Naturally, as a contrarian bastard when it comes to state interference, this somewhat tweaked my interest in such gadgets. Especially on finding out that they raise the hackles of readily-gulled, pompous, egomaniacal, borderline psychotic anti-smoking fuckweeds.
So, despite there being a degree of uneasiness between smokers and vapers (those who use e-cigs), I made enquiries about getting hold of one.
It was a surprise how complicated (for a newbie) they appeared to be at first glance, but I was fortunate that an uncommonly generous person - and a vaping expert to boot - offered to send a full kit complete with instructions and individually hand-labelled parts and potions.
A little fiddling around with atties, batteries, 510s, mouthpieces and fluid later, and I had my first taste of an e-cig since visiting a benevolent 'witch's' house** in Birmingham last year.
Since then I've been having quite a bit of fun with it, taking a puff while surveying magazines in Sainsbury's was the best so far - no-one cared as I may as well have been using an asthma inhaler for all they knew. Nothing to see (or smell, or wash clothes, hair etc) here.
Apart from regular cartridges, there are a variety of exotic flavours as Leg Iron has explained before. The only one I have so far is mint choc chip ice cream, which I
A couple of days after the package arrived, I think I can now understand why they boil anti-smoker piss so much. After nearly three decades of fabricating a scare story to eliminate others enjoying a substance (nicotine) of which they personally disapprove, the righteous have next to nothing on the e-cig, and it must really - no, I mean really - grate.
Having dreamed for years of that orgasmic final boot in the face of those they jealously hated for enjoying a benign pleasure, they can see a few wriggling free, still putting hand to mouth, and with the two fingers still defiantly up.
No chance of ever reining these people in with incredible tales of widescale death and disaster to others. No chance of classifying water vapour emissions as a class A carcinogen. Nothing but a limp bleating about how e-cigs may be mildly dangerous to the user, as if anyone cares. Nothing, really, except a future of exposing themselves as even more mentally unbalanced than the public is increasingly discovering them to be.
Some have found that vaping is a way of ditching tobacco for good; anti-smokers would prefer to ban e-cigs to force them back to being smokers where they are easier to hit. As Bannatyne shows above, they're not really bothered about health, or the chiildren, or harm reduction - they just enjoy the hunt, the superiority, and the self-righteousness.
E-cigs threaten to deprive them of that, all of it - after 30 years of intense obsessive effort - and the psychos don't like it one bit.
My motive for taking up vaping isn't altruistic or self-preservatory, I don't intend to give up smoking (that vague notion evaporated on July 1st 2007). I just want to be firmly in the opposition trench when the righteous come gunning for vapers. Anti-smokers (or anything that looks like smoking) get their jollies from ordering people around, I derive mine from telling them to fuck off.
I'm vaping now. The game's afoot, bring it on!
** Long story. She will hopefully turn up in the comments, if she's in the country.
