Ashtray Blog

Nicotine causes cancer. That’s just one of the misconceptions that surrounds nicotine. In fact, while not healthy in an absolute sense, nicotine is nothing like as bad as nicotine plus the tar, toxins and carcinogens that are in cigarette smoke. And in this post we aim to clear up some of the misconceptions. 1. Nicotine [...]

ecigarettedirect.co.uk is in the Mail on Sunday! The story features one of our customers, Julie Parnell, and how she managed to buy a house with the savings she made from switching to electronic cigarettes. Click here to read the fully story! Alternatively, use our cigarette calculator below to find out how much money smoking is [...]

You can get two special offers from ecigarettedirect this month: one on mini-kits and on refills. Mini Electronic Cigarette Kit Special Offer For a limited time only, you can get a free battery (usual cost: £8.50) with every Smoker’s Halo mini electronic cigarette you buy. To check out the mini kit, or get your free battery, [...]

I think it should probably be taken as a given that I am biased writing this post. However, I have yet to taste a disposable electronic cigarette that I have found personally satisfying. I’ve tried several. When Tescos brought out the 10 Motives electronic cigarette, I thought I’d try one. I bought one, and headed [...]

5 Days 5 Questions 6 Great Prizes Over the next 5 days I will be posting 5 questions. Each day one person who has answered the question correctly.will win our smoker’s halo electronic cigarette kit (changable for a tank kit if you prefer using e-liquid). On the final day one person who has answered all [...]

By Paul Bergen of tobaccoharmreduction.org In the New World, tobacco was both thought of as a panacea for all that could ail you and also as a spiritual conduit. Using it cured you, kept you safe, and could give you visions. And it also helped with what was more common in those days: a less [...]

If you’re like me, when you first heard of the electronic cigarette you immediately wondered what was wrong with it. In fact, it was a fortunate comment left by a researcher, now a good friend, in the very very early days of this blog which reassured me (and lead to our Interviews with Scientists series). [...]

Free Electronic Cigarette Trials Every few weeks or so we seem to get a spate of people ringing us up demanding to know where their money is. They’ve had an electronic cigarette from someone advertising a free trial – and they’re wondering why their money is suddenly disappearing from their bank account. (Unfortunately, one of the companies [...]

Nicotine cessation aids don’t work! The public health organisations have lied to you. The National Health Service has lied to you. The pharmaceutical companies have lied to you. What’s the lie? That nicotine cessation aids work. Pfizer is currently running a campaign to stop smokers from quitting cold turkey. The NHS gives out big pharm [...]

By tobacco harm reduction researcher Paul Bergen of tobaccoharmreduction.org No one knows if e-cigarettes actually do help smokers kick the habit! This statement (my exclamation mark!) arises predictably in many a tobacco control research paper and article. The statement can only be compared to someone watching television and saying: no one knows if it is [...]

A campaign in Portsmouth is telling smokers NOT to quit cold turkey. Whose funding the campaign? Surprise, surprise, it’s Pfizer, a manufacturer of quit smoking aids. One problem – pharmaceutical aids, when measured at 12 months, have half the effectiveness of quitting cold turkey. In fact, according to one study, effectiveness can be low as 0.8% - [...]

Has your life been affected by the electronic cigarette? We are working with a journalist who is looking for case studies. If you: have switched to the electronic cigarette because of health reasons (either because you have chosen to or been recommended to) and/or have made dramatic money savings as a result of switching to [...]

Millions of smokers resolve to quit smoking every new year. Unfortunately, the vast majority fail. (Are you one of them?) Indeed, one smoking cessation study found that only 0.8% of subjects managed to quit for more than a year! But if you want to go smoke-free, rather than nicotine free, there are alternatives that carry [...]

My godmother, Helen, was a heavy smoker. She fell on hard times after her husband, who she loved dearly, died far too young. Smoking was partly a crutch, I think, but also something she loved. Always short of money, she made sacrifices to continue smoking, and switched to rolling tobacco. Terribly unhappy, she always said [...]

Once again, you can choose from two special offers at ecigarettedirect.co.uk! The first is the final extension of the incredible two-for-one Christmas special offer. The offer has proved so popular that it’s been extended until the 1st January. All you have to do is buy one standard, zero or menthol smoker’s halo e-cig kit – [...]

By Paul Bergen of tobaccoharmreduction.org This really has nothing to do with vaping at all but it is amusing. Vaping has come in at a time when the ways of using tobacco and/or nicotine don’t exhibit quite the imagination when compared to days of yore. Nowadays the choices are: inhaling  chewing  and a little bit [...]

My aunt has Alzheimers.

It’s fairly early stages. She still recognised me when I met her recently, and can usually have a conversation.

But she is increasingly getting confused. Sometimes she thinks her money has been taken away from her and bursts into tears.

There may, however, be help for her.

Prevention

Some research suggests that nicotine can both help prevent Alzheimer’s – and help alleviate the effects when people have the disease.

