My name is Shai - My wife and I have been cigarette free since September 11th, 2013 thanks to a Joyetech eGo-C Twist pen we used to quit smoking tobacco cigarettes. I smoked 40+ cigarettes a day for nearly 12 years, and I was only 24. I started vaping using 24mg nicotine, and within 24 months I was down to 0mg and stopped vaping completely.
I am the ultimate success story for vaping. Use it to cut out your tobacco habit, and then stop vaping all-together after effortlessly eradicating your nicotine addiction.
Public health units have quite a dilemma on their hands; support vaping as a harm reduction tool, by publicly announcing that it is proven to be at least 95% safer than combustible tobacco (which is the truth), and risk minors believing that it's harmless to pick up a nicotine addiction, or vilify the entire industry in an effort to scare minors from using these products.
North American media, and public health units have unfortunately chosen the latter; effectively handcuffing existing smokers from life saving alternatives. You've probably seen the recent reports of a death, allegedly related to vaping, and that 450+ people have recently contracted lung disease, also allegedly from vaping.
To clarify on my point above; the death and every single contracted lung disease was caused from home-made, illicit THC cartridges. This isn't an e-cigarette at all, and yet the media headlines fail to mention this important distinction, scaring away potential switchers. [source]
I get it, there's a real issue with minors gaining access to these products, I'm completely against it. Every single package leaving our facility goes through two-step age verification (Soft verification via Equifax, and hard verification via Canada Post).
Here's an example of a label showing the 19+ signature requirement: https://imgur.com/ewBZw8a
The way minors get access to products isn't because they go in to a store and the clerk sells it to them, they get someone of age to buy it for them. Whether it's a parent, a friend, a sibling, etc.
If you smoke, you should vape to reduce your harm by 95% or more. If you don't smoke, you shouldn't vape and get a nicotine addiction for no reason.
Anything you inhale will be worse for you than inhaling nothing but oxygen, but the recent media blitzkrieg on vaping is frustrating to see, read, watch, and listen. Blatant falsehoods are passed as facts to generate views, clicks, and listens, and all it does is deter your every day smoker from reducing their harm. No one has died from vaping, no one is getting lung disease from vaping.
You have groups such as "The Truth Orange", which parade around children that share scary stories that may be completely unrelated (if even true), and public health regulators paying social media influencers to read cue cards to try and discourage kids from using these products. Instead, they end up discouraging smokers from trying a less harmful alternative - and that's a problem.