6 ms·

I’m a UK vaper (former smoker) and while I’m sure I’m going to find this annoying (disposables are helpful in a pinch when your proper vape has run out of batte

I’m a UK vaper (former smoker) and while I’m sure I’m going to find this annoying (disposables are helpful in a pinch when your proper vape has run out of battery or liquid), it’s clearly the right thing to do. The e-waste involved in that sub-industry must be absolutely horrifying. Tens of millions of tiny little batteries, surrounded in plastic, lingering quantities of nicotine-rich liquids… Glad this is happening. I’ll take the inconvenience on the chin lol

Faaak 2y ago
Yeah, same. I'm all up for a "free country", and all that. But this was just absurd. I wonder if 30+ years don't the line, if maybe resources are scarcer, we'll think about these and say: "we were fucking crazy"
- exe34 2y ago
  at least we'll mine them. with helium, we put it in party balloons and lose it to space.
  - r2_pilot 2y ago
    There's plenty of helium in the solar system (granted, a bit further out) and the sun is producing 595 million tons per second.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      Let me guess, you have plans that to mine that helium by working at night?
    - exe34 2y ago
      yes, and it'll be very easy to capture in commercial quantities, I'm sure.
      - r2_pilot 2y ago
        What, you've never heard of star-lifting? Or just getting it from Saturn? Commercial/economic quantities are all about the necessity versus scarcity, and helium has unique properties that can't be synthesized in sufficient quantities even if you ran all of Earth off fusion of hydrogen into helium.
        exe34 2y ago
        > Or just getting it from Saturn? always love a good laugh in the morning! I'm as much a fan of sci-fi as anybody, and the last 5 years of space x should make anybody optimistic about the future of space exploration, but strip mining Saturn is a long way away from providing for the needs of MRI machines and other essential modern technology. what will happen first is that the prices will rise and we will stop using it in party balloons, and then it'll be too expensive for the lower 95% of the population for any use at all for decades/centuries - and that's even if we do manage to escape the local gravity well for good. even that's doubtful - space is just unbelievably hostile.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  I dunno. The earth is pretty big, and vape batteries are tiny, and we keep finding substitutes. I'm all for reducing waste, but it seems unlikely we'll run out of metals in our lifetimes. Keep in mind, things keep getting more efficient, and rich nations are finally tending toward using LESS per capita. Sure, the poor nations might eventually become rich and the global population has not yet peeked, but there's no reason to assume our materials usage will grow exponentially forever. And, even if you assumed we were going to run out of whatever is in these tiny vape pens - the percentage of all usage going to tiny applications like this is a rounding error. It's not what you would attack if you really wanted to move the needle. You'd probably try to reduce the number of people buying new cars, for example.
  - Vegenoid 2y ago
    > in our lifetimes Is the key here. We need to think beyond our lifetimes. We should be treating the earth like we're going to live on it for (tens or hundreds of) thousands of years, because I sure as shit hope we (meaning humans) are going to. Yes, reducing creation of cars would certainly have a much bigger impact, and should be done. But it's also a lot harder than dealing with vapes. Anyway, as far as I understand it, the main reason this is happening isn't happening to reduce waste, it's happening to stop a rise in nicotine consumption in children. Preventing waste is more of a nice side effect.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- dotBen 2y ago
  The UK isn't a 'free country' in the way American's use the term. It took me a few years of living in America to understand the nuance. I think the 'freedoms' Americans have raises it's own problems for society (eg guns) and there isn't a right or wrong, just different. The joke I always like to make is that in the US everything is legal unless the government legislates to say you can't, in Europe everything is illegal unless the government legislates to say you can. :D
  - ninalanyon 2y ago
    That's just nonsense.
  - immibis 2y ago
    That's the joke they made about the Soviet Union; it's inaccurate for Europe. But in Europe the government isn't afraid to make things illegal.
  - seneca 2y ago
    > The joke I always like to make is that in the US everything is legal unless the government legislates to say you can't, in Europe everything is illegal unless the government legislates to say you can. That's pretty good. It's a succinct contrast of the difference between a citizen and a subject.
  - asplake 2y ago
    > The joke I always like to make is that in the US everything is legal unless the government legislates to say you can't Guess where the US got that from? Yes, the UK, and it still applies.
    - DiscourseFan 2y ago
      I think you're forgetting something called the CONSTITUTION which gives a number of rights that one doesn't have in the UK like -Freedom of expression (can't be arrested for social media posts, can't easily get sued into the ground for libel[0]) -Right to bear arms (technically legal for citizens to organize their own militant force, though often discouraged) -Right to remain silent (it is always advised to never talk to the police under any circumstances). [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act
- ryandvm 2y ago
  I have a different thought about that kind of stuff in that in 100 years or so landfills will probably be literal gold mines (or whatever else you're looking for).
Crosseye_Jack 2y ago
I'm just pissed that my source of free batteries is gonna dry up lol.
- stavros 2y ago
