spydre

To the OP, welcome, and it's great you are looking for information. But just to start off with, I would stay away from the cigarette lookalikes. I've heard they are harder to get a throat hit out of, and plus, they can get more expensive than the other equipment with the amount of juice you go through, and how much is charged per cartridge and such. The disposables are the worst - advertised to be about a pack's worth, but when you vape it, I've heard they last no more than 2 hours on the battery life, which, considering how many hours in a day, can get just as expensive or more expensive than smoking - which is why I stayed away from e-cigarettes until I found out about the other equipment (I'm currently using the basic eGo starter package, but with different tanks to hold the juice than what came with the kit, but I have other equipment coming in. Didn't think you could do Chantix with epilepsy, either? But no matter, I'm bipolar, and an a TON of medication for it, not to mention medication for MS and such, we well as my epilepsy medication, so it was a no no for me (I haven't had a true manic episode for about 7 years, although I would almost welcome one to get out of the depression, I'm not willing to risk it). They never told me of any problems with the patch and my epilepsy, but whenever I used it, the muscle I had it on would end up in a lot of pain and spasms by the end of the day, so they figured I was allergic. Plus, after two days, I figured out that even the highest dose patch wasn't as much as I was getting smoking 2 packs a day, so I would supplement with the occasional cigarette, even if I let half of it burn out. Any time I tried to quit analogs before this, I never lasted more than 2 days without going back to analogs at least a few a day. And my anxiety is much worse now, before I put down the analogs, then it was last time I tried, when I lasted somewhere between 5 - 12 hours. B, I realized within a week as well - we were still smoking the rest of our analogs to finish them off (at most, what would have been a 3 day supply lasted us about a week or 10 days, can't remember the exact day we picked this stuff up, and I don't feel like looking up our account history, lol. By the end of the week, while I was smoking an analog, I would still take an occasional vape because of the flavor, and the analogs tasted bleh. I still did have those two slip ups, but one I pretty much planned on, and the other, well, you know. But except for 5 on 2 days, I've been analog free since 7/27. There have been times when I've missed it, especially that first week, or occasionally now and then (like when I have my occasional can't settle of a flavor times), but for the most part, I haven't looked back.

I've never tried the VN's. I went straight from the generic clearomizers (rather cheap) to the Evods. The first store we shopped at didn't stock the Vivi Novas as far as I know, and I was so set on the Evods after that, I didn't even look at other clearomizers until I got the Davide. On the Evods I have like a lime green, the hot pink, a red/burgandy color, and a black one. I only have one of any color I've gotten so I can keep track of what flavor is in what tank.

Tam, I'm signed up with the CASAA facebook group, and I got the info from there, I posted it in the linked thread at the top of the page - both the link to the post and the text of the post - it's an open group, so you don't have to be a member to view it. I think CASAA also mentions it on their regular facebook page. IMO, I think people automatically panic when they hear that the FDA doing anything, like these listening sessions, with regards to e-cigs. They don't even have the approval yet to regulate them, although I believe that it's just a technicality, and that will be changed soon from what I've seen.

Okay, I need to double check the Zmax description on the various sites, but I've heard you want to go with UNprotected batteries rather than protected, something about there being limits to how fast you can charge them, or limits on the power output at one time? So I'm asking my experts here, which are best to go with on APV's? Also, which is the best brand of batteries - Efest or AW? Finally, I was PLANNING to get and EFest LUC intelligent charger, I've heard Trustfire has issues, and hubby's Trustfire has issues. Are there any issues I should know about the EFest?

Read my latest post in the above pinned thread straight from the mouths of CASAA. The WSJ article (which the only other source I found was QUOTING the WSJ article), according to the FDA was reporting unsubstantiated RUMOR as fact. The FDA released a statement to CASAA this morning, which I quoted in the in thread linked at the top of everyone's page highlighted in pink, and CASAA was scheduled to meet with FDA Monday anyway. Evidently these "listening sessions" happen regularly.

No, it was just how I was feeling - I vaped for about four hours yesterday. This guy orders all his juices, and this one from a store we're familiar with - by the time he gets them, and gets them out, they've usually steeped enough. My tongue finally came in, and I vaped on Honey Wood for a while (which I have to order again tonight) and then the Cinnamon Roll again. Although right now I hit hubby up for some of his inferno for a few minutes. Had to use his carto tank, because both my glass tanks are full. Was fine before I brushed my teeth (we're getting ready to go out to dinner), but it doesn't hold up well with mint toothpaste taste, lol. Annnnd now that I've brushed my teeth, no flavor's sitting right again. I HATE that.

Welcome!

On my 36 ml Honey Wood bottle, the squeeze is pretty light, and the liquid comes out pretty fast, and I've filled some Evod's up and had it spill into my lap via the center tube/mouthpiece before I realized what was happening.

