Having almost experienced a dearth of e-cigarette specials and deals during recently passed holidays, it’s pleasing to report yet another big online electronic cigarette presence has jumped on the Black Friday bandwagon with a site-wide special for vapers and smokers who want to go digital.

South Beach Smoke will be taking 40% – that’s forty, almost half - off the price of any and all starter kits, accessories, e-liquids, reusable express vape kits, batteries and disposables available online.

Not that it’s an actual problem but the only “catch” is it ends on Sunday, December first, instead of “Cyber Monday”…

Hm… maybe that means they’ll be running another special then…

Oh, well if they don’t you can always refer to our last post about Apollo Ecigs’ holiday deals, which last until then.

Apollo E-Cigs is offering a great “Black Friday” special to last the full upcoming weekend until the end of Cyber Monday.

Actually there’re two deals available. One is a free disposable to any and every customer to their site who enters “FREECIG” at checkout. All that needs to be paid is a small two-dollar shipping fee.

The other deal is a 30% rebate on everything, site-wide, without exception, upon entering the coupon-code “THANKS30″ when you’re done.

Right on time for Christmas, this is a perfect opportunity for vapers to get the smokers in their lives the gift of smokelessness and go digital.

Of course if you want the free electronic cigarette and the 30% off, you’ll have to go back and do it again…

(Shh! I did’t suggest that, ok?)

The government which inspired Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks is still working its media magic thanks to rules regarding e-cigarette advertising forbidding the devices being shown or used on screen.

So, vape companies can advertise the stick but can’t show the stick. Got that?

What’s an advertiser to do?

UK-based VIP electronic cigarettes company came up with a perfect solution, not only getting their brand out but, thanks to the “prick up your ears” reaction of a few sensitive souls bereft of ulnar nerves, garnering even more attention internationally.

“Will make you cringe”, “smutty” and “wrong on every level” have been common reactions,  droolingly displayed across world media. Naughty, evil e-cigarettes, right? Check out the video and decide for yourselves.

Actually this whole thing is in the minds of the aghast. The shock is more a reflection of viewers and where their minds are than of the actual commercial, which basically tells viewers to try electronic cigarettes made by VIP. Television authorities, take note: there would have been no brouhaha had there been an electronic cigarette in view.

One YouTube user, “JonesesKid”, actually commented, in part: “For goodness sake, this advert is so crude and offensive. It should be aired in the wee small hours, or better still taken off the air.”

Then, tellingly, added: “Not everybody has such a filthy mind”.

While the spot may not be very subtle, and the imagination readily implants its own significance  to the “it” to which it alludes, you have to say this is rather brilliant as it connects with and affects people on so many different levels.

Frankly, it is merely amusing. But not as much as the people who are self-generating porn in their own minds…

Britain’s Heathrow airport seems to honor its motto of “Making Every Journey Better”, having announced a deal with an electronic cigarette company to create the world’s first “vaping area” within its walls.

UK-based Gamucci is essentially opening a vape lounge and shop at Terminal 4, a great opportunity for business, with over ten million people a year passing through…

Seems to be a really cool thing. At first. But there’s a “but” to consider…

An area where people can enjoy their vape sticks without offending holier-than-thou non-vapers (and probably even some smokers) might not be a good way to help illuminate the unilluminated.

Rather a special “zone” or section ostracizing personal vaporizers into their own little ghetto will only re-enforce misconceptions and the already pervasive lies about the devices and their “emissions”.

The ten million or so who’ll see the “vape room” on their travels will only be the beginning; news is guaranteed to reach many more eyes and minds via media outlets already dripping with misinformation and e-cig fear-mongering.

Heathrow policy now prohibits vaping anywhere indoors (of course), so until government regulation and general public understanding renders the area redundant, it remains good for journeying vapers and maybe even smokers.

Who knows, it just might end up converting many from burning tobacco to smokeless vapor.

“I don’t care what they say about me, as long as they spell my name right,” P.T. Barnum reportedly said, and he may have had a point.

In a recent interview with CDC Director of the Office on Smoking and Health, Tim McAfee (apparently an MD), repeated and in some cases seemed to “clarify” many of the  recent false assumptions and statements made by other CDC “reps” (for want of a better word).

These statements are inevitably going to end up distilling up, to the mainstream media as similar reports and vague, unresearched claims have done in the past – especially now the FDA is working on new regulations.

The pro-vaping movement is going to raise a righteous (though odorless) stink about the barrage of anti-ecig propaganda and misinformation this will produce.