  Are the batteries any good? What do they have in them? 1100 mAh LiPo?
  - Crosseye_Jack 2y ago
    The cells themselves are pretty good - pretty much only every come across Lipo's even in "non-rechargeable" disposables. mAh basically depends on the size of the vape / the puff count, but yeah I normally find them to br between 500 and 1500 mAh (give or take).
    - bloopernova 2y ago
      I figured any disposable vape would have its batteries glued in. How straightforward a task is it to remove the battery? What do the batteries generally look like?
      - Crosseye_Jack 2y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65DpT2nqEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65DpT2nqEI <--- BigClive scavenging cells from vapes. (Basically where I got the idea from) The cells are generally just "push fit", maybe with some kapton tape or foam to give them a snug fit. As for taking the vapes apart, A pair of pliers and some brute force is typically all that is needed to get them apart. Cell shape is either cylindrical or rectangular, depends on the vapes shape really. You get the knack of remembering/guessing what the shape will be just by looking at the vape.
        bloopernova 2y ago
        Nice, thanks for the info! EDIT: those batteries look like they'd be very useful for some ESP32/PI2350 type projects.
prophesi 2y ago
I'm not sure how it is in the UK, but in the USA it's also next to impossible to find a disposable vape that doesn't have an insanely high amount of nicotine. If anyone is unfortunate enough to try a disposable as their introduction to nicotine, they'll be as hooked as a pack a day smoker in no time. I switched to vaping after the pandemic and saw in realtime vapes come out with higher and higher nicotine levels, replacing the lower nic vapes on the shelves. The only reason I had to use disposables was that I couldn't get replacement coils & nicotine juice for several months. They can't use traditional shippers, and the services they use vary wildly in quality; I probably still have a shipment gathering dust in a storage warehouse after several failed delivery attempts. For anyone trying to quit smoking, my best advice would be to go to a vape store that has a lot of custom vape equipment and not just peddling disposables. They should be able to tell how much nicotine salt / freebase liquid you should use given your current smoking habits and goals for quitting.
- cyberpunk 2y ago
  I switched to vapes for a while and genuinely my lung health was worse than smoking. In the end it was Allen Carr’s book that got me off them, and it was surprisingly easy. The author died in 2006 so I wouldn’t even feel too bad about pirating it, I’m quite sure he wouldn’t mind.
  - nostrebored 2y ago
    My pet theory is that nicotine itself isn't particularly addictive to adults. I think the combination of additives in cigs is what makes them so hard to quit. I have quit various forms of pure nicotine with no withdrawals over the years, and treat it a bit like caffeine -- a stimulant that I use for a few months at a time before cycling off. The only time I've _ever_ desperately craved a nicotine product was after 2-3 days of smoking cigarettes. When getting on a near-day-long flight, the whole time back I was thinking "wow, it would be great to have a cigarette right now" every 5-10 minutes. But agreed on lung health with vaping. Also, my whole upper respiratory tract was in shambles. My throat was so dry, and it made me get sick constantly.
WediBlino 2y ago
*vapist
8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago
I also noticed that the flavors I'd get in disposables taste a lot more "chemical" than the ones you can find for a vape mod. I suspect that people buying them in a pinch makes them a lot less discerning about what ends up in them.
- LordDragonfang 2y ago
  It's also possibly to do with the fact that disposables are almost universally nic salts, where as mod juices are usually freebase nic, and that can affect the flavor. (Of course, I might be wrong, since it's been nearly a decade since I paid attention to the vape scene)
jsheard 2y ago
> The e-waste involved in that sub-industry must be absolutely horrifying. The human cost of making them doesn't look great either... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQacZNc33r8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQacZNc33r8
mytailorisrich 2y ago
This begs the question: why do you use disposables, then, and will apparently only stop when they are banned if you think they are so bad?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ajmurmann 2y ago
Would it make more sense to properly tax those negative externalities instead of having some authority just picking one use case as "bad"?
- changing1999 2y ago
  How would an additional tax address this? Paying more would hardly reduce usage, and definitely won't incentivize users to dispose of vape pens more responsibly.
  - tomjen3 2y ago
    It could pay for additional people to clean up the streets, or you have a deposit on them, so that they be returned rather than littered.
  - dberst 2y ago
    I can imagine a tax so high that it's effectively a ban, and a tax half that size that might be a compromise between black and white ban/no ban
    - jsheard 2y ago
      The UK taxed tobacco to high heaven and I don't think it did much to actually curb use. It's subject to the usual 20% VAT, plus an extra 16.5%, plus a flat £6.33 on 20 packs, so well over half of the sale price of tobacco is just tax. https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/alcohol-tobacco https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/alcohol-tobacco
      - corobo 2y ago
        The people I know that would be affected by this just get duty free from corner shops under the table now. Last I heard it's around 8 quid for 50g of rolling tobacco instead of £38 buying legit. Wouldn't be surprised to find out they smoke more than they used to with it being less scarce.
      - 2y ago

