How Soon Will Vaping Become As Expensive As Smoking?

[copydude]

The Gov has ordered an inquiry into e-cigarettes, which looks like becoming Britain's biggest craze since hula hoops.

According to Bloomberg, early research indicates that vaping is 95% less harmful than smoking, so that's all good, yes?

Well, perhaps not in a country which depends upon punitive taxation. 3 million people are no longer buying the world's most expensive fags every day and one imagines the Gov will not be able to leave this alone for long.

Quote

 

The U.K. health charity Action on Smoking and Health welcomed the review.

“While e-cigarettes are helping smokers quit, they are not a stand-alone solution to the tobacco epidemic,” said Deborah Arnott, chief executive officer of the group. “It’s important that the evidence is considered in the context of tried and tested policies.”

 

 

[rollover]

I hope ASAP.

[CunningPlan]

Just now, rollover said:

I hope ASAP.

Why?

[fandanman]

I thought that but problem for the gov is anyone can make the juice themselves with only 4 ingedients needed, PG, VG, nicotine and flavour/colouring, can they tax the hell out of those ingredients, don't think so.

[Maynardgravy]

Putting my tinfoil hat on and as someone who managed to give up the old fashioned way of using willpower, getting masses of people off an expensive habit they would have ditched anyway into a slightly less expensive habit (but one they don't feel compelled to give up for health reasons) is a tax winner.

[copydude]

There are still 7.9 million smokers spending maybe 30 plus quid a week on fags.

Vaping is obviously weaning people off cigarettes faster than any 'tried and tested policies' of the past.

All this money is being released into the wider economy. It must be quite significant.

[CunningPlan]

21 minutes ago, Maynardgravy said:

Putting my tinfoil hat on and as someone who managed to give up the old fashioned way of using willpower, getting masses of people off an expensive habit they would have ditched anyway into a slightly less expensive habit (but one they don't feel compelled to give up for health reasons) is a tax winner.

I would change your 'slightly less expensive' to 'significantly less expensive'

And I tried for 30 years without success the old fashioned way.

I don't honestly believe I would have 'ditched anyway'

[dgul]

8 minutes ago, copydude said:

There are still 7.9 million smokers spending maybe 30 plus quid a week on fags.

Vaping is obviously weaning people off cigarettes faster than any 'tried and tested policies' of the past.

All this money is being released into the wider economy. It must be quite significant.

Yeah, but it is being spent in the wrong way.  The government would like to be in charge of the way it is spent.

[Maynardgravy]

1 minute ago, CunningPlan said:

I would change your 'slightly less expensive' to 'significantly less expensive'

And I tried for 30 years without success the old fashioned way.

I don't honestly believe I would have 'ditched anyway'

Fair enough, not everyone is the same. Personally, if I'd have known how easy it was to stop I'd have done it earlier. I think people wind themselves up over how 'hard' it is to stop and they're buggered before they start. The nicotine habit is  not the worst part IMO. That wanes after a week or so. It's the physical habit. I know a fair few 'vaps' that often go back to fags because they never got over the physical habit.

[CunningPlan]

10 minutes ago, Maynardgravy said:

Fair enough, not everyone is the same. Personally, if I'd have known how easy it was to stop I'd have done it earlier. I think people wind themselves up over how 'hard' it is to stop and they're buggered before they start. The nicotine habit is  not the worst part IMO. That wanes after a week or so. It's the physical habit. I know a fair few 'vaps' that often go back to fags because they never got over the physical habit.

Agreed. I tried everything, including a one on one with Alan Carr. Nothing worked for more than three weeks.

Started vaping three years ago. Haven't wanted a fag during that time. Not even a little bit.

 

[Dogtanian]

47 minutes ago, fandanman said:

I thought that but problem for the gov is anyone can make the juice themselves with only 4 ingedients needed, PG, VG, nicotine and flavour/colouring, can they tax the hell out of those ingredients, don't think so.

Exactly.

I recently started to make my own and it really is cheap.  From those ingredients the only one I can see the government trying to tax etc would be nicotine.  Nothing really stopping getting it from China in that case.

However there are lots of vapers that spend plenty on various shiny new gizmos to go with the liquid.

[thewig]

watching all these braindead people inhaling that trendy vapour reminds me of all those obese people proudly guzzling their diet cola

[Bricks n' mortar]

1 hour ago, fandanman said:

can they tax the hell out of those ingredients, don't think so.

