E-cigarette manufacturer is first to offer a "puff counter"These canny little devices are fast becoming the jewel in the crown of tobacco harm reduction, while simultaneously right pissing off the tobacco control community in general. Oh yeah, and this guy, of course.
With data being stored by an electronic chip, the new technology will give users the option of displaying how many “puffs” are left, how many virtual cigarettes are left or a simple color-coded line indicating how much vapor is left in a given product. Logic is the first electronic cigarette company to be issued this kind of “counting” patent.
It may be just a small adjustment but, as a vaper myself, one of the obstacles e-cigs have currently is that there isn't the same 'session time-out' users get with an 'analogue'. Psychologically, this detracts just that little bit from the experience.
The throat hit is very similar to that of real tobacco - even if I'd agree with other commentators who believe the taste could be improved upon - but the same natural end point that one gets with a real cigarette is missing.
It's clear that the owners of this patent have recognised this and their solution is something which many vapers will welcome as a definite improvement to their enjoyment.
Of course, the very fact that vaping is enjoyable is precisely the reason those opposed to tobacco are also opposed to less harmful replacements like the e-cig. The game-changing facet of e-cigs to mimic smoking is repeatedly quoted by anti-tobacco loons as a bug rather than a feature. In this, they are identical to the evangelical prohibitionist nutjobs of the past who waved their crosses, sang to Jesus, and wailed that only the hair shirt and uncomfortable abstinence was the way to see the light.
It's quit or die only (though if you buy some of their pharma sponsors' products along the way, that'd be hunky-dory).
Like I said last month, the electronic cigarette looks unstoppable now, and this latest development just makes me more certain of that.
It's also a perfect example of progress being very swiftly driven by intense competition in a free market. With government yet to get its claws in to stifle entrepreneurial spirit and innovation, we are seeing a 'gold rush' as small outfits are clambering over each other to offer new products, new angles, and intelligent design to attract custom.
Everyone wins! Small businesses get rich, consumers get ever-improving goods, and tobacco users get a product which is becoming more similar to smoking by the day, but less dangerous.
It can't last, of course. If there's one thing government has in common with anti-tobacco it's a deep distrust of free trade. They thrive on regulation and the money it inevitably brings them.
We'll see burdens placed on e-cigs very soon; taxation no doubt; regulation which sqeezes the small entrepreneur out of the market; and the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the tobacco control industry if e-cigs end up being controlled by big tobacco instead of big pharma.
It won't be the end of the e-cig though, it's here to stay - it's the big not-so-bad new boy in town. It's just that the people who claim to care about smoking and health will put off, financially or by scaremongery, many many of those who might otherwise choose a safer alternative.
Just like they've done - in a stratospherically irresponsible, and deadly, manner - with snus.
For shame.
19 comments:
I used to work for Lancashire County Council and they introduced an extreme anti-smoking policy.
Staff were banned from smoking in working hours even if they were off the premises. Even if they were in their own cars travelling to a 'job'.
The ban also applied to councillors - disgraceful as they are the representatives of the people. Equally disgracefully, the councillors didn't object. They meekly accepted being told that they could not even smoke in their own cars!
The bureaucrats even tried to ban smoking by members of the public on the road outside County Hall. They were told by their own legal department that they had no right to do that as the road was a public highway. They would have to buy the road to be able to enforce a ban! They didn't buy the road - but they installed signs on the public highway telling people that they couldn't smoke on the road - in the open air! Purporting to have powers they did not have.
I suppose some local government employees have too much time on their hands...
Night school attenders - paying customers - were told they couldn't smoke anywhere on the college premises. Not even on the playing field. They had to leave the grounds altogether to go and stand on a main road.
Some smokers inquired about the use of e-cigs. They don't give off smoke etc etc.
The council said the same ban applied to them.
That always puzzled me. I suspect the 'Policy Unit' did not understand the issues and just reproduced the views of the tobacco-control industry.
The council is Conservative controlled! Is this the modern Conservative way? I give up on them.
DP,
They also do the “Chapman Trick” for e-cigs.