Faaak 2y ago

Yeah, same. I'm all up for a "free country", and all that. But this was just absurd. I wonder if 30+ years don't the line, if maybe resources are scarcer, we'll think about these and say: "we were fucking crazy"

exe34 2y ago
at least we'll mine them. with helium, we put it in party balloons and lose it to space.
- r2_pilot 2y ago
  There's plenty of helium in the solar system (granted, a bit further out) and the sun is producing 595 million tons per second.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Let me guess, you have plans that to mine that helium by working at night?
  - exe34 2y ago
    yes, and it'll be very easy to capture in commercial quantities, I'm sure.
    - r2_pilot 2y ago
      What, you've never heard of star-lifting? Or just getting it from Saturn? Commercial/economic quantities are all about the necessity versus scarcity, and helium has unique properties that can't be synthesized in sufficient quantities even if you ran all of Earth off fusion of hydrogen into helium.
      - exe34 2y ago
        > Or just getting it from Saturn? always love a good laugh in the morning! I'm as much a fan of sci-fi as anybody, and the last 5 years of space x should make anybody optimistic about the future of space exploration, but strip mining Saturn is a long way away from providing for the needs of MRI machines and other essential modern technology. what will happen first is that the prices will rise and we will stop using it in party balloons, and then it'll be too expensive for the lower 95% of the population for any use at all for decades/centuries - and that's even if we do manage to escape the local gravity well for good. even that's doubtful - space is just unbelievably hostile.
onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
I dunno. The earth is pretty big, and vape batteries are tiny, and we keep finding substitutes. I'm all for reducing waste, but it seems unlikely we'll run out of metals in our lifetimes. Keep in mind, things keep getting more efficient, and rich nations are finally tending toward using LESS per capita. Sure, the poor nations might eventually become rich and the global population has not yet peeked, but there's no reason to assume our materials usage will grow exponentially forever. And, even if you assumed we were going to run out of whatever is in these tiny vape pens - the percentage of all usage going to tiny applications like this is a rounding error. It's not what you would attack if you really wanted to move the needle. You'd probably try to reduce the number of people buying new cars, for example.
- Vegenoid 2y ago
  > in our lifetimes Is the key here. We need to think beyond our lifetimes. We should be treating the earth like we're going to live on it for (tens or hundreds of) thousands of years, because I sure as shit hope we (meaning humans) are going to. Yes, reducing creation of cars would certainly have a much bigger impact, and should be done. But it's also a lot harder than dealing with vapes. Anyway, as far as I understand it, the main reason this is happening isn't happening to reduce waste, it's happening to stop a rise in nicotine consumption in children. Preventing waste is more of a nice side effect.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
dotBen 2y ago
The UK isn't a 'free country' in the way American's use the term. It took me a few years of living in America to understand the nuance. I think the 'freedoms' Americans have raises it's own problems for society (eg guns) and there isn't a right or wrong, just different. The joke I always like to make is that in the US everything is legal unless the government legislates to say you can't, in Europe everything is illegal unless the government legislates to say you can. :D
- ninalanyon 2y ago
  That's just nonsense.
- immibis 2y ago
  That's the joke they made about the Soviet Union; it's inaccurate for Europe. But in Europe the government isn't afraid to make things illegal.
- seneca 2y ago
  > The joke I always like to make is that in the US everything is legal unless the government legislates to say you can't, in Europe everything is illegal unless the government legislates to say you can. That's pretty good. It's a succinct contrast of the difference between a citizen and a subject.
- asplake 2y ago
  > The joke I always like to make is that in the US everything is legal unless the government legislates to say you can't Guess where the US got that from? Yes, the UK, and it still applies.
  - DiscourseFan 2y ago
    I think you're forgetting something called the CONSTITUTION which gives a number of rights that one doesn't have in the UK like -Freedom of expression (can't be arrested for social media posts, can't easily get sued into the ground for libel[0]) -Right to bear arms (technically legal for citizens to organize their own militant force, though often discouraged) -Right to remain silent (it is always advised to never talk to the police under any circumstances). [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act
ryandvm 2y ago
I have a different thought about that kind of stuff in that in 100 years or so landfills will probably be literal gold mines (or whatever else you're looking for).

