So, as many of you who know me are aware, I am a big fan of e-cigarettes. I’m not sure I understand how I managed without them. I’m one of the people who likes the mildly psychoactive effects of nicotine, especially when combined with caffeine, but I don’t like conventional delivery systems of it very much – I’ve never tried chewing tobacco, but just looking at it makes my stomach do a slow roll to the left. I like the taste of clove cigarettes, but smoking more than a few a week makes my lungs feel like they’re being used for target practice. Regular cigarettes have a whole long list of down sides, including that they smell awful and that repeated use of them makes me feel even more like death when I wake up than I already do. <\/p>\n
Enter the e-cig. Repeated use doesn’t make me feel sick, they don’t smell awful, and with my newest vendor they’re even available in lots of fun flavors. And they’re about 1\/4th the operating cost.<\/p>\n
Technologically, they’re very simple devices. A lithium battery, a pressure-sensing membrane, a small microcontroller that does battery and thermal management, and a cartridge with some liquid and a small heating element. You still get the same gesturing-and-oral-fixation fun of a regular cigarette, and the sense of something moving into and out of your mouth, but they taste good. No, really. And you never have to light them, a big safety plus when you’re smoking while driving. They’re instant-on-instant-off, so you can just drop ’em in your pocket when you step indoors. <\/p>\n
For a long time, I used Mistics<\/A>, but they have been having serious supply chain management issues lately – first they were no longer available on the web, and then you couldn’t buy them at any of their listed local retailers. So I’ve switched to South beach smoke<\/A>. I have to say, their product is a big step up. It’s somewhat more expensive, especially for the battery packs, but it’s better designed – the air doesn’t draw all the way through the battery, making a much easier drag, and the end cap is captive instead of plastic that can come off. (I assume in case of a battery runaway it would still pop off to vent). Their chargers are better designed – with mistic, you must plug the charger into power first and then screw the cig in, with south beach, the charger repeatedly drops the charge current in order to ‘poll’ the battery to see it’s stage of charge. Way safer, too, if you think about it. And they have flavors. Lots of them, and they never seem to be backordered. My favorites are Chocolate, Cherry, Pina Colada (even though it keeps getting that song stuck in my head), and Peach. So far I’ve only found one flavor (Tobacco Gold) that I didn’t like.. it’s awful in a chemically, artificial sweetener sort of way. But their blue and traditional flavors are quite nice.<\/p>\n I’ve also found the folks at South Beach to be very helpful – while I did have one battery arrive DOA (it would trip the overcurrent limit on the USB charger, and on a AC charger would just sit at ‘charging’ forever), they sent me *two* replacements for it, no questions asked.<\/p>\n So, if you’re a smoker (if there’s anyone left in the world that will admit they are), you ought to try ’em out. All of the nicotine, none of the cancer. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n I do have to wonder, with WA’s new marajuana legalization, is a THC e-cig in the works? \ud83d\ude09 I wouldn’t use one if it did exist – I already have enough trouble with paranoia without adding chemical help – but it would be a neat product to see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So, as many of you who know me are aware, I am a big fan of e-cigarettes. I’m not sure I understand how I managed without them. I’m one of the people who likes the mildly psychoactive effects of nicotine, especially when combined with caffeine, but I don’t like conventional delivery systems of it very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2276"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2279,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276\/revisions\/2279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}