But one of the claims McAfee made provided a red flag of illumination. A completely baseless statement he seems to have picked from mid-air, inadvertently may have been correct: “The thing that got [kids] interested was mass advertising that glamorizes the act of vaping.”

The CDC report, which found e-cigarette use by the underaged doubled in 2012, barely overlapped when Blu Cigs started placing the first e-cig ads in a few men’s magazines and aired the first (and only, at the time) television ad at the tail end of that year. It couldn’t and did not study mass advertising and teens. It was a sloppy survey.

McAffee, who can cite no study because there is none, may nonetheless have hit it on the head.

Whether or not Big Pharma is funding negative media coverage of electronic cigarettes or it’s just lazy journalism is irrelevant. The fear-driven alarmist drivel headlining countless TV and news outlets has provided incredible exposure for the vaping industry.

All thanks to the CDC, the FDA, ALA and ACS and all the anti-vapor alphabet organizations making claims against the very products they’re ostensibly promoting (though in “news” media rather than advertising).

So unwanted appreciation is due. Next time, they should reflect a moment and remember Phineas Taylor Barnum.

When next he tours the United Arab Emirates with Kings of Leon, bassist Jared Followill will leave his personal vaporizer at home.

The artist couldn’t have been expected to know, but e-cigarettes are banned, not just illegal, in the UAE.

Although there isn’t much information on his getting “e-cigged” available, he was apparently quite unnerved by airport security when they “caught” him with an electronic cigarette as he and his musical siblings (they’re all brothers except their lead guitarist cousin) were entering the country, where they were scheduled to perform.

Groundless reports Followill was accosted by “some sinister looking airport security guards” and “ almost found himself banged up abroad” should be taken with an ocean-full of salt, however, until he comments on the incident more fully.

Typically, as with many who vape, Followill is the only family/band member who thinks well of e-cigs.

Followill Tweeted: “Just had the life scared out of me at security in Dubai. Apparently it’s not just my bros who think e-cigs are uncool.”

One can make of the first statement what one will, as it seems some yellow journalists have done.

But his second statement is accurate.

Apparently, the “bros” and the UAE government feel cancer is “cool”.

In an astounding display of reason and rationality, the Italian parliament has struck provisions from the law which lumped electronic cigarettes in with regular tobacco sticks, as reported by the online edition of the Gazetta Del Sud.

Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin is apparently “sanguine” this was done, however it appears the Italian parliament is an independent body and can do whatever the heck it pleases.

Apparently inspired by the recent decision by the European Parliement against regulating e-cigarettes as medicine, the parlianment’s move was partly justified by Ignazio Marino, the mayor of the city of Rome, who is also a transplant surgeon:

Although not a fan of vaping in public, Marino stuck to the letter of the law along with fellow parliamentarians and “said e-cigarettes did not produce second-hand smoke or other dangerous emissions for others.”

So while both Lorenzin and Marino were implicit in the “big battle” (her words) against medicalizing nicotine vapor at the EU, and both don’t “favor e-cigarettes in public”, logic and reason, and perhaps a little of the classical Roman philosophical tradition, seems to have prevailed.

A bright spot for the future of vapers as well as smokers.

One would think the American Lung Association (ALA) to be open-minded, curious and scientifically inclined regarding personal vaporizers, or electronic cigarettes.

But one would be wrong.

Either the ALA is lying through its teeth or it is (willfully?) ignorant about the facts on electronic cigarettes.

Consider the recent statement co-signed by Harold Wimmer, ALA CEO, titled “Cotton Candy and Atomic Fireball flavored electronic cigarettes are forging a new pathway to addiction, death and disease“.

This isn’t humor from The Onion or some other similar parody-news site. It’s the ALA official position directly from the… well, the CEO’s mouth.

It’s also echoing, and inspired by, the recent and sorely incomplete Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report on the rise in minors trying e-cigs. Actually it seems they probably didn’t even read it. Otherwise, conclusions may have been quite different.

No, it seems they simply went with CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden’s alarmist and unscientific idea about e-cigarettes maybe being a gateway to tobacco for highschoolers.

Now, compare this with ex-ALA President and CEO Charles Connor, who recently was signed as a consultant for the Electronic Cigarette Industry Group (ECIG):

“We have a fairly reliable understanding of the contents of an electronic cigarette and the vapor it produces,” Connor has written.

In an interview, he stated, “I have a general view that science should triumph over opinion.”

One has to wonder what happened between February, 2012, when Connor accounced his “retirement” from the ALA, and September of this year when ECIG press-released his new post-retirement position?

