Vaping: Australia to ban disposable vape imports from January
Vaping: Australia to ban disposable vape imports from January
The move is part of a crackdown aimed at protecting children from becoming addicted to nicotine.
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They're so obviously unnecessary I'm surprised more places haven't banned them. They're also new, so conservatives should instinctively hate them.
We need a more generic approach to throwaway culture: the societal cost of disposing of things needs to be embedded in the price of those things. But in the case of vapes, I don't see how that can have a big impact: reusable vape pens only seem to be about twice the cost of a disposable, so anyone who is even remotely thinking rationally about price would be getting reusable ones.
They've exploded in popularity in the US since the FDA absolutely decimated the market for juice and mod manufacturers. They want everyone back on cigarettes and will stop at nothing to accomplish it.
Altria has done so much damage. Philip Morris did a damn good job hiding it's influence in the vape market.
I'd kinda like to see standards for vapes written so we can invent/install refill stations. Making things easier for people cuts the demand for undesirable outcomes like excess waste.
Disposable vapes are massively convenient but the waste is truly excessive and awful.
Regular pod devices are already ridiculously easy to use and maintain. You fill it and charge it. New pod every 1-2 weeks, a 30ml bottle of juice will last you around a month. There's no need for refill stations or anything like that. If ypu were still allowed to buy juice and pods at a gas station (in the US) they'd be more easily accessible but that's about it. Where I'm from at least there's a smoke.shop on damn near every corner though so there still isn't that much of a barrier
You fill it and charge it.
While I am certainly into this idea, the market has clearly shown high demand for disposable vapes. Beating that market in convenience factor would be the intent.
If ypu were still allowed to buy juice and pods at a gas station (in the US) they’d be more easily accessible but that’s about it.
I'd strongly support this legislation tho
I'm not trying to be an ass or anything, I just couldn't find a better way to phrase this. Have you ever used a vape, disposable or not? Having a designated place to swap out disposables would be more of a hindrance than using pod systems. I'm honestly not even sure how that could be structured. The most popular disposables are already rechargeable and people already do that task for themselves. Refilling is a ~10 second endeavor in pod systems. And I'm not even sure how you could go about reusing disposables on a sanitary level. You can't replace the mouth peices and many of them are very poorly built. The juce leaks into the electronics and can cause all sorts of problems.
In order to make this feasible you'd basically have to implement a reusable pod system that people just walk into the shop and swap out for a freshly filled pod when theirs dies out. This would dramatically increase the costs associated with pod systems.
My vape cost me $18, a pack of 4 pods costs $10, and a bottle of juice is ~$15 on average. $43 in total, or a little over the cost of 2 disposables. Disposables are only good for a week max, usually less. For a month of vaping (including the cost of a new vape) it cost me the price of 2 weeks in disposables. Ignoring the cost of the vape and only worrying about pods and juice, you get a months worth of nicotine for less than the price of one disposable. It's not really a convenience problem because reusable vapes are already more convenient and cost effective than disposables. It's not even a flavor or strength thing. Most disposable brands sell bottles of their flavors at the strengths they come in in the disposables. It's just people making poor consumer choices, it's as easy and cheap as it's ever been to use a reusable pod system. It can get even cheaper by ordering online.
Not to say there isn't room for improvement, I mentioned the gas station thing earlier and there used to be a lot of shops that made their own juice and you could order custom bottles with varying flavors, strengths, and vg/pg ratio. I'd like to see those return but there was a lot of restrictions passed in the last few years that have made it exceedingly difficult and cost prohibitive to do. You also used to be able to make your own juice at home but it's illegal to ship concentrated nicotine to individuals now. There's plenty of areas to fix but convenience isn't one of them
I do vape, yes.
It’s just people making poor consumer choices, it’s as easy and cheap as it’s ever been to use a reusable pod system. It can get even cheaper by ordering online.
People always make dumb choices in the name of convenience. That's the problem we're trying to solve.
Idk I just don't see disposables as more convenient than regular ole pods. Some sort of recycling/repurposing for disposables should absolutely be implemented but I don't think it would necessarily affect the convenience of one over the other
I don't want to suggest that I personally disagree with you. I agree with you, as just some dude. However, there is a reason disposables have taken off like a fucking rocket, and my concern here is curbing that and the waste it produces.
