The portions are longer than the white portions and while they taste good they are much sweeter than my old friend General white portion. Well, Im back on the snus bus for now. We will see if its a long trip or a short one before I decide to kick the habit again. One things for sure...I need to sell this vaping stuff to try to recoup some loss :/ off to the classifieds!
