Juice review: Steam Sauce - Transdimensional by ePipeMods

Last time I ordered a new batch of one of my favourite juices, the Long Bottom Leaf, from ePipeMods, I included a couple of newcomers as well. I've already reviewed the Piper Mint here: http://goo.gl/SKrdMv. The second newcomer was Transdimensional from ePipeMods fairly new range of non-tobacco juices called Steam Sauce.

"The Marty McFly of eliquids; a grape so intense, it exists in multiple dimensions". 

This is the description ePipeMods have for this Juice on their webpage. It is indeed a pretty intense grape juice, but at the same time, as always from ePipeMods, very well balanced. I was afraid that grape might be a bit too sweet for me, but it's not. You get tons of flavour, perfect amount of sweetness and huge amount of vapour as usual with the ePipeMods juices. Now I haven't tried any other grape e-liquids so I don't have anything to compare with, but my experience is that quite a lot fruit juices have that artificial taste to them. Transdimensional however doesn't have that at all. Another problem with a lot of the fruit juices I've tried is that it really tastes more like a blend of different fruits rather than the fruit they are actually meant to taste like. This as well makes Transdimensional stand out from the crowd, it actually tastes grape. 

This juice, being the second one from the Steam Sauce range that I've tried, have raised my expectations for the rest of them. And I do plan to taste them all. EPipeMods keep on delivering high quality juices that never disappoints me. The problem, however, with this new Steam Sauce range, is that it has no less than 14 juices to choose from. Now I have 12 to go and no idea which one to choose next.

Will the fate of the e-cigarettes be decided in court?

In December last year the New York City council's Health Committee passed a bill that bans the use of e-cigarettes in all places that normal cigarette use is banned (bit.ly/1iJAS9h). E-cigarettes will be included in the Smoke-Free Air Act of 2002, and this will go into effect on the 29th of April, 4 months after the ban was passed. Yesterday, however, e-cigarette advocates led by Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment (CLASH) filed a lawsuit against the New York City Council, claiming that the ban violates the New York State Constitution (bit.ly/1hnryov). The lawsuit is not based on health claims, but on the advocates says that according to the constitution you cannot edit an existing law to include something that has nothing to do with the existing law. The New York Constitution states: "No private or local bill…shall embrace more than one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title."

The outcome of this will be very interesting, not only because it will decide whether New Yorkers can vape in bars and restaurants, but it also means that a court has to make a decision on whether e-cigarettes and cigarettes are in fact the same subject. But this is not the first time e-cigarette regulations has been discussed in a courtroom. The FDA has been trying to regulate e-cigarettes as drug-delivery devices (together with nicotine patches and gum), but has lost this battle in court: bit.ly/1g1hVuH. The courts ruling was that they could not regulate them as such unless health claims are made, and the court said that the FDA should regulate them as tobacco products. As far as I know, the FDA is expected to propose regulations for this but has still not done this. Why they haven't yet, I don't really know, but they are probably struggling to find any good reason to, as the majority of scientific evidence shows that there is none. The fact that the FDA wanted to regulate e-cigarettes as a pharmaceutical product, I think shows that they really do know that the e-cigarettes are helping people quit smoking and are virtually harmless. And then... what will happen if the New York court decides that e-cigarettes and cigarettes are not the same thing?

Other countries has also tried to regulate e-cigarettes as pharmaceutical products. In France, before the TPD was approved though, a court decided that e-cigarettes are tobacco products (f24.my/NUxNbv), a German court has ordered that e-cigarettes cannot be restricted (bit.ly/1gCz4B1) and in Hungary a court also ruled that e-cigarettes are not pharmaceutical products (bit.ly/1jvmNjU). Earlier I've also written about a court in Sweden that ruled against Swedish customs who wanted to classify e-cigarettes as a pharmaceutical product (bit.ly/NUH7MK). There are probably more examples as well. The courts around the world at least seem to agree that e-cigarettes cannot be regulated as medicines. But are they tobacco products? It'll be very interresting to see what the New York court decides on in that matter.

Here in Europe I also expect that we'll see that e-cigarette regulations will end up in court. French consumer organization Aiduce (www.aiduce.fr) say that the provisions in the TPD "are unjust, incoherent and detrimental to public health", and "As soon as it (the TPD) is transposed into national law, it will be challenged before the Courts" (bit.ly/1f08ACW).

