This shit really grinds my gears. There’s absolutely no need for this product. Normal vape is like $20, you’re not saving on anything. In EU the manufacturers are obligated to recover used units (they have to setup boxes where you can drop them and handle recycling) but obviously you see them on the ground all the time. This should be banned with the speed of light but EC thinks the current regulations are enough. Fucking infuriating.
I was in Italy recently, and I could ONLY buy single use. I fucking hated it as it died in two days making me throw out an otherwise fine device - just because there’s no charging port.
Now I have one lasting for almost half a year, and that’s only the taste that dissappears - not the battery becoming bad.
I believe the regulations about replaceable batteries will apply here but they are only coming to life in 2025 or even later.
Aah okay! It’s good to know.
Where I live, only single use vapes are legal.
Tobacco companies must love anti-ecig regulations like that lol.
There’s absolutely no need for this product. Normal vape is like $20
A single use disposable is like $4 - $10, depending on how many puffs, and some people just want something they can puff on for the weekend and then quit, not something they can use/reuse long term.
Sure it’s not healthy, and it’s environmentally irresponsible with current single use disposables, but there’s definitely a market of “casual smokers” that don’t want to commit to a non-disposable vape.
When it’s easier for people to litter, they litter more. I don’t care if they want to vape while pretending they’re only gonna do it for one weekend.
Sure, I’m just saying there is definitely a market for single-use vapes. I’m not saying it’s good or right to buy and use a single-use vape, but people definitely do it.
Really? People smoke for one weekend and then quit? Never ever heard about this. Sure, there are people that smoke sporadically, for example only while partying or something but this is such a minority I doubt anyone would target a product specifically at them. Besides, you can just buy normal vape and buy refills only for one weekend and then ‘quit’. $20 non-disposable vape is no commitment, that’s my point. And people who can’t afford to spend $20 on a vape probably shouldn’t be spending their money on smoking anyway. There’s tons of policies to discourage people from smoking, banning cheap, single use vapes should be one of them.
There certainly are casual smokers, who might buy a pack of cigarettes on Friday and be done with it by Sunday (usually after giving out several along the way) to repeat the next week.
These people don’t see themselves as addicts, and they for all intents and purposes aren’t, otherwise they’d be jonesing all week and buying a pack on Monday.
Making the leap from “having a finite amount of smoke” to “owning reusable paraphernalia” is a big jump for a casual smoker. And more than likely would enable them to justify smoking during the week.
It’s the same thing as the guy who buys an eight of weed, brings it to the party, smokes a flew blunts, and then doesn’t smoke the whole week. This guy has no need for a glass bong in his house, and he wouldn’t be able to justify its purpose, but its existence would likely mold his occasional use into something more frequent.
What you’re describing is such a tiny minority of smokers I really don’t see why we need specific product aimed at them. If they don’t want to own a vape they can just keep smoking cigarettes. It would be better for everyone if they just stopped smoking. Contaminating environment with disposable batteries for their convenience is just insane.
Well, the flip side is that the disposable vapes do get people on nicotine that would otherwise be casual smokers. On its own that’s a net neutral, but the jump from “buying disposable vape” to “buying a pack of cigarettes” is easier than the jump from “buying a disposable vape” to “buying a refillable and rechargeable system”.
So I guess disposable vapes are a bit of a double-edge sword. I’d rather the occasional/social smoker pick up a disposable vape than a pack of cigarettes. But I also know that most of the major disposable vape brands are owned by the classic big tobacco names. However, at least they are taking the Gillette model, with a rechargeable battery and disposable cartridges. But these are also the ones sold at gas stations. If people don’t have their disposable vape available, I’d think they’d be more likely to purchase cigarettes than a whole new system, and I see that as another negative.
of course they are. it’s why I always encourage people not to buy them. they’re awful for the environment, they’re wasteful and they are lower quality than you’d get with most standard rechargeable e-cigarette kits.
I don’t vape, but I can’t imagine they’re cheaper than re-usable vaping devices in the long run either.
oh my goodness yes. I couldn’t imagine buying a disposable every time I ran out.
that would possibly be just as expensive as smoking regular cigarettes.
I just use a little pod system that has replaceable coil heads. it was maybe 60 total because I bought two batteries. but I’ve not needed a replacement battery for my personal vape yet. Just have been replacing (or reusing) my coil heads.
I do vape. The long-term reusable vapes are a LOT more expensive than the disposable ones. My current setup cost 100 USD before batteries or coils.
No, I mean long-term as in costs. Over a year or two, won’t you be saving money?
