Electronic Cigarette Truth

Do you know what you're actually vaping? Or is it coming straight off of a cheap production line somewhere in China?

Cheap imported e-cigs from China are on the rise – big time. You can’t go into a shop here in the UK without seeing a stack of cigarette-sized e cigs and ‘e juice’ next to or on the counter. Being a fairly experienced e-cig smoker myself, I wonder how many people are actually buying these things. It surely can’t be many, right? I mean, after a couple of hours of research on Google you’ll soon find popular electronic cigarette forums filled to the brim with posts about how ineffective, overpriced and frankly dangerous these cheap cigarette-sized imports are.

Well, imagine my shock when I read this piece of news today:

http://www.nottinghampost.com/E-cigarette-boom-takes-Notts-importer/story-20093586-detail/story.html

MultiCIG, whom I have never actually heard of beforehand, reportedly sells hundreds of thousands of e-cigs a month. Hundreds of thousands! That’s a heck of a lot.

Well, you may ask: what’s the problem?

The problem is that companies like MultiCIG, E-Lites, SkyCig and so on all simply import their crappy products straight from a Chinese conveyor belt and lump them on their website for sale. However, the bigger problem is that these companies do exactly the same for their e-liquids… which is where the real danger potentially lies.

A few months ago I actually looked into setting up a business and selling e-cigs myself. Obviously it’s a real money spinner, as they’re really taking off pretty much everywhere, but especially the UK. On my searches I found a cheap Chinese e-cig importer… complete with pictures of their factory line.

For your entertainment, here’s a link to thousands of e-cig sellers. http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/e-cigarette.html

You can even import some yourself, which is great right?!

Sure, if you have no morals. But what do morals matter anymore?

What exactly are these Chinese sellers putting into their e-liquid? How many hours are their workers working each day? How many safety measures are there to guard an accidental ‘overdose’ of nicotine (e.g. putting too much nicotine in a bottle)? How cheap are the ingredients they are using if they’re able to sell so many for so little?

In my experience, these slimline cigarette-sized e-cigs are a complete ripoff. One look at sites like the ones mentioned above and they simply look like they just want you to rip open your wallet and buy buy buy.

Fancy graphics, slick marketing sales copy, and you’re fooled – hey, I was fooled before too. The difference is that I was appalled with paying so much for a product that was garbage, so I learnt my lesson and did my research.

If you want my advice, find a relatively local supplier that makes their e-juices in-house or sells quality, reputable liquids. Grizwald from VapeEscape is one such supplier, and I recently had a fantastic experience with a small, growing e-juice maker who makes all of his e-juices in his own flat (apartment).  I would never, ever consider being ripped off for some disgusting imported juices now, not after I’ve tasted these.

At the end of the day, electronic cigarettes side effects are unknown. I’d prefer to give myself more of a chance of being safe and smoking quality e liquids, not cheap ones with who knows what in them.