October of 2016, we attended a football game in Edmonton and participated in an informal pool that night. As a result of the participation, we netted just shy of $400 CDN from our $20 buy-in. Rather than fritter the coin away on useless shit, we decided that we would head to a vape shop in town and purchase some equipment to see if we could kick tobacco in favor of “Big Vape” instead.
To be fair, and to offer full disclosure, for years prior to this we referred to vapers as weak and inferior and often called their rigs “douche pipes” and even less savory epithets that we won’t speak publicly. To us, it all seemed so absurd to see these folks pulling back on “juice” and “cloud chasing”. The latter being the biggest reason we avoided the vape world and vapers in general were handed derision rather than interest...the grade school cloud chasing.
However, those nearest to us had recently experienced some tragedy in their lives and even offered to buy us the gear to get us off tobacco so we can stave off cancerous endings as much as possible. Up to that point we had started off very young and averaged about a pack a day for decades. Then voluntarily weaned ourselves down to 15 a day at most and then down to 10 a day (unless in social settings when we would undoubtedly smoke a hellova lot more).
So we thought, “What the Hell?” and headed to the vape shop to spend our winnings.
Fast forward to almost a year later now and it was probably the best decision we can remember making in ages. No kidding, and nobody is paying for us to say this – it was one of the best decisions we have ever made. We do occasionally imbibe a cigarette but after so long as a vaper ourselves now, a cigarette brings harsh side effects these days. We get light headed and almost borderline queasy. We can feel the difference. So we do limit our exposure to real cigarettes as a result. Our body rejects it now.
So what’s with this post? This rant?
“The Man”. That’s about all we can say about it. This rant is aimed at “The Man” that is trying to slap their ridiculous Government regulations all over the industry to the point it will collapse. This is not hyperbole. This is fact. The regulations they are toying with are in no small way an over-reach and will cripple the vape community and cause it irreparable harm.
For years they have debated back and forth about the “health” benefits of vaping versus smoking, and only recently peer reviewed studies in notable journals have come to light that indeed espouse the benefits and the substantial difference between the two, insomuch as saying that vaping is now established as being 95-99% “better” for people as compared to smoking.
Make no mistake – ingesting anything that doesn’t come from nature will be bad for you in one way or another, so despite the fact that vaping is not smoking, you are still inhaling and ingesting, so it will cause damage to some degree.
That said though, it is also worthy of note to add that there is NO COMBUSTION with vaping. There are no combustible elements at play. Nothing burns. It is simply super-heated and then combined with your own breath creates vapor.
There’s no magic to it.
It is NOT smoke. Smoke can only come from combustibles. We repeat, vaping has NO COMBUSTIBLES. So to all of you that treat vaping like smoking and cry and pout about “second hand smoke” from a vape device...fuck you and your hat. You people are sitting in a vacuum of your own fucking stupidity and ignorance. There’s no smoke so there’s no second hand fuck all to worry about. You can walk into a vape shop and spend weeks or months in there with everyone puffing away and you will see no adverse effects. Ever. So fuck off with your stupidity. Read a book and get educated on how combustibles work.
Get your science on, bitches.
Since vaping has caught on, and wow has it ever caught on, more and more people smoking less and less equals a massive dropoff in taxation revenue from “sin tax”. As more people reject smoking and turn to vaping, the taxation revenues will shrink as a matter of due course. Seems the Government and “Big Tobacco” don’t like that very much and they seem Hellbent to make sure that the industry is so regulated that it can’t sustain itself, and that will send everyone back into “Big Tobacco’s” bed.
To make matters worse, the verbiage contained in the proposed S-5 Bill currently snaking its way through the Canadian Government, they are trying to imply that vaping is a gateway to smoking.
Here's the actual verbiage they used:
Vaping products
(3) The purpose of this Act with respect to vaping products is to support the objectives set out in subsection (1), to prevent vaping product use from leading to the use of tobacco products by young persons and non-users of tobacco products and, in particular,
(a) to protect young persons and non-users of tobacco products from inducements to use vaping products;
(b) to protect the health of young persons and non-users of tobacco products from exposure to and dependence on nicotine that could result from the use of vaping products;
(c) to protect the health of young persons by restricting access to vaping products;
(d) to prevent the public from being deceived or misled with respect to the health hazards of using vaping products; and
(e) to enhance public awareness of those hazards.
It is abundantly clear that despite the reams of information available, and the reams of stories and posts in social media, and even hearing people talking at the water cooler every day that no one in the Government seems to understand that those that vape are REJECTING TOBACCO. That is the entire reason they took up vaping...to get AWAY from tobacco.
But the Government shitsticks want us all to believe that if a kiddie starts vaping that they will treat it as a gateway to real tobacco. The complete opposite reason anyone ever picked up a vape rig in the first place.
And that’s what bothers us the most. The fact that the people in power who have no immediate idea what the fuck they’re talking about are the ones that will be pushing forth regulation even though they have no idea what they’re on about, and are using their own ignorance of the subject matter to prop them up.
Anyone that pushes a plan through from a platform of ignorance is an exercise in futility though.
That’s why we believe that the Canadian Government is incapable of making the right choice here. They have no idea what they’re talking about and until they get their information and facts sorted out, they have no business trying to put through Bills from a platform of ignorance.
Tobacco is tobacco. Vape is vape. One is a combustible and one is not. They are not now nor will they ever be interchangeable, nor can you conflate one with the other and treat them as “the same thing”. They are not the same thing and will never be the same thing.
For us, this whole proposal lost any and all credibility the moment they inferred that vaping will be treated as a gateway to more harmful (and completely contradictory to the point of vaping) tobacco use. Anyone that vapes is already shaking their heads at that gross misinformation and ignorance.
Really, if they get their way, there will no longer be juices of all kinds but only 2 to choose from. No flavor and tobacco flavor (oh, the fucking irony).
Free your 8
~ SC
As always, if you have any questions, concerns, comments or suggestions, feel free to leave them below or contact us.