$9 for the device - Vuse is the brand
Approx $7 per “cartridge”$14 (on average) for a “Breeze Pro” disposable vape.
So it’s cheaper, but about the same as regular cigarettes. Even worse, quality control on the cartridges is shoddy at best and I wind up moving the coil from a decent cartridge to one that failed less than 1/4 way through. At this point it’s rare to have a coil last as long as it should.
Best way to save money is to quit. Dropped alcohol last year and THC before Thanksgiving.
Nicotine is next on the list, here’s hoping for a cheaper new year.Nicotine is one of the hardest addictions to get over. Nicotine is as addictive as heroin or cocaine. I wish you good luck, but don’t blame yourself if you can’t quit.
I quit in 2000 and I think the only way I was able to quit was because I worked in a place where everyone smoked, so I got a ton of second-hand smoke. I doubt I would have been able to do it otherwise and it was still one of the harder things I’d have to do.
Nicotine isn’t the only addictive substance in cigarettes. As someone who has quit both cigs and vaping, it was by far easiest to quit vaping. It absolutely sucked - but nothing compared to going off tobacco. I still get massive cravings if I smell someone smoking nearby.
Nicotine is one of the hardest addictions to get over. Nicotine is as addictive as heroin or cocaine. I wish you good luck, but don’t blame yourself if you can’t quit.
I quit in 2000 and I think the only way I was able to quit was because I worked in a place where everyone smoked, so I got a ton of second-hand smoke. I doubt I would have been able to do it otherwise and it was still one of the harder things I’d have to do.
Lol comparing it to heroin.
It’s not the substance itself that is addictive, it’s cultural aspects and ease of access. When you can throw a stone in any direction and hit a store that sells tobacco, it’s going to be harder to quit. Even if you are far away from a store, if your near any significant group of people you can find someone who will give you a cigarette.
Now if I wanted heroin it would probably take me a week to bounce messages around some of my more downtrodden acquaintances before I found a dealer. And you won’t find anyone who is going to share their heroin with you. If you knew the hoops people would jump through and fire they would walk across to obtain heroin, you wouldn’t compare that to cigarettes. Hardly anyone would do all that shit just for a smoke.
It’s compared to heroin in terms of how addictive it is. And considering people have spent their entire lives trying to quit and failed, that seems right to me.
I bet you think I made that up, don’t you? I did not.
https://www.google.com/search?q=nicotine+as+addictive+as+heroin
Yes, in the long term you are saving money but if you have 20 bucks but not 100, what vape are you buying? That’s the point I’m making.
Honestly, even for twenty bucks, you can probably get a cheap rechargeable vape kit.
You can definitely get a shitty one that will have you back on the disposables within a few weeks until you save enough for a good system. Source: been there done that lol
You just don’t vape then
Yeah, smoke cigarettes again!
It’s no cheaper, we’re talking about someone that can’t afford to spend 100$ to save money long term.
Spoken like someone who never got hooked on nicotine.
“Why don’t heroin users just stop doing heroin?”
Was a smoker for over a decade but it wasn’t causing me financial issues.
Personally, I can’t keep a vape in one working piece for two years. Either the battery box fries, I shatter the tank, the USB port gets destroyed, or something else goes wrong. I’m very clumsy.
I have a box of backup parts and pieces at home because of this.
Goodness. I used the same SMPL+goblin tank for like five years straight. It’s still in great working order, I just got lazy and don’t wanna deal with wrapping my own coils anymore.
If you really want long term savings… how about ditch your nicotine habit? That’s what - $1,500 per year? $100,000 over your lifetime?
Oh, and medical bills on top of that. Hard to estimate that, but it could be more.
I can think of something better to spend $100,000 on. Slot machines at a Casino would be a better option for example.
It’s not habit, it’s an addiction. Telling people to just quit smoking or vaping as if it’s that easy is ridiculous. People spend their whole lives trying to give up nicotine.
I spend maybe $60 a year on vaping and I do it a lot. Key is though, mix your own juice and build your own coils.
A premade coil costs a few bucks. Replacing the cotton and wire in a diy coil is maybe a nickel. A bottle of premade juice is $20 these days where I am. Mixing my own costs at most, a dollar and that’s if I use more expensive flavor additives.
I won’t pretend it’s good for you, but if you’re gonna do it, no sense in half assing it and spending way more than you need. Plus it’s fun to experiment with new custom flavors.
Juice is sooooo easy to make too.