Why such a radical Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde departure from the current ALA CEO’s stance?

Without implying any connection, Connor’s mother did pass away from lung failure in 2012, “undoubtedly due to cigarettes,” Connor told US News.

“I am deeply committed to eliminating tobacco cigarettes from the American scene.”

Was Connor “freed” from a corporate policy regarding electronic nicotine delivery systems (or ENDS) once he’d officially left the organization the following June? Was this when his research in ENDS began? Or did it start when his mother became ill?

Did this research motivate him to leave the ALA and its intransigent position?

Does the ALA promote a culture of ignoring tobacco harm reduction? (It does, actually.) Is CEO Wimmer now simply parroting uninformed policy, or knowingly misinforming the public and driving nicotine users back to tobacco?

Does the ALA benefit from the ongoing cancer “crisis” or federally-enforced contributions from Big Tobacco?

There are no doubt non-disclosure agreements Connor is honor-bound to keep.

But as long as the doctor is in, it hardly matters.

It’s one of those forehead-slap moments when you should have thought of it yourself.

How many among us still use an ashtray when we’re at the computer, even though we don’t smoke tobacco anymore? How often have you put your e-cig in that old thing (clean now) just so your vape stick wouldn’t roll away, so it’s easier to pick up or simply out of habit?

How many times have you not thought about this doinky little holder (you should have a million times before) which Blu Cigs has just announced on their Facebook page: a neat little receptacle to put your electronic cigarette when you’re not pulling on it?

It’s just too obvious for anyone to have actually conceived, but it seems Blu users and fans (who may be a little brighter than you or I) have requested something like it in the past, and so the company has responded.

Oh, by the way, it’s called an “Ashless Tray” (Ashless Ash Tray?) and it’s coming soon…

And it’s very “cool” that Blu isn’t taking the credit on the thing.

Legendary blues and folk guitarist Roy Book Binder loves electronic cigarettes so much he’s penned an original tune called “Electric Cigarette Blues”.

The Book, as he’s commonly called, wrote it for his latest album, The Good Book, after converting from smoke to vapor thanks to award-winning reporter and “full-time crackpot” Dennis E. Powell three years prior.

“He saved my life,” Book Binder said.

Book Binder is 70 years old and a living library of blues, folk & country music. He was a student of the Rev. Gary Davis, whom he met through his friend Dave Van Ronk (the “Mayor of MacDougal Street”), and has basically lived his life as he did with Davis – driving and touring and, when he isn’t camped and teaching at Fur Peace Ranch guitar camp, on the road.

And a smoker.

Like many if not most of the road-borne, blues and jazz artists slogging it throughout this and other countries in anonymity before the 1960s’ cultural revival and re-awakening to these musical roots, Book Binder puffed tobacco heavily. It was almost part of the art.

But Book Binder is a cultural treasure, included in Sheldon Harris’s seminal Blues Who’s Who and torch-bearer of American musical heritage.

“Electric Cigarette Blues” is a ragtime-jazz delight.

Having him around a little longer now he’s gone digital is probably a good thing.

Electric Cigarette Blues
Music & Lyrics: Roy Book Binder

These new ‘lectric cigarettes they really satisfy

You can

• Smoke ‘em in the kitchen
• Smoke ‘em in the loo
• Smoke ‘em when you want to
• Doin’ what you do

These new ‘lectric cigarettes they really satisfy

‘lectric is the way to go you know it ain’t no lie

You can

• Smoke ‘em playin’ poker
• Smoke ‘em in the car
• Smoke ‘em at the office
• Or hanging at the bar

These new ‘lectric cigarettes they really satisfy

‘lectric is the way to go you know it ain’t no lie

You can

• Smoke ‘em on the golf course
• Smoke ‘em on a cruise
• Smoke ‘em in the pool room
• Chalkin’ up your cue

These new ‘lectric cigarettes they really satisfy

‘lectric is the way to go you know it ain’t no lie

• Smoke ‘em on the dance floor
• Lookin’ mighty cool
• Smoke ‘em after dinner
• You know they really rule

These new ‘lectric cigarettes they really satisfy

‘lectric is the way to go you know it ain’t no lie

• Never need an ashtray
• Never need a match
• Don’t have to leave the party
• Whatta ya think of that?

These new ‘lectric cigarettes they really satisfy

‘lectric is the way to go you know it ain’t no lie

[UPDATE:  the good people at E-Cigarette-Forum go into more detail about the inspiration for the first E-Cig Blues Song.]