Crosseye_Jack 2y ago

I'm just pissed that my source of free batteries is gonna dry up lol.

stavros 2y ago
Are the batteries any good? What do they have in them? 1100 mAh LiPo?
- Crosseye_Jack 2y ago
  The cells themselves are pretty good - pretty much only every come across Lipo's even in "non-rechargeable" disposables. mAh basically depends on the size of the vape / the puff count, but yeah I normally find them to br between 500 and 1500 mAh (give or take).
  - bloopernova 2y ago
    I figured any disposable vape would have its batteries glued in. How straightforward a task is it to remove the battery? What do the batteries generally look like?
    - Crosseye_Jack 2y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65DpT2nqEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65DpT2nqEI <--- BigClive scavenging cells from vapes. (Basically where I got the idea from) The cells are generally just "push fit", maybe with some kapton tape or foam to give them a snug fit. As for taking the vapes apart, A pair of pliers and some brute force is typically all that is needed to get them apart. Cell shape is either cylindrical or rectangular, depends on the vapes shape really. You get the knack of remembering/guessing what the shape will be just by looking at the vape.
      - bloopernova 2y ago
        Nice, thanks for the info! EDIT: those batteries look like they'd be very useful for some ESP32/PI2350 type projects.

prophesi 2y ago

I'm not sure how it is in the UK, but in the USA it's also next to impossible to find a disposable vape that doesn't have an insanely high amount of nicotine. If anyone is unfortunate enough to try a disposable as their introduction to nicotine, they'll be as hooked as a pack a day smoker in no time. I switched to vaping after the pandemic and saw in realtime vapes come out with higher and higher nicotine levels, replacing the lower nic vapes on the shelves. The only reason I had to use disposables was that I couldn't get replacement coils & nicotine juice for several months. They can't use traditional shippers, and the services they use vary wildly in quality; I probably still have a shipment gathering dust in a storage warehouse after several failed delivery attempts. For anyone trying to quit smoking, my best advice would be to go to a vape store that has a lot of custom vape equipment and not just peddling disposables. They should be able to tell how much nicotine salt / freebase liquid you should use given your current smoking habits and goals for quitting.

cyberpunk 2y ago
I switched to vapes for a while and genuinely my lung health was worse than smoking. In the end it was Allen Carr’s book that got me off them, and it was surprisingly easy. The author died in 2006 so I wouldn’t even feel too bad about pirating it, I’m quite sure he wouldn’t mind.
- nostrebored 2y ago
  My pet theory is that nicotine itself isn't particularly addictive to adults. I think the combination of additives in cigs is what makes them so hard to quit. I have quit various forms of pure nicotine with no withdrawals over the years, and treat it a bit like caffeine -- a stimulant that I use for a few months at a time before cycling off. The only time I've _ever_ desperately craved a nicotine product was after 2-3 days of smoking cigarettes. When getting on a near-day-long flight, the whole time back I was thinking "wow, it would be great to have a cigarette right now" every 5-10 minutes. But agreed on lung health with vaping. Also, my whole upper respiratory tract was in shambles. My throat was so dry, and it made me get sick constantly.

WediBlino 2y ago

*vapist

8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago

I also noticed that the flavors I'd get in disposables taste a lot more "chemical" than the ones you can find for a vape mod. I suspect that people buying them in a pinch makes them a lot less discerning about what ends up in them.

LordDragonfang 2y ago
It's also possibly to do with the fact that disposables are almost universally nic salts, where as mod juices are usually freebase nic, and that can affect the flavor. (Of course, I might be wrong, since it's been nearly a decade since I paid attention to the vape scene)

jsheard 2y ago

> The e-waste involved in that sub-industry must be absolutely horrifying. The human cost of making them doesn't look great either... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQacZNc33r8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQacZNc33r8

mytailorisrich 2y ago

This begs the question: why do you use disposables, then, and will apparently only stop when they are banned if you think they are so bad?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

ajmurmann 2y ago

Would it make more sense to properly tax those negative externalities instead of having some authority just picking one use case as "bad"?

changing1999 2y ago
How would an additional tax address this? Paying more would hardly reduce usage, and definitely won't incentivize users to dispose of vape pens more responsibly.
- tomjen3 2y ago
  It could pay for additional people to clean up the streets, or you have a deposit on them, so that they be returned rather than littered.
- dberst 2y ago
  I can imagine a tax so high that it's effectively a ban, and a tax half that size that might be a compromise between black and white ban/no ban
  - jsheard 2y ago
    The UK taxed tobacco to high heaven and I don't think it did much to actually curb use. It's subject to the usual 20% VAT, plus an extra 16.5%, plus a flat £6.33 on 20 packs, so well over half of the sale price of tobacco is just tax. https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/alcohol-tobacco https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/alcohol-tobacco
    - corobo 2y ago
      The people I know that would be affected by this just get duty free from corner shops under the table now. Last I heard it's around 8 quid for 50g of rolling tobacco instead of £38 buying legit. Wouldn't be surprised to find out they smoke more than they used to with it being less scarce.
    - 2y ago