Banzhaf: "As the FDA and others have noted,
electronic cigarettes pose a wide variety of potential dangers to users, and
perhaps also to those around them, both of whom inhale a mixture of nicotine (a dangerous drug) and
propylene glycol (which is used in
antifreeze[)] and may cause respiratory tract irritation”
http://www.pr-inside.com/electronic-cigarette-seller-sued-r1452385.htm
"It's just that the people who claim to care about smoking and health will put off, financially or by scaremongery, many many of those who might otherwise choose a safer alternative.".............
Like they did in 1979 in the USA when Philip Morris were about to launch the 'safer cigarette', or the UK when we had cigarettes containinjg NSM (new smoking material) which mysteriously disappeared from the shelves after 6 months.
Did people comply?
Quite. A law/rule is only as good as the publics willingness to abide by it.
What would they actualy DO if twenty or thirty people lit up in the canteen, or in the office one morning? Call the police to have them removed? MAYBE once, but EVERY morning for ten, twenty, thirty weeks?
I may have asked this before, but reading your blog made me think about getting some e-cigs for my dad.
I don't smoke so have no idea what's what, he smokes rollies with liquorice paper, is there any cheap one you would recommend?
hey Fake-
There's too much ecig info to post it all here. Come on over here: www.e-cigarette-forum.com
Banzhaf is an idiot. Propylene glycol isn't in antifreeze. It's a thickening agent found in a lot of foods.
And toothpaste!
Whilst I was reading your blog - it popped into my head that clamping down on vaping by anti-tobacco because it "seems" like smoking would be equivalent to anti-alcohol clamping down on drinking glasses because using them "seems" like drinking! Or possibly banning swallowing? Or what about banning sales of Orange Juice? The imagination wanders.....
You'd think the agencies claiming to safeguard the public's "health" would have actually read the FDA report which actually shows that there was nothing in any of the ecigs tested that could harm anyone. But no! They don't want you to smoke on any campus but of course it's okay to force you onto the road to breathe in those deliciously fragrant car exhaust fumes eh?
Freaking moron the lot of them!
C.B.
and stage smoke.
I would refer you to the comments at the link below for a description and
the intent of the “Chapman Trick”.
http://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/doctors-in-name-only/
I should also point out that it some e-cig sites that not
only promote the Chapman Trick regarding cigarettes, but promote the worst
(inflammatory) versions of the Chapman Trick, e.g.,
http://ecigarettesbuy.com/category/tobacco-cigarettes-vs-electronic-cigarettes/
http://vapor-smoking.net/vapor-smoking-vs-real-cigarettes/
http://thesmartsmokers.com/articles.html
http://reviewecigs.com/
http://www.nuvapor.com/
http://www.themarketfinancial.com/electronic-cigarette-wholesaler-empowered-after-u-s-judge-decision-against-fda/1417
I'm
And this sort of thing is why I don't vote Tory any more.
I don't suppose EuroDave reads Dick's blog, but it might do him and his party a world of good if he did.
Yes, people did comply. If they didn't they would have had to face a disciplinary and ultimately get the sack.
It seems "Dickass", or whatever the system here calls it's self will not allow replys to SOME replys, so;
XX Yes, people did comply. If they didn't they would have had to face a disciplinary and ultimately get the sack. XX
So why have you not answered MY question; "What would they actualy DO if twenty or thirty people lit up in the
canteen, or in the office one morning? Call the police to have them
removed? MAYBE once, but EVERY morning for ten, twenty, thirty weeks?"
See, this is one of the reasons why I fucking HATE Britain. You let all your freedoms get fucked all over, "because we might get sacked", at the same time as saying WE, in Germany should have risked a trip to Poland, just to tell Hitler he was "a naughty boy, and really should not be doing that."
You don't fight, you don't deserve to survive. You don't fight for your rights, don't expect them to survive either.
Basically; TOUGH, you did fuck all, now live with the consequences, and stop fucking moaning abouit your "plight", on the internet.
In Your blog fact that vaping is enjoyable is precisely the reason those opposed to tobacco are also opposed to less harmful which electronic cigarette. Can you give us anti-tobacco it's a deep distrust of free trade.
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