Where do you get flavors nowadays? I have a ton on backup from years back but when I looked online, prices at my normal places seem insane. I mainly need cap sweet strawberry and vanilla custard v2 (the one without diacetyl or whatever)
I’ve had good luck with nicotine giant, but pretty much everywhere has stock issues. They definitely carry both of those flavors but no stock at the moment.
That’s absolutely flat out wrong and honestly concerning.
For a start nicotine addiction (vaping) has not been proven to have any long term health strain on the medical system. To say having a gambling problem is better is just crazy.
You realise the difference between nicotine addiction and gambling addiction right?
The pod style devices are cheaper than the older style cloud chuckers and most of those now are refillable and not the juul style ones. I’m seeing good ones for $30-$50. The non removable battery gives them less longevity although they’re still significantly more environmentally friendly than disposables. I used a fog machine to quit smoking and I’ve kept using them, but I definitely get why new vapers are largely going with the USB sticks now.
Not really anymore for the ones with built-in batteries like the disposables. Similar to disposibles they are typical 20W or less. You can get many of them for under $30, including the UWELL Caliburn line which is a quality product line. The G Coil packs are between $10 and $20 depending and last a week or more per coil of which there are 5. If you chain them, you’re probably looking at between 2 and 3 days per coil.
The mods that require rechargeables like 18650 and other similar form factors sit between $50 and $70 for reputable brands, though for the ~200W mods it can be around $100 if you include their branded tanks.
I’d bet your mod is at least a 100W+, probably over 150W depending on when you bought them (they are cheaper now than a few years, which were cheaper than a 10 years before that).
The tanks are pretty cheap now too, even those multi-coil rebuildables. If you don’t rebuild your tank and use pre-built coils it is going to be a little more expensive. Those tanks for pre-builts tend to be a bit cheaper as well, like ~$30 for non-pods. Pod tanks tend to be around $10 - $15.
I remember 80W mods going for between $100 and $300 back in 2011 depending if it was considered a “clone” or not.
I went from a caliburn to a geekvape aegis and the coils are cheaper and they last me WEEKS instead of days now! So now I’m a shill for that. Also it’s like 35USD.
Quick edit: my SMPL clone was like 25USD and last like five years before I got lazy and stopped wanting to deal with building coils hahaha. It still works great!
Lawl my geekvape aegis was like 35USD and five coils are under 15USD. The coils last 2-3 weeks or more. The battery lasts FOREVER before needing a recharge.
I make my own juice so that’s free.
It was even cheaper using a SMPL mech mod and wrapping my own coils, but I got lazy. Now my 16+ 18650s go to my hobbyist flashlights.
I don’t know what your setup is, but you prolly overpaid
A few of us electronics hobbyists have been collecting them (when found discarded on the street) to harvest the battery for re-use in other projects.
.
Yes they’re nasty, but I pick them up with a dog poo bag and clean them before cracking them open to get the battery.
I was just thinking about this the other day. Any ideas for projects to use them with?
Turn them into a power bank, among other things.
futuristic caltrops
I am dying… 🤣
Also they all have to be 0.1 v from each other otherwise the “whole thing goes south” sounds scary and is now kind of making me rethink my plan of putting up collection boxes outside of high schools and building a battery for my house out of them.
Once it’s balanced and wired it’s impossible to be imbalanced again though. The risk is only during initial assembly and you accidentally includes an empty cells among fully charged cells.
building a battery for my house
Uh yeah that’s totally different league than building a power bank though.
this is only true if they’re 1s. but all bets are off if you have cell groups. God forbid you use them to make anything remotely useful like an ebike battery or home power storage.
… home made ecig?
I guess that’s the silver lining, free batteries for anyone willing to deal with a dirty object.
They’re also a prime starting supply for lithium battery recycling plants so they can get things figured out before they have to deal with car packs at volume.
For anyone wanting to learn more there’s a bigclive video covering the extraction process.
I have a small collection from friends that use the disposables. What do you use them for? I had the idea to make keychain flash lights or a battery conversion of some kind.
Oh wow it’s as of e-cigs is just like cigarettes, but besides cancer and toxic chemicals, they also found a way to add more waste.
I gave up arguing with people like you a long time ago, but I still want you to know actively telling people they’re just as bad as cigarettes will keep people on cigarettes, which are 4000x worse than vaping. Your misguided views are extremely harmful.
Nicotine alone is carcinogenic, despite what people like to believe.
[Citation needed]. Both of you.
There’s been a study which found carcinogenic compounds in vapour… thing is they overdrove the thing so hard that it was burning the wick, noone would actually take a puff of that. It’s the equivalent of setting a toaster to maximum and then saying that bread causes cancer.