Same here. I'm not generally in favor of bans but they'd probably be best in this instance. They're completely unnecessary and it boggles my mind that they're so popular. There's alternatives that are better in literally every metric, available for sale at the same place, at a similar price point, and with lower long term costs. Shits wack
And I’m not even sure how you could go about reusing disposables on a sanitary level. You can’t replace the mouth peices.
That would be the point of setting standards. What the other person is saying is that if you just have to take your old vape back to get a nice discount on your new disposable vape, lots of people would do it. And if there were standards to ensure even disposable vapes could be refilled and reused safely, then they could be put back into circulation instead of into landfill.
The mouth pieces needn't be replaceable either - they just need to be made to survive sanitisation.
I see what you're saying, I just think the barriers to making that feasible are a bit too steep to see widespread adoption. Something absolutely needs to be done about it and something like a core charge/deposit for disposables wouldn't be a bad call. I don't think bans are the way to go for most things but perhaps standards for reusable pod systems may be better. It would lower the barrier to entry and make things a bit more accessible to people who just want nicotine and don't want to think about it. And that way you wouldn't have to fuss with sterilizing and repackaging disposables, not that it's a bad thing/not worth doing. There would still be a fair bit of waste but it'd put it more on par with pod systems
Well there are two ways to get people to do the right thing: carrot and stick. At the moment as you've pointed out, the carrot is in favour of reusable vapes anyway. So unless the carrot can be made even more enticing, it has to be the stick, i.e. bans.
The market = 13yo - 30yo (leaning heavily to the 13-20 age group).
I'm 39 and started vaping with disposable vapes. Vastly better than smoking (which I did before switching)
Are you talking about juul/blu/those kinds that you buy the pods for? Or are you talking about puff bars etc where the entire thing including battery is one unit and you toss it after 1000 hits or whatever like these https://i1.wp.com/aksmokeworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/puff-flow-01.jpg?w=1000&ssl=1
because blu/Juul/etc suck but disposables cost 3x as much and are so much worse for the environment. Disposable batteries are a level above the detriment to the planet of disposable plastic.
The single use 1-unit disposables are what are so popular with the teenage crowd, according to my high schooler.
It's so much more cost effective to spend $20-40 on a good pod mod and buy premium juice online to refill your pod. better for the ocean and 3rd world countries too, all you're throwing away is the 30ml plastic nicotine bottle once every few weeks.
The single-purchase disposables are what I'm talking about and would like to encourage better market alternatives for.
Cost-efficiency just isn't a winning argument here for a whole bunch of consumers. Convenience is. I don't necessarily like that, but it's true, and you can't fight preferences
Juul knocked it out of the park so well it almost became a household name. Then Altria group bought a big part of them and lobbied to kill off all the flavors. It's a shame, they did it right, e-waste wise.
Indeed, the problem seems to be how much easier it is to use the disposables in comparison, I don't get it because adding juice to my tank takes like 30 seconds and I'm good to go, but there's also the coil replacement aspect, it's probably mostly laziness honestly.
I think there's an intimidation factor too. "Coil replacement" would definitely have weirded me out a few years ago.
Laziness is definitely a huge factor tho
I know disposable vapes are very common in the marijuana industry as well; I've been to a handful of dispensaries where they were the only vape product for sale. And frankly in much of America where cannabis is still illegal, using a discreet, disposable vape pen is the safest way to get high (other than when your bootleg Chinese vape kills you 🤣).
Not only that, but federal prohibition on cannabis makes it that much harder to bring alternative products to market, both from an R & D perspective and because marijuana companies can't use traditional banking systems. It's a whole industry built on cash. And right now the big money interests in the cannabis industry are largely tobacco companies who don't have the greatest track record when it comes to making healthy and environmentally friendly products...
There are plenty of reusable vapes on the market that I've used (MFLB, Pax, Volcano, Silver Surfer, etc) but I would definitely choose a concentrate vape pen over all of those options if given the choice. It's just the superior method/form factor and it gets you higher faster. Plus it's perfect for microdosing.
I agree an outright ban on disposable vapes is a must, but we also need to make new, convenient, reusable liquid concentrate vapes with refills that are widely available, like those that already exist in the tobacco industry.
This was a bit of a tangent from the main discussion. It's crazy that disposable nicotine vapes are a thing.
Juul was on the right track, with the pods and reusable battery. At least it's just some plastic getting tossed and not an entire fucking battery. Then the government cracked down on them and here we are
Probably because Altria owns Juul and then lobbied to ban flavors. The red flavor was the best, and I miss it a lot.