Consider how well they taxed a weed you can grow in your garden.

[CunningPlan]

7 minutes ago, thewig said:

watching all these braindead people inhaling that trendy vapour reminds me of all those obese people proudly guzzling their diet cola

Well it has helped me and several million others give up smoking. If that makes me brain dead so be it. But at least I will be physically alive for a lot longer than I would have been.

[Inoperational Bumblebee]

Another ex-smoker turned vaper here. Significantly cheaper, and I'd never go back to cigarettes. Three days it took me to switch completely. Started as harm reduction but preferred it almost instantly.

The govt will have to look elsewhere for their money as I'm down to such a low nicotine level that I will be down to zero soon. Perhaps a shift to a less authoritarian culture could actually be beneficial to them...

[Dogtanian]

In the same boat, I tried an ecig years ago after a chest infection.  Wasn't planning on stopping or even quitting the fags.  Never looked back.

Guess ecigs don't have the cool factor from decades ingrained on the silver screen.  Lot of people definitely think it looks a bit silly but never heard it alluded with the undead!   

[copydude]

2 hours ago, Bricks n' mortar said:

Consider how well they taxed a weed you can grow in your garden.

I suppose they could license or even take over the outlets, like the Tabacs in France or the state shops in Hungary.

[Starla]

9 hours ago, CunningPlan said:

Agreed. I tried everything, including a one on one with Alan Carr. Nothing worked for more than three weeks.

Started vaping three years ago. Haven't wanted a fag during that time. Not even a little bit.

 

Same. Hypnotherapy 3 times, a session at the Allen Carr centre in Raynes Park (I cried in the car park afterwards), patches (gave me nightmares), gum, cold turkey, nothing for me worked. If I'd of found it as easy to give up as some people then I'd have stopped when I started.  I was fully addicted to nicotine and for whatever reason (long-term brain changes induced by continued nicotine exposure) meant my personal head-wiring found it harder to un-do.  I have never had even the slightest addiction to any other drug. Along came E-cigarettes and stopping was effortless.

 

[thewig]

9 hours ago, CunningPlan said:

Well it has helped me and several million others give up smoking. If that makes me brain dead so be it. But at least I will be physically alive for a lot longer than I would have been.

yeah well four litres of diet coke a day has helped me give up four litres of coke zero a day, check me out!

[Inoperational Bumblebee]

1 hour ago, thewig said:

yeah well four litres of diet coke a day has helped me give up four litres of coke zero a day, check me out!

Amusing, but inaccurate analogy. No carcinogens or carbon monoxide produced in a correctly used vape.

[Calcutta]

Have stopped smoking a couple of times, lasted two months both times. Got over the addiction pretty well, was handling the rage - not particularly well but I never actually attacked anyone - but after 6/7 weeks I found myself morbidly, suicidely depressed.

Have had a couple of ecigs before but they ran out at inconvenient times and I had to blag a fag off someone, which started me going again. 

Would be interested in vaping, I'm a bit confused about what it entails, and I think I'd actually be a bit embarrassed trying to buy the gear. And remembering to charge the bloody thing would be a pain.

[shatner's bassoon]

37 minutes ago, Calcutta said:

Have stopped smoking a couple of times, lasted two months both times. Got over the addiction pretty well, was handling the rage - not particularly well but I never actually attacked anyone - but after 6/7 weeks I found myself morbidly, suicidely depressed.

 

That may be because there are compounds in tobacco that are also found in a class of anti-depressant drugs, namely MAOIs. I was certainly much flatter when I stopped smoking & hence was probably self-medicating with the fags. 

"tobacco contains naturally occurring MAOI compounds in addition to the nicotine"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_inhibitor

[thewig]

3 hours ago, Inoperational Bumblebee said:

Amusing, but inaccurate analogy. No carcinogens or carbon monoxide produced in a correctly used vape.

theres no fat in salt so I just eat a kilo of salt a day

 

[thewig]

yeah I got really bad headaches when I drank four cups a coffee a day every day, until I started a cheeky dab of whizz on the hour every hour

I've never touched a cup of coffee since

 

[Diver Dan]

Vapes always remind me of the Robocop film where most of the city are addicted to a drug that gives them no pleasure other than a relief from their cravings.