There’s little evidence of pure nicotine being carcinogenic afaik. Nicotine in tobacco is carcinogenic due to certain reactions with other chemicals in the tobacco plant
I mean, it is, but smoke and, weirdly, polonium are also very large contributors to cancer from tobacco use.
I used to have roommates who vaped from that exact type of single-use device shown in the thumbnail diagram. They asked me to re-charge it, which I did, disassemble it, connect it to my Li-ion charger and it worked again. Apparently it didn’t taste good because it was nearly out of juice, but that was when I found out these were perfectly reusable 3.7V batteries in a disposable product.
Isn’t there a difference between rechargable and single-use-batteries? I was always under the Impression you should under no circumstances try to recharge single use batteries or they would explode?
These are rechargeable lithium ion batteries. The same standard 18650 that has powered laptops, EVs, and power banks.
They’re packaged inside a single use product, but the battery is rechargeable.
Many products actually have charging ports now. All they need to do is allow users to change out the flavor wick and we will come full circle.
Yeah, some extra electronics to handle charging would go a long way.
Buuut, Quality charging controllers cost money the vapes company isn’t going to put in, and overly cheap controllers add a bigger fire hazard.
Not an 18650, that’s way too big (18x65mm). Smaller than 14500 (AA) for sure
You’d need quite a number of alkaline batteries to get the necessary watts to drive a vape. Lithium cells aren’t just rechargable they are also good at releasing lots of energy in a short amount of time.
There is a difference. Not sure how they ar made, but the chemical composition and possibly the design is different.
Trying to recharge a non rechargeable battery can risky and there is the possibility of leaking or explosion.
In general yes, but that doesn’t apply here. Vapes all use rechargeable lithium batteries, even the disposables without a charging port. Other battery chemistries at that size don’t put out enough power.
That reminds me of this monstrosity https://www.walmart.com/ip/Neutrogena-Light-Therapy-Acne-Treatment-Face-Mask-1-ct/168984043
You have to buy new “activators” every 30 uses as a way of increasing profits… You know rather than just letting users replace the batteries.
This seems easy to hack. Just dig into it and hook it up to a wall wort with the applicable resistor, then sell the monstrosity on eBay for 2x the cost.
I can imagine the company suing
I can imagine them fucking off.
I can imagine all of you naked.
Wait, you guys are clothed?!
You have to buy new “activators” every 30 uses
“Please drink…”
Who knows the rest?
60 dollars for 10 dollars worth of electronics with no moving components… of course they wouldn’t let you just keep using it for years
I used to have a radio that would use the leftover battery from a Polaroid 600 cassette.
Iirc that was some sort of a lipo and it handled the flash and motors, but had more than enough power after the paltry 10 pictures were taken to power an AM/FM radio.
Reminded me of this: https://www.trojanbrands.com/en/products/sex-toys-vibrators/trojan-tandem-couples-vibrating-ring And Louis Rossmann’s repair video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv88A4vI960
I bought one of those once and when I realized what it was (something disposable that really shouldn’t be) I was quite upset.
It’s 2023 for gods sake we should be able to buy rechargeable teledildonic cock rings at every corner store by now ffs. Alexa, suck my dick.
I keep telling you all smokers are jokers
Yeah, its the consumer’s fault! /s
Every aspect of vaping is wasteful and stupid.
There are plenty of people out there using equipment with replaceable and rechargable batteries and owned tanks that they refill with their own liquid
Pretty much the least wasteful version of smoking as far as I can tell
If you know how to solder new batteries and make and replace coils, one device could theoretically last almost forever. I would be curious to see what goes first after that.
Probably the user.
See I’m struggling with this transitioning from smoking handrolled pipe tobacco filterless cigarettes to reusable box mod Vape.
One is cost, my past method I spent less than $700 a year on tobacco and paper. Now I spent $200 on a box mod and its been like $60 a month for liquid now, then lets say another $12 for coils. My costs have way more than doubled but I spent years finding a way to trim that down before.
Secondly the waste. I had no filter so the last few puffs of paper and tobacco were biodegradable. Now I have at least 3 plastic bottles a month and their lids all piling up in the recycle. Then the metal coils, housings, and cotton just get tossed every month. The tank I had leaked so I wasted a lot of juice and had to buy extra, I replaced the tank for $30, that one leaked too and I couldnt return it, so I bought a better one overpriced at $40. That coil burned while on vacation, so I begrudgingly bought a disposable one for the first time and I’m finding I can pop it open and creatively refill it, so Ill be doing that until I get home and can replace the coil. Vape shops don’t take your used coils or bottles back in my area. I doubt they even get properly recycled because I cant rinse em effectively.
