One of the biggest hurdles to “going digital” and somewhat confusing aspects of electronic cigarettes is the pricing. Especially if you don’t necessarily want to quit smoking or using nicotine.

After all, when a smoker is out of smokes, getting the next nicotine fix is just the price of a pack away.

All too often, for smokers to become vapers they must spend anywhere from $35 to $100 to get that first starter kit – quite a leap when times are lean. And they must wonder – I thought e-cigarettes were supposed to be cheaper.

Well, they are but it’s the catridges or e-liquid within that brings in the savings.

But while it’s often initially a hit to the pocket-book to convert, this isn’t the case with EonSmoke‘s new “Economy” starter kits, which come with two filled cartridges, rechargeable battery and USB charger cable for only $12.95 – just a bit more than a pack of cancer sticks.

While it’s not a “Christmas Special” per se, this is a perfect holiday stocking stuffer for smokers, or a gift for you and everyone who says you should quit tobacco.

More and more, there is less and less of an excuse…

Previously we posted a piece about how the American Heart Association probably did some research to change its stance from outright prohibition of electronic cigarettes to saying, as a last resort, that vaping was probably not so bad after all…

Now? They’ve actually come out with a review of studies of  e-cigarette use and quit-rates of vapers which surmises that e-cigs are better than traditional, approved, pharmaco, FDA approved Nicotine Reduction Therapies (NRTs) at  getting smokers to quit tobacco.

No, no… really. No Joke here…

What happened? Did their funding from big pharma and big tobacco dry up? Or were they really fair-minded and science-based all along, but just a little slow on the uptake?

Who knows? Who cares? This is quite simply great news!

While any new electronic cigarette studies that find e-cigarettes are less toxic than regular cigarettes are hardly a surprise – let’s face it, even those who are against e-cigs know this – the latest results from a Penn State university report are really unexpected.

You see, the study indicates electronic cigarettes are less addictive than tobacco.

Which is hard to believe, even for the most ardent vapor activist.

After all, isn’t it the nicotine in both tobacco and e-liquids that is addictive? Why would inhaling burning shredded leaves be more addicting than vaporized water, glycol and glycerine??

Apparently cigarettes deliver more nicotine than e-cigs do.

Researchers used the Penn State Cigarette Dependence and Electronic Cigarette Dependence Indexes to gauge their findings, and, according to Penn State College of Medicine professor Jack Foulds, “We might actually need e-cigarettes that are better at delivering nicotine because that’s what’s more likely to help people quit.”

With the growth of open and tank systems available today, that’s a done deal, professor!

Politicians are like children, playing in a big expensive sandbox.

BUT here’s one nobody saw coming…

John Boehner and members of the House of Representatives have written a letter to the US Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Food and Drug Administration, warning against pending, deeming regulations which “will impede innovation and impose unnecessary regulatory burdens on both the FDA and regulated industries”.

About electronic cigarettes. Ok?

Really, the obstructionist party which has actually not done much proactively in the last six years has come out for e-cigarettes…

It’s hard to hold that in the mental crucible.

Although it is true that any regulation or obstruction to business, whether it screw up the environment or force industry to respect human safety, is anathema to the Republicans, this is still a welcome surprise…

Then again, if Democrats had cried foul over the FDA, the Republicans would have probably been all for stricter regulations. For the children, you know, throwing sand at each other…

When politicians discuss banning e-cigarettes it’s pretty one-sided. Though some are against over-regulation of vaping, referring to industry and economic factors, for the most part everyone mouths the usual platitudes about “gateway” to and “re-normalisation” of smoking, against facts and stats indicating the opposite.

But not in Wales.

While some would ban electronic cigarette advertising and sales to minors (currently effective under British law and which of course everyone is for), there are others who are educated, or at least well-informed.

A member of the Wales National Assembly, Kirsty Williams has fiercely debated against and written about how there is no reason to ban vaping everywhere smoking is banned.

Rather than buzzwords and ambivalent fears, she not only uses facts, she attacks the other side for their utter lack of reason for legislating strongly against e-cigs.

Debating in the Senedd, Williams said, “There is no justification for such a ban, no evidence to support such a ban and indeed such a ban could lead to potential improvements in public health being lost. ”

This Welsh Liberal Democrat just may swing that vote.

Here’s a company that’s been around for quite a while – in fact you could argue it’s one of the first online companies in the US to mix & blend their own e-liquids.

While you’ve probably seen their ads here there and everywhere (that they’re allowed that is), Halo Cigs hasn’t been promoting that much compared to some other companies, especially on social networks, and yet it’s one of the biggest.

