Vaping is a great way to quit smoking. If you want to quit smoking, do that. Don't buy the drugstore stuff (Blu, etc.), though. Look for a shop or website that specializes in it and buy proper equipment and quality e-liquid.

I prefer to make my own e-liquid because quality control is easier buying ingredients separately (reputable suppliers will provide test documentation from third-party chemistry labs per batch). Also, it's much cheaper to make your own.

A high quality setup (battery, tank, coils) costs about the same as a carton of cigarettes. Mixing my own liquid (not hard, three ingredients, just mix 'em up), I spend about a dollar a week on that when you average it out.

How does that work? How does vaping make it easier to quit nicotine(smoking)?

You can dose yourself down just by the solution you use. Even with off-the-shelf cartridges.

Because nicotine itself is not terribly addictive. The main components of addiction to tobacco are now believed to be other substances.

Now consider the mechanical act of smoking; inhale, exhale cloud, reward.
Using a vaporizer reproduces the physical act that smoker's brains associate with the reward.

There does seem to be a period at the beginning of using a vaporizer, where there's a craving for cigarettes, perhaps because of the other addictive chemicals that are absent. But this craving isn't particularly difficult to overcome when you're satisfying the other elements of your habit. Not to mention, lungs clearing, sense of taste returning...

Then there's the final stage of using a vaporizer, which I've seen happen with others and I've experienced...you lower the nicotine levels further and further and then one day you start forgetting to use it at all. Your frequency of use may drop to nothing. Not always though. Some people go truely insane. We call them "scuba vapers". One of my buddies has earned the nickname "Darth Vaper".

Really? Where is that info found? I've never heard that.

The slow lowering of nicotine sounds like something that could help you give it up while still getting to hit it.

Anyone know of studies that show that its easier or that smokers are quitting at a higher rate due to vaping?

For me, the primary thing was that I use vaping as a means to alleviate withdrawal and to break the routine of smoking cigarettes. Smoking was just an automatic thing I did at certain times (after a meal, after a cup of coffee, work breaks, etc.). I used to always carry a pack of cigarettes around with me, but now I leave my vaping equipment at home (unless I'm going to be gone more than eight hours or so). Really, I think getting over just the routine of pulling out a cigarette and smoking it is the biggest hurdle. It's always good to keep in mind that between emotional dependence and physical dependence on a drug, it's the emotional dependence that is by *far* the more powerful.

Granted, I could have painlessly weened myself off cigarettes in a couple weeks with vaping (or gum or whatever), but I think it's probably better to stretch it out a little longer, and the instant hit you don't get with inhalation is important. Six months was my goal, and I'm at about four now.

It's pretty great really. I can smell things again and food tastes better and generally breath easier. I quit smoking once before cold turkey, but that only lasted a year. When I finally put this down, if I do relapse (which seems much less likely), it will be back to vaping rather than smoking.

The e-cigarettes I tried years ago when they first came out were crap and no substitute for what they have now, which has really only been around for a year or so in a convenient form. Probably there will be some decent studies in the very near future.

Part of the problem is that the drugstore stuff really doesn't work (and many are made by the tobacco companies, which is suspicious--they don't provide dosage information for one thing).

ed: Oh, and there are also a lot of people who don't quit nicotine, they just quit smoking and vape instead. Though it's too early to tell, vaping is almost certainly less harmful than smoking and may be effectively harmless. I don't know if you'd count that or not.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/why-smoking-addictive-its-probably-not-just-nicotine-despite-what-weve-been-told-years-260839

The chemical acetaldehyde in tobacco is suspect for lowering monoamine oxidase in the brain, resulting in higher dopamine levels which stimulates addiction.

*controversy

Keep sucking on those robot penises.
Until this whole industry is strictly regulated and controlled, I don't want that shit anywhere near me!

I'll settle for 'well tested with publicly available information', but we aren't anywhere near there yet either.
I'll stick with cigars, thanks.

If I were a smoker I'd definitely make my own because the industry has so little regulation, you have no real way to know what chemicals you are getting that may cause even more harm than a cigarette. As an example some brands have been shown to release more formaldehyde and other dangerous carcinogens at significantly higher rates than a regular cigarette.

E-cigs can definitely be used to help quit, but the opposite is also true. I see more teens than ever smoking e-cigs who wouldn't have otherwise smoked cigarettes because they don't ruin your teeth, your sense of taste, your breath, you don't have the smell of cigarettes on you. Those are teens that wouldn't have been addicted to smoking otherwise and now are, even if that addiction is less severe.

As an example, my step-nephew (18) for example and his father both use e-cigs and have for the last year or two as they've gained popularity. His father has since quit after much reduced smoking but the nephew goes through multiple flavored bottles a week. He never puts his down.

If you are a Seattle resident, and I know some of you are, I recommend visiting Future Vapor in Capitol Hill. The owners are all about reaching that 0% nicotine level, and will hook you up with what equipment you need for the budget you can afford. I can't praise these guys highly enough.

If you are not in the area, you can get a decent starter kit and a popular e-juice from mtbakervapor. They are a reliable and relatively inexpensive ecommerce outlet.

That said, if you don't smoke period, don't start vaping. Don't be a tool. Life is hard enough as it is without giving yourself one more fiddly-assed thing to worry about.

You know that the tobacco industry isn't regulated either, right? The FDA has been wanting to for decades, but there's way too much money at stake for politicians to let that happen.

Whatever FDA is doing with tobacco is still more than what's going on with those robot penises.

The examples you provide aren't particularly accurate.

The formaldehyde results in the study you're talking about have been misrepresented often. The study actually only showed higher formaldehyde when the vaporizer was run dry, meaning the coil wasn't vaporizing liquid but burning the liquid, wick and coil. Nobody would ever inhale that because it would taste horrible. The actual conclusion of the study showed fewer harmful chemicals in ecigarette vapor than cigarette smoke.

As far as teens using ecigarettes at a higher rate, the only available studies show teenage smoking rates dropping by about the same amount as the adoption of ecigarettes. There's no evidence of a net increase in nicotine use among teenagers. Instead, some teens that would have smoked are using ecigarettes.

Rock music is corrupting kids, comic books are teaching children bad morals, pinball leads to juvenile delinquency, video games make kids violent and ecigarettes are turning teens into addicts. Great headlines, zero facts.

I feel so damn superior for never started smoking...