I have that one! Of course, in my tank log, I call it, of course, hot pink (have to keep a tank listing of what I have in what since some liquids look so similar and I have um, 6 tanks now).

Yeah, so do I, and I'd wear the heck out of it, I'd wear it everywhere, which would embarrass the heck out of my husband, but it's a proud thing for me. Hmmm, we have a custom T-shirt maker in town, maybe I could get them to make one up for me. I can as well. The last place I worked at, there were several of us that smoked, and until the Executive Director (a smoker) resigned and we got a new one (a managing attorney from the housing department), we had an indoor smoking area. (Funny story - well, it wasn't so funny to me at the time - I was on medical leave when he changed the policy, and said we had to smoke outside - specifically in the back, on the loading dock/by the dumpster/that area - I came back to work, it was a lovely 18 degrees, but I only brought a jacket, because I thought I only had to worry about the trip to and from the car. I froze my behind off that day.) But at least that last almost year, I got a tan and got plenty of Vitamin D during the summer, lol. But it was also aggravating, because, well, I'm not sure when, the managing attorney of the Elderly Department, well, the ONLY attorney in the Elder Law department, starting feeding a pregnant feral cat that was sheltering behind the building. Well, cats tend to breed, and over the years, 1 cat became four (the first litter), and by the time we the staff put our foot down, found someplace that would take the cats (most shelters won't take ferals because they are unadoptable, or they just spay/neuter then and release them back to where they were), we trapped twenty freaking six of those things. So, especially in the summer heat, it stank. Of cat droppings. Once we started counting the cats, as well as we could, because they weren't all there at the same time during the day, many of them looked alike, etc., we came up with like, 13. We had no idea it was actually DOUBLE that amount. I don't know how many humane traps and how many trips to the place it took, but it was over four days. And we STILL didn't get them all - but the others didn't get fed by Stan anymore, so while they still sheltered there, at first, I got sick and had to stop working full time before it was determined if they were still going to stay there (as in not move on) or if they started breeding again.

I hope that happens just from switching from my ego starter stick batter to the zmax APV. I don't like too airy of a draw, so I'll be sticking with Pro Tank 2 - but I know that having the VV/VW will make a big difference in taste. But I'm hoping that it will allow me to drop in nic levels easier, too, because I'm vaping more than I smoked, so even at 18 or 15 mg nic, I'm still taking in more nic than I was smoking 2 ppd of lights.

Welcome! Once you start, you won't regret it. I certainly don't. Within three days, just the way your sense of smell improves is incredible. It tastes SOOOOO much better than analogs, it's hard, for me, to believe that the bleh taste of analogs satisfied me, much less some of the other things that came along with it. I was developing a chronic cough - I wouldn't call it a smoker's cough, but I was a smoker for 24 years. I would just up and have a little cough come up every once in a while, nothing huge, just a little cough. Within a week, that was gone. After a month, well, let's just say I'm pretty much stuck on the flavors.

I do.

Congratulations! I've only been working it for a month, and have had 5 in the two slip ups. I reset my counter with this last one, mainly, because I needed to remind myself what stress/fear caused, and that the only way I even was able to smoke those cigarettes was because they were menthols, and thus "flavored". I'm going to keep a bottle around of a higher nic content for those times Congrats on skipping 1000, and congrats on I'm sure better health.

Wow.

How much of a smoker were you, out of curiosity? I can do 6 - 8 in a day, although I think the day my mom went into the hospital, I MAY have done 10. Oh, and for those of you that can vape in the hospital, you're lucky. Hospitals around here - at least my hospital, and as far as I know, Barnes, you can't. I asked. See, when I started vaping a short month ago, I would go through one ego 900 mah battery in 18 - 24 hours. Then the time started getting shorter, and shorter.....seemed like all the short time was on one battery - but that was the battery I was using the biggest part of my vaping day. Now, the battery times have evened out, and it's because the amount I'm vaping has increased. At least, I'm assuming that's why my batteries run down quickly now. I go through two full batteries in a day this week, getting up around 7, going to bed around midnight. Since I have hubby's other stick battery (he uses one of them because skinny little evod and pro tank mini look weird on his big honking provari), I generally have 1 in use, 1 charging, and 1 charged. It's a good thing that so far today, I was only able to vape the cinnamon roll a little bit, because that's one I could see over-vaping on, not for the nic fix, or the oral fixation, but for the flavor. But my battery doesn't get hot when I chain vape, but coil area of the tank gets pretty hot when I vape a lot in quick succession.

