Disposables, yes, but at least where I’m from there was a big independent industry of “flavor” industries that quickly popped up around 2015, and in those years hardware had a ton of manufacturers and “DIY” aspects. You’d make your own liquids and coils using cheap specialized metal wire and cotton and you could go on for months with 20€. Then a bunch of absolute horseshit laws from both the national and EU level seemed to try and make that experience as inconvenient as possible, for example requiring you to buy half-filled bottles that you must fill yourself using nicotine bases that can be no bigger than 10ml, resulting in 3-4 small disposable plastic bottles per liquid that you buy. Several countries limited what flavors you can buy, and/or regulated the market such that there is only one or two brands of approved hardware manufacturers.
Now if you think that reducing accessibility of vapes is good, this would all be fine and dandy, but at the same time all the kids are vaping disposables, which are not subject to some of the same restrictions and you can buy online or in corner stores for the price of a pack of cigs. Of course almost all the brands are owned by old tobacco money, but I still can’t really understand how we took a perfectly good and simple system like an electronic cigarette with a decent industry behind it, made it borderline illegal, and then normalized the same thing but imported from a cartel, that works the exact same except that they refuse to put two holes for refilling and charging it. Fucking disposable lithium batteries in 2026.
I once owned a very popular food shop, and I always loved telling people to knock off the vapes. Now and then, someone would try to look tough in front of their buddies, and try to argue with me, and only succeeded in getting them, and their buddies, kicked out.
I would tell them: “This shop is my kingdom, and I’m the Emperor, and what I say goes, PERIOD. Do what I say, or get out!” I would say it exactly like that, while glaring into their eyes. Few ever argued a word after that, and those that did, were tossed out, FOREVER.
I feel like vapes have undone all the progress against smoking and more.
i feel like you can’t have grown up in a smoking household and seriously believe this
Pretty sure that was why they were invented, cig companies made so much money
Disposables, yes, but at least where I’m from there was a big independent industry of “flavor” industries that quickly popped up around 2015, and in those years hardware had a ton of manufacturers and “DIY” aspects. You’d make your own liquids and coils using cheap specialized metal wire and cotton and you could go on for months with 20€. Then a bunch of absolute horseshit laws from both the national and EU level seemed to try and make that experience as inconvenient as possible, for example requiring you to buy half-filled bottles that you must fill yourself using nicotine bases that can be no bigger than 10ml, resulting in 3-4 small disposable plastic bottles per liquid that you buy. Several countries limited what flavors you can buy, and/or regulated the market such that there is only one or two brands of approved hardware manufacturers.
Now if you think that reducing accessibility of vapes is good, this would all be fine and dandy, but at the same time all the kids are vaping disposables, which are not subject to some of the same restrictions and you can buy online or in corner stores for the price of a pack of cigs. Of course almost all the brands are owned by old tobacco money, but I still can’t really understand how we took a perfectly good and simple system like an electronic cigarette with a decent industry behind it, made it borderline illegal, and then normalized the same thing but imported from a cartel, that works the exact same except that they refuse to put two holes for refilling and charging it. Fucking disposable lithium batteries in 2026.
Yup. When vapes and ecigs started being a thing, I kicked so many pissy whiny babies out of my store on the daily for it.
Not allowed to do that at my current job.
I once owned a very popular food shop, and I always loved telling people to knock off the vapes. Now and then, someone would try to look tough in front of their buddies, and try to argue with me, and only succeeded in getting them, and their buddies, kicked out.
I would tell them: “This shop is my kingdom, and I’m the Emperor, and what I say goes, PERIOD. Do what I say, or get out!” I would say it exactly like that, while glaring into their eyes. Few ever argued a word after that, and those that did, were tossed out, FOREVER.
B A S E D
Everybody look out, we got a couple of internet tough guys