It can look like the fate of vaping and e-cigarettes will be decided in courtrooms around the world. And that, I hope, will be a good thing for vapers and smokers who wants to quit. Most courts, have high evidence requirements. This means that they will look at all the scientific evidence, and the ones that provide the evidence might be dragged into the courtrooms to witness. It will be very hard for the regulators to provide scientific evidence backing up their regulations, and hopefully they will not be able to. And I look forward to see what happens if Aiduce go through with their plan, and the scientific data to support the 20mg/ml limit on nicotine content is examined by a court...

photo credit: SalFalko via photopin cc

Nicotine poisoning; the anti-e-cig-movements new favourite argument?

Responsible adults is the key to avoid nicotine poisoning.
photo credit: lindsay-fox via photopin cc

The gateway argument has been the anti-e-cigarette-movements favourite argument for a while now, urging us to think of the children that would doubtlessly start using e-cigarettes and then move on to traditional cigarettes, or even worse, according to some of the most delusional anti-e-cig advocates, to harder drugs. However, this argument has been properly ripped apart by people like Clive Bates and Dr. Michael Siegel (read http://www.clivebates.com/?p=2053 and http://goo.gl/tYS7Gb) lately. In my opinion Dr. Glantz himself is kind of responsible for destroying the credibility of this argument totally by publishing his infamous report that, as I've written about earlier (http://goo.gl/AvS6T8), despite failing to provide data to support the argument, claims to prove it by deliberately misusing the data they actually did have.

Now, however, I'm a bit worried by a new kind of propaganda emerging in the media. Yesterday this headline was screaming against us from the New York Times: Selling a Poison by the Barrel: Liquid Nicotine for E-Cigarettes. To be fair, however, the article itself is not as bad as the headline would suggest. It does recognize that most of these poisonings are due to the lack of proper regulations and careless adults, and it has some statements that supports reasonable regulations. However I am afraid such headlines, and the scaremongering cited in there, will be picked up by the anti-ecig-movement and used to support their crusade against vaping. It might very well become the anti-e-cig-movements new favourite argument.

I did some google searches on the topic and I noticed several newspapers and websites have published stories on the topic last week. A press release from Minnesota seems to be a favourite source of information. Read about it here (among other places): http://www.wdaz.com/event/article/id/23361/. The case in Minnesota is that the number of reported incidents of nicotine poisoning by e-liquid among teens and children has jumped from 5 to 50 from 2012 to 2013. Sounds bad huh? Well, first of all we see e-cigarette use booming around the world so an increase in poisoning cases are not unexpected, and e-cigarettes are not even close the the number of poisoning cases from other household products. But does that mean we shouldn't worry about this? Not at all... we need to take this seriously of course. We should start out by trying to figure out the reasons why kids get poisoned, and what we can do about it.

On thing I notice is that 50% of the cases are children younger than 3 years. These kids are not capable of opening a child proof bottle, so all these cases are caused irresponsible adults, either leaving childproof bottles opened in reach of children, or leaving bottles that are not childproof in their reach. 9 of the cases were teenagers meaning that 16 we're kids older between 3 and 13 years old. The reasons for these poisoning could very well be the same as for the ones under 3 years, but it could also be that these children actually had bought the e-liquid, as there is no age limit. Other reasons for poisonings could be unsafe bottles (leaking), unsafe equipment, and that people are really not aware what is in the bottles and how to treat them. The solution to all of this is reasonable regulation, with emphasis on reasonable. That means labelling and information requirements, reasonable nicotine concentration limits and age limits on sales.

Over-regulation or banning will on the other hand lead to more cases of poisoning. I've earlier written about the consequences of over-regulation, and in addition to forcing a lot of ex-smokers back to cigarettes and denying heavy smokers the option of e-cigarettes, over-regulation or banning will have negative impacts on the safety of e-cigarettes. Some examples:

• One of the worst consequences is a thriving black market. A black market is by it's nature not at all regulated and will supply a lot of unsafe equipment, unlabelled e-liquid bottles with nicotine concentrations off the chart and no information to the customers whatsoever. 
• Regulating the sizes of bottles and cartridges, like the TPD does, will also have negative consequences on safety. It will lead to more bottles and cartridges around the house (easier to loose, misplace), or carried around. Filling will also need to happen more often, leading to even more risk.
• Limiting the nicotine content too low (like 20ml/mg in the TPD) will have a couple of negative effects as well: It will force a lot of people to get their products from a black market, which is as I said above not good, but it will also lead to more filling, more frequent use and more e-liquid around children.