Read this from CASAA's facebook group. It's an open group, so you should be able to see it. https://www.facebook.com/groups/casaamembers/permalink/554003184637533/ I just got an email from the FDA about the WSJ article. I'll try to post it here "This Week in CTP - Updates from the Center for Tobacco Products The FDA wants to correct inaccuracies in an August 22, 2013 article in the Wall Street Journal, titled “FDA Discusses Banning Online Sales of E-Cigarettes.” The FDA frequently meets with members of the tobacco industry, as well as with public health groups and other stakeholders, to better understand any concerns or questions they may have. As part of this effort, “listening sessions” with e-cigarette companies have been held at their request and have given the FDA an opportunity to listen to their concerns or views. “The FDA did not raise or weigh in on potential regulatory options—including any potential restrictions on e-cigarettes or any other particular product category—during these listening sessions,” said Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. “Any details about the agency’s intent to regulate additional categories of tobacco products will be made publicly available to all interested parties at the same time, through the issuance of a proposed rule.” The FDA currently regulates cigarettes, cigarette tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco and smokeless tobacco. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA) permits the FDA to deem other “tobacco products” to be subject to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act by regulation. The agency has announced its intent to issue a proposed rule deeming products meeting the definition of a “tobacco product” to be subject to FDA regulation. "

Hubby got me presents today! KPT 2, which I love, and Better Vapes' Cinnamon Roll, which I love, too, but I think I'm only going to be able to vape for a few hours at a time, because you get the sense of cinnamon powder, and after a few hours, it just didn't sit right anymore. I don't know, maybe it had something to do with eating dinner. Or maybe because I'm not feeling all that good....I'm going through a lot of med changes and I can't settle on a flavor, and now I just feel plain old weird - probably because of this latest med change.

Yeah, when they announced the ban on flavors (which included the trace of cocoa or chocolate most Marlboro light smokers didn't realize was in there, but I noticed ever since high school), there was like a three month lead time. People were PISSED that menthol wasn't included (but I think menthol constituted a HUGE percentage of the market share on tobacco sales), and I don't think things like strawberry swishers were included, or pipe tobacco (but those weren't considered cigarettes). The gambling thing wasn't the WINNERS not paying taxes, it was the gambling companies that were actually operating in the US, but using things like Grand Cayman bank accounts to get OUT of paying taxes. They were trying to do what big companies like Apple do very well - except they DIDN'T do it very well. Apple has it's assets diverted into so many mini-companies, some with no actual BUILDING presence in a country, but they do have a mail drop box, and that mini-company pays the tax rate in that country, which is very low to nothing, not to mention that all of their manufacturing is done in mostly China, where they pay pennies on the dollar what they would have to pay in the US for workers, without worry about FICA, health benefits, etc., just those pesky workers committing suicide. That's how Apple ends up paying just 3% taxes on their whole corporate earnings, while working Americans pay generally, what, 18%? Higher if you add in state taxes? That would be considered wholesale, and wouldn't be banned. There are plenty of B&M cigarette stores that import cigarettes (Dunhill is the one that immediately comes to mind, but I'm familiar with that, there are also french cigarettes, etc.). The cigarette companies aren't selling TO CONSUMERS online, they are receiving orders from a retail company and shipping them there, a/k/a a middle man, who's job it is to ensure that the minimum tobacco age is met. I'm not sure where you guys are getting the impression that it's juice. To me, it looks to me, and it stated in the article "e-cigarettes". The three people they mentioned and interviewed were the people that manufacture Blu, Njoy, and another company that manufacturers both disposables and the Blu type devices. I haven't seen anything that says it's the juice, or anything other than "e-cigarettes". Maybe they are literally just talking about the stupid little fake cigarettes, but if you've seen something that links it to juice, please show me a link. From the article, it says making the minimum age 18 OR 19. I would lay money down that if they make the minimum age for this 19, the minimum age for smoking is going up as well. In my town, to get a business license, it's a little more involved than that. You have to be properly zoned (so, you have actual declare what your business is going to be doing, even for a home business, I believe), inspected, etc., and the mayor signs off on the business licenses. We KNOW businesses are getting their hardware from China - that's where a good chunk of the hardware, APV's, tanks, are manufactured. From what I've seen, it's just juice that people don't like being foreign.