I miss the simplicity of smoking right now but honestly the hassle and waste just makes me look forward to when I can quit for good and put all of it behind me.
Popularity among 18 year olds of > 50%. Christ. A significant chunk of those will become long term users.
Part of why the single use vapes are popular seems to me to be due to kids using them, they can toss it out so they won’t get in trouble for having it, or if they do get it taken away it’s just the one disposable instead of a reusable device. They also smell and taste like candy.
Is this what post-scarcity is going to be like?
When we get desperate enough for scarce resources we’ll start digging in our trash heaps. I’m surprised we haven’t started yet.
Google “landfill mining”. It’s being researched. So far the economics of what could be recovered don’t outweigh the costs, but they might eventually. Current mining mostly concentrates on remediating older unlined fills and moving the waste to a lined fill.
https://gizmodo.com/landfill-mining-metal-recovery-trash-recycling-ewaste-1850151569
Well yeah. As far as I know, there’s no such thing as a single-cycle battery for a low-power application.
They’re not really particularly low power.
Quick search suggests around 8W power consumption with a 2 ohm heater, which at the approximately 4V of a charged Lithium-Ion battery (V=IR, P=VI) checks out to around a 2A draw.
Similar results suggest the batteries inside are in the neighbourhood of 0.75Ah (3.7V nominal) = 2.8Wh. I don’t know how much of that capacity actually gets used during the “lifespan” of the vape, but I’d guess half would be a good estimate. In any case, probably safe to assume you need to pack around 2Wh in at minimum.
A Lithium AA battery (Li-FeS2 chemistry) gives you 3.4Ah @ 1.5V = 5.1Wh, but has a maximum discharge current of 2.5A (only 3.8W). The AAA is only 1.2Ah with 1.5A discharge, but two of them would give you 3.6Wh and 4.5W, closer to the target but still under.
You could probably arrange this in some sort of configuration whereby the batteries charge a capacitor and that runs the heater, at those kind of numbers it’d need to be at most a 2 seconds off for 1 second on deal, but that honestly seems like it should be fine for, y’know, vaping. Might just need to have an on/off switch to avoid draining the batteries when you’re not using it.
But I guess we’re at the point where manufacturing Li-Po cells happens in such vast quantities that the extra electronics to charge a capacitor from a 1.5V battery probably cost more.
There are lithium primary cells that are perfect for low power uses when you need something to last years in between battery changes. They can’t supply high current, which is why rechargeable batteries are used in disposable vapes even though it’s very wasteful.
They should either ban disposable vapes outright or put a large enough deposit on them that most people will return them for recycling.
thank politicians like Biden, Trump, and Obama for helping to write in laws against health synthetic nicotine not being grown in soil has no pollutants added like lead think artificial vanilla here same thing
better products could have been on the market years ago like better battery usage through education and innovation but instead good scientific research got pushed into the closet with climate science and the like so people like our current politicians could keep their big tobacco bonus checks
and not all companies involved have been up to no good some have tried to do better products and research before getting shut down by policies Obama started and Trump carried on and then Biden now carrying the torch
this was definitely a planned shit storm for profit but hey lets blame the public the government screwed over for this whole mess
not to mention your local vape shop selling products that do not include safety information or where it was manufactured or anything no public service announcements on the wall or talked about nothing just selling untested products with no regard to safety or health
this is way beyond the battery problem the US has really screwed the pooch on this one major health and environmental problem and not entirely because people consume a particular substance just like coffee’s push for sustainability and psa and single source and what have you
Please use punctuation. This is incredibly hard to read, especially to those who are dyslexic.
Sure thanks president.
yeah, the same problem exists in the cannabis industry too. the single use vape carts are everywhere and they get chunked into the bins with no regard for recycling or the contamination theyre poor choice will cause. i use vape carts, but i have a rechargeable battery so i only have to worry about the carts themselves.
i used to vape nicotine too, and i would mix my own juices and used rebuildable coil mods too. i knew exactly what was in them, including the precise level of nicotine, so i used it to cessate from 12mg to 1mg and havent had nicotine in years now. its crazy how far away from that the industry has gone, its all disposable carts made by cigarette companies with crazy high concentrations of nicotine now. absolutely disgusting
oh good, there are single-use e-cigs? what will they think up next? single-use, disposable, electronic pregnancy tests?
True dat folk.