But no more. Halo has been evolving with a spiffy new website and has kept up with market demand by growing into the more advanced tank systems, multiple funky flavors, and improved technology with their antiburn filler and battery life.

And now, of course for Cyber Monday, they’re adding a full 15% rebate on everything site-wide, from their starter kits for beginners to even the gear and apparel, until Thursday December 4th midnight.

And all you have to do is enter CYBERSALE as the code at checkout.

It’s a four-day Monday!

(PS: Here’s a Halo Ecigs Video Review.)

Oh we have a doozy of a dumb line or deliberate lie, suspicious of one of two things.

First the new headline-myth is the lie of a Japanese study “finding” electronic cigarettes, according to a rubber-stamped phrase carried planet-wide, contain TEN TIMES more carcinogens than tobacco smokes.

Ok? Got that? Every report, reporter, syndication feed, news paper, from national to small-town rags, has carried it. Even United Press InternationaI (aka UPI).

It. Is. Full. Of. It…

Luckily there’s one investigator who is not just willing but able to do a little more research than probably every journalist in the world.

Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos, Research fellow at Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center, one of the leading researchers in the inordinately comparitive fields of vapor and smoke, thought this was unusual, having read the study.

So he got on the phone to lead researcher Naoki Kunugita, who told him the ten-times-higher-formaldehyde finding was partial and not published, since it was from a single, new, next-generation, more powerful device and couldn’t be corroborated or included in the study.

AHAH! So how did the journalists of the world get this “headline”?

Who knows… stay tuned. For facts.

Intolerance of and discrimination against electronic cigarette users and vapers is becoming ridiculous.

For example, a big Colorado health services company announced they will no longer hire tobacco smokers. Or anyone even using patches or other smoking-cessation means.

Just before this, Missouri University Health Care started to drug-test – and bar from employment – people who used nicotine. Vapers, in other words. ECig users.

In other news, a 16-year old New Jersey student was suspended for four days for possession of a vaping pen, though the school didn’t even know if it contained nicotine.

These institutions test for cotinoids, a breakdown product in the blood from nicotine. A legal substance. Like caffeine, high-fructose corn syrup…

And that’s just this month – these are the tip of an iceberg that has grown steadily in the past few years. Remember the Titanic?

These must be constitutionally challenged, appealed until science proves e-cigarette vapor is bad.

Until then, there are studies, a growing body of facts, to be sent in, commented in propaganda parading as reporting, links submitted.

If we don’t, who will?

To quote Martin Niemöller, “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

As part of their yearly PR stint in Time magazine, Oxford always denotes a “word of the year” from the list they’ve accepted as official words…

This year, Vape was accepted as a real english word, automatically making the short list.

What made the difference was the fact that the use of “vape”, on the increase last year, literally doubled in the 2013-2014 period (Oxford does count these things).

On top of the media use and its reflection of the mushrooming e-cigarette market, as well as to the landmark year marijuana was allowed for recreational use, Oxford also points out the word “has ties to our preoccupations with freedom and health and legislation.”

What they don’t mention is the all-out war against ENDS and personal vaporizers being a large part of the reason the word’s use has increased in the popular “discourse”.

The relentless assault by either paid agents of the state’s tax revenue interests, corporate pharmaceutical stakeholders or a lazy subjugated press combined with an unquestioning, thoughtless audience (or all above combined) has not only brought the whole non-issue to the forefront, assigning official status to a verb which has now become the word of the year, it has also created the bulwark against which its efforts will crash, fall asunder beneath the weight of its own over-exposure and illumination by facts to the contrary.

If this is propaganda, it’s against Chinese manufacturers, not agains e-cigs as a whole…

A reddit user posted on the TalesFromTechSupport sub-reddit about malware found on one executive’s machine where he works, but its source remained a mystery despite all efforts to track it… until somebody in IT asked the victim, “Have there been any changes in your life recently?”

Turns out he’d quit smoking and was a vaper whose e-cig charger (no mention of brand), USB-connected to his computer, apparently had some kind of malware hardcoded into it which launched and called in other forms of … something, via the internet.

What it did – advertise, spy, steal, just play with the user – isn’t specificied.

They found the low-cost, low-quality device was Chinese-made.

This isn’t to say all Chinese e-cigarettes are bad, but some most definitely can be.

If you want to save money using an electronic cigarette, stick to domestic, reputable companies, and don’t go lowest-brow-possible.

Or it could really cost you.

Or…. maybe it didn’t even really happen. But it’s guaranteed to generate hundred of responses…