Well, in Illinois, we just passed a bill stating that e-cigs and e-cig products can only be sold to those 18 and over, but the stores in my area don't even let you in the shop if you are under 18, although I've seen some people come in with older people (possibly older teens) that may be questionable on the 18 mark, but they were coming in with what appeared (by both the fact that they were together, and the conversation) a parent, and the parent was the customer, not the younger person. And one guy at one of the shops doesn't look a day over 19 or 20 (that's coming from my wizened old 39 year old self. If I compare him to my 18, almost 19, year old, he looks older, if I compare him to my 19, much closer to 20, year old nephew, he looks about the same age). But I'm assuming he's probably 20 (?), he's sitting at the shop with three APV's, because he likes different ones with different flavors, he likes different APV's, and he doesn't want to have to worry about a battery dying during his shift, and he admits that he vapes more when he's working, because you can vape in the shop, and EVERYONE's vaping. But he's actually one of nicest guys (most knowledgeable, willing to spend the most time going over equipment with you) in that shop, but I've never met the owners yet, as they both have full time jobs. There's another guy, who we didn't like, and another woman, I'd say late 20's, early 30's (she looks kinda rough, like she's been through the wringer), and she freely admits she had a smoker's cough when she quit analogs, and her lungs were in piss poor shape, but all that is fine now. I haven't dealt with her as a sales associate, but I've chatted her up with a couple customers she was selling to. But my subject has wandered, as I'm prone to do. If the FDA passes this, I see two things happening (hopefully). B&M stores will (hopefully) start stocking more in terms of the hardware that they stock (my fave B&M, Better Vapes, in terms of APV's, only stocks the ZMax, and they don't even carry that in their online store, which existed for two years before the storefront, and they don't have the Davides and KPT's up on the online store yet). OR that could mean that a lot of the online stores will at least be setting up token storefronts so they could sell the hardware (the actual e-cig, and the APV's), but that would mean prices would go up, because they would have more expenses. All in all, I hate that they might do this. I hope they don't manage to get the tobacco act expanded to include e-cigs, but I also see it as inevitable. Maybe they will also see that for some of us, the flavors are primarily what keep us from going back to analogs - that, and the ability to do it anywhere (although unlike some hospitals, I checked yesterday while I was out there, and my hospital you can't vape inside of), and some other benefits that have NOTHING to do with what analogs actually do to your body (I would have a harder time giving up my vaping than I did switching from analogs to vaping, and straight tobacco flavors, I'm not fond of, so I'm not sure I could vape those). All that said, I think the FDA is still thinking with it's head wrapped around that very FLAWED "study" they did with the confiscated Chinese e-cigs (one brand, and only tested the actual cartridge, not juice, and not vapor) they did in 2008, despite more recent studies, including the one that came out of Philidelphia recently stating that the vapor provided no health risk to the user or "second-hand", other than the nicotine involved in the actual vaping, but that study did not go into the impacts of nicotine on the user's body, because a LOT of studies have talked about the impact of nicotine on the human body, some even conflicting, I believe. You would think that the government would WANT us to make this switch (other than the fact that I think they are in Big Tobacco's pockets, and this is cutting into Big Tobacco's profits), as, although the manufacturers make no claim to be safer than analogs (because that would invite FDA scrutiny, and they don't want that), it actually is (though they wouldn't believe that without proof - but all of us, I think, have noticed an improvement in our health, or at least, an improvement in our nose breathing, being able to smell, and improved taste), and it doesn't harm people around us (again, I don't think they'll believe it without seeing more than one study on it), and for gods' sake, it gets us off the freaking cancer sticks with 4000 chemicals, including urea, I think ammonia, um, I know other stuff, but can't remember it, and how many carcinogens? Okay, that's all I can think of to say right now, but I'm sure more will come to me later. Stupid fracking FDA. I love their involvement with medications, and I wish they could regulate over the counter supplements - especially the ones that claim to be miracle cures for such and such, but as it is, they can only analyze them, recommend that they be pulled off the shelf (they did that in one case lately where the B supplement sold at nutrition stores actually contained steroids as well, but I've still seen that same supplement advertised) and warn the public away from problem ones - which is why I only take my One-A-Day (which I currently can't even take because I'm on a megadose of Vit D) and fish oil. But e-cigarettes is going too far, IMO. And I don't think the flavors is marketing to kids, because this is really only marketed to former smokers, right?

Wow, that's a lot of stuff! And TFA, what does that mean? I'm guessing since you said it was a DIY order, then that's flavor only, not juice on those? Cause I can't see Ethyl Malto being a flavor that you would vape, lol. I'll be swinging by the B&M store either today or tomorrow, and I'll have at least a KPT to post plus some flavors (gotta get larger bottles of my flavors from them in lower nic levels, well, at least lower nic levels, not sure about the larger bottles because I haven't been hitting the fr vanilla or the milk chocolate that much this week). Anyway, I'll post here what I end up getting.

Yeah, my honey wood, which the last few days is my most frequent vape, with like four mls + per day, is a 15 nic rather than 18, plus it's 50/50 this time, rather than 25/75, so it tastes sooo much better. Will dropping my nic level change the taste?

Tam, did you mean SHAKE vigorously? I hope so.

I thought even in the 60's, only nerds wore pocket protectors?

Hahaha, I like how you clipped out all jibber jabber and just put [sciency stuff] in brackets when you quoted me! I tend to overanalyze, I think.