Nicotine poisoning from e-liquid is a matter we really do need to take into consideration. And the e-cigarette industry (well most of it anyway) and vapers do take this seriously and most important, they do know what measures need to be taken to ensure safety in this matter. This brings further support to the claim that vapers should write the laws on vaping, because the regulators have shown that they do not understand this. The EU rules on nicotine concentration and bottle and cartridge sizes are perfect examples of over-regulation that will work against its intention. The rules were put there to enhance safety (at least that is what the EU claim), but will in fact lead to less safety. Another example is that the EU (and the American Cancer Association) is against age limiting, while the the e-cigarette industry is currently self regulating and the great majority of vendors enforce an age limit on e-liquid and vaping equipment. Almost all the e-liquid I buy also has good labelling with ingredients and health warnings. In conclusion, the e-cigarette industry, and the vapers do need to worry about the children... and they do that today. And, unlike the regulators, they do understand the safety aspects of vaping and e-cigarettes.

Review: Mini Aspire BDC Clearomiser and 390mAh ECig Tank Batteries from Smokers Angel

A couple of weeks ago my wife asked if I could get her something smaller to bring out and about than the Kanger Evod she has been using for a while now. I thought that I'd ask around a bit and find a decent cig-a-like for her. So I did, and James, who runs the excellent Ashtray Blog as well as the Smokers Angel web-shop told me that they had some new Mini Aspire BDC Clearomisers exclusively made for them. Match this up with a cool mini ego-style battery and you got a really small combo, perfect for bringing out and about. My wife was pretty set on a cig-a-like, but she also loves skulls, so when I saw the skull-batteries I thought why not give it a shot.

Now, I got the package about a week ago, filled it up with Long Bottom Leaf and gave it to my wife. She absolutely loved it and the Evod has been collecting dust since then. The size is perfect for bringing around, the batteries have the classic 5 click locking feature so you can safely keep it in your pocket and the clearomiser is pretty solidly built and we've had no leaking yet. In other words, this is perfect for bringing around, if you're going out just a short trip or you just don't vape that much, like my wife. I think she goes through like 1 ml a day if not less. As for myself, I go through around 3-5 ml a day so for me this would be more like an extra device to bring when I'm just going out for a couple of hours or to a party or something where I wouldn't want to bring the more expensive devices. Cause it's also quite affordable, the atty is £7 and the batteries £8 and you can buy a strip of 5 replacement coils for £8.

Size matters. Shown beside an Evod on
a VV 650mah battery, an Evod 650mah
and a 10ml juice bottle.

Now to the performance of this little thingy. I'm used to my genesis atomizers, and of course this doesn't give you the same flavour and vapor-production as the high end atties and mods. And I wouldn't expect it to either. That said, the first thing that hit me was that I thought it performed a lot better than the Evod. Fresh out of the box the flavour was clean and vapour-production was pretty great. Now my wife has been hugging it for a week and I just gave it a taste again and I can notice the difference of course, but it's still performing pretty well. Personally I would change the coil after a week, but that of course also depends on how much you use it and the juices you use. The Long Bottom Leaf is pure VG and tends to build up a bit on my genesis coils and muting the flavour pretty quickly, so I'd actually say I'm quite happy with the Mini Aspire coil lasting a week with that juice.

This is an awesome little combo, and I do actually think I'm going to get myself one as well when they get back in stock. For a medium to heavy vaper the battery size (and tank size if you don't want to bring a juice bottle) makes this an affordable extra device to bring out and about. For a light vaper it might be a main device. Looking at the different decorations available on the batteries I'd say some of them would definitively appeal to the ladies, and they also have their handbags with them at all times so it wouldn't be a problem to bring an extra battery and a small bottle of juice for a night out. This would also be a combo I'd recommend as a first device for a smoker who wants to try out e-cigarettes, due to the ease of use.... unless it's one of those who wants a cig-a-like no matter what. For those I'd let them get their cig-a-like and then offer to try this one out and I bet they go buy one as well. Thanks to James from The Smokers Angel who recommended this.

Lots of cool batteries to choose from, and something for the ladies as well

On vaping in Norwegian media today: "E-cigarettes create smoking boom"

This morning I was reading the online version of one of Norway's biggest newspapers, VG, and spotted some pictures of people blowing some pretty decent clouds of vapour. "E-cigarettes create smoking boom" was the headline accompanying the pictures and the ingress was something like this: "They smoke on the bus, in the cinema and inside nightclubs. The "Vapers" are heading full speed to become generally accepted. The new trend takes Norway by storm". The article was released in VG.no's premium service so I had to pay for a week of this service to be able to read it. It is also in today's paper version of VG. (The article can be found here, in Norwegian of course, and you'll have to pay for at least 1 week, which is 35 NOKs: http://goo.gl/fv99nu).

The article is kind of a life-style piece, describing everyday situations where e-cigarettes are seen more and more often. Pretty amusing reading actually. After describing a situation where someone vapes in the cinema the article sums up the situation (freely translated): "New winds is blowing into nicotine hungry lungs. In nursing homes old farts are using hyper-modern smoking equipment. In a crane, a polish worker is sucking on his plastic mouthpiece. Hip girls blow clouds of vapor in bars".

It moves on to explain what an e-cigarette is and gives us a list of vaping celebrities (Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Paris Hilton, Ronnie Wood, Lindsay Lohan og Lady Gaga), before summing up the legal status here in Norway. And of course, our friend Karl Erik Lund is mentioned here as well, when the consequences of the new TPD is mentioned: "It looks like e-cigarettes containing nicotine will also be legal in Norway" says Lund, and explains: "There are few reasons to maintain the existing ban, now the debate will be about regulations, health warnings, declaration of contents, flavours, age restrictions and so on."

The article continues to give examples of how smoking is replaced by vaping. It mentions the Kik launch party, where Helen Flanagan arrived in a white Lamborghini, puffing on a blue e-cigarette, and that the main character in the Netflix series "House of Cards", Frank Underwood, replaces the old analogs with e-cigarettes. "A vice precident can't smoke cigarettes" it is pointed out. The word "smoking" is replaced with "vaping" and Big Tobacco is of course involved, states the article.

"Norsk Dampselskap" (Norwegian Union of vapers) is also mentioned and Jacob Hauge from the organization says that they exist mainly for people that wants to replace smoke with vapour. It's great to see that the journalist behind this article (Olav Brekke Mathisen) has done his research. He even mentions the modding sub-culture, describing how some users modifies their e-cigarettes, or making new "mods" with the intention to maximize the vaping experience, experimenting to create as much vapour as possible. American vaper Brian Ott is described as a human vapour machine, capable of filling a room with vapour in just a couple of puffs.  

"Statistically it is more dangerous taking the bus through the capitol, than to fill your lungs with electronically generated vapour. The big question in 2014 is maybe not what long term harms that lurks in the fog, but how socially acceptable it will be to vape", the author states towards the end of the article. And then he has gone out and asked around in a lot of public places if vaping is accepted there. The answers are quite interresting:

• In a mall in Sandvika they are worried it will trigger the fire alarm, but they have it on the agenda to discuss it.
• In Oslo Airport they were asked if they would stop an old lady from vaping in the terminal, to which they answer that they do not have any restrictions on vaping in the terminal. (That's good news, I've always stealth vaped in the toilets in there)
• The head of the taxi-company in Tromsø says a lot of his colleagues have switched to vaping, but not in the car. He really doesn't see why a customer would do that. (This one really surprised me to be honest, as the car is one of the places I vape the most)
• Peppe's Pizza (one of the larges pizza restaurant chains in Norway) does not allow vaping in their restaurants for the sake of their customers. (Clearly they don't know a lot about it)
• You can't vape in a group workout session at SATS (a big fitness center chain). (Well, why would you need to do that :P)
• Then what about inside bars and nightclubs? Kaman Leung, responsible for social media communication at Jæger in Oslo, says they do not allow vaping at this time, but that a lot of their DJ's are very exited about vaping cause it allows them to vape at work. (Uhm... how does this work actually? The DJ is allowed to vape but not the guests... sounds pretty strange, and a bit hard to justify to a guest that starts puffing on an e-cigarette)
• And in the university reading rooms? HSE-advisor at NTNU (Norwegian University of Technology and Science), Arve Johansen, says he has actually never seen an e-cigarette. He seems unsure, but concludes that if there is smoke coming out of the device, the one using it would probably be asked to leave. (I'm not so sure about this... would be interesting to check)
• Finally, on the bus home? Svein-Arne Vik from Nettbuss Express says they do not have any rules against it as of now. (I think this varies from bus company to bus company to be honest).

Very interesting answers indeed. And I suspect some of these will change during 2014, when vaping gets more known to people, and people understand more what it is. It's pretty obvious from these answers that some people are still totally unaware of it's existence.

I think this article is a good piece of work, putting vaping in a positive light, and it will be read by a lot of people, as VG sells more than 600k papers every day in addition to all the people reading this online via their premium service (which they claim is the fastest growing premium newspaper service in the country). And it's good to see a journalist actually do some real research on vaping, and talk to people about it, rather than just writing whatever the health authorities feed them. Good work.