• According to Dr James Le Fanue: “Smokers have a 50 per cent reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s–and the more smoked the greater the protection.”
• Out of 17 studies, 13 reported a reduced risk of Alzhimer’s, with 4 finding no difference.

Source: Nicotine Benefits (FORCES)

Treatment

• Nicotine may alleviate side effects of other treatment. (Source: Science Daily)
• A by-product of nicotine may help prevent plaques on the brain that are linked to Alzheimer’s. (Source: BBC HEALTH)
• Nicotine is known to help concentration (see Are you smarter when you vape?).

But…

The protein thought to cause Alzheimers.

In the title we said maybe…

There is one piece of research that suggests nicotine may encourage the growth of Alzheimers.

Alzheimers disease is characterised by tangles (twisted fibres found inside the brain), and this study found that nicotine could encourage the growth of tangles in mice.

My aunt is desperate for anything that could help her think more clearly. (She’s still working, and has to hang on in their if she wants to get her pension.)

But until research comes up with something more conclusive, I think I am going to hold back from giving her nicotine patches.

One of the things I have been trying to do with this blog has been to build up resources and apps that can be used by bloggers and webmasters – and not just e-cigarette webmasters, but by people writing/blogging about smoking.

Our latest gadget allows you to calculate how much you would save by stopping smoking. It’s not totally relevant to e-cig users, as of course we are not quitting, we are simply switching to a different way of using nicotine (and we still spend money on e-cigs) – but it’s still fun to see how much money you are not spending on tobacco cigarettes.

Created by ECigarette Direct

As usual, anyone is free to embed or use the calculator on their website or blog as long as no change is made to the code and the calculator is attributed to us.

How much will you save over your lifetime?

Now for the fun bit – calculate how much you would save (or are saving) and let us know in the comments, or on our facebook page!

Also see: Electronic Cigarette Quiz | Electronic Cigarette Slideshow

Do you have a few seconds to answer one question – and get yourself a chance to win one of two great prizes at the same time?

All you have to do is tell us why you switched to e-cigarettes.

And here’s what you could win:

Click here to take the survey and get two chances to win the smoker’s halo tank kit above!

A guest post by Steve from Steve’s Vaping World

Introduction

Electronic cigarettes share a number of similarities with consumer electronics besides rechargeable batteries. Some say e-cigarettes are more complicated than traditional cigarettes requiring a little bit more dedication on the part of the user. Learning curves are common in many areas of technology. The amount of dedication required of e-cigarette users goes way beyond having to learn how to actually use the devices.

However, electronic cigarettes are unique in the field of technology in one aspect. I cannot think of a single pice of technology that required the average user to become politically active to keep a product on the market, or even to use the product as intended.

Why fight for consumer technology?

Smoker's Halo users - from our User Gallery.

You never hear about anyone writing to his or her elected representative to ask that their favorite microwave oven not be banned from import. Nobody has had to try and explain how their life was made so much better because they were able to switch from VHS tapes to DVDs.

To raise the stakes a little bit, nobody to my knowledge has been killed by VHS tapes. Could you imagine the outcry if analog cell phones were found to emit dangerous levels of radiation while new low-radiation digital phones were kept off the market for some arbitrary reason?

Yet, this is exactly what is happening in many locations with e-cigarettes. The old technology continues to exist despite being a known killer. A new technology comes onto the market that promises to be less deadly and perform better than the original. Rather than welcoming the new technology every obstacle imaginable has been put in its way.

A new technology having to fight for acceptance in the marketplace isn’t exactly unusual. It happens all the time. Competing formats are released on a regular basis. For example the war that broke out between Betamax and VHS, or the more recent format wars between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are just two examples of many.

These battles, however, take place somewhat behind the scenes and in marketing departments. Consumer involvement is limited to either being an early adopter, picking one of the technologies and hoping for the best or simply waiting it out to see who will win the battle.

True Believers

Oh mighty e-cig...

Most consumers choose the latter path rather than running the risk of throwing their hard-earned cash down on a losing contender. The smaller subset of users, the early adopters tend to be much more active in their activities surrounding a product. These consumers tend to talk about the products on message boards, or blogs and evangelize whichever product.

Even the consumers who are the most vocal about a product generally do not need to write a politician to further their cause. That’s where e-cigarette technology departs from most other forms of technologies.

Not only do the super fans of the devices have to do more to make their product more successful, average consumers also need to defend their product. Whether the threat is overreaching local smoking ordinances or entire national agencies attempting to outlaw the electronic cigarette, it is grass roots movements that have been the most effective in keeping e-cigarettes off more black lists.

For grass roots movements to be effective, there has to be a sizable base of constituents to affect real change. This is why just early adopters getting more active is not effective in the fight to keep e-cigarettes out in the open.

As of now, the people who are fighting for e-cigarettes are still a small majority of the larger base of consumers (estimates are currently at 2.5 million users in the US). If 2.5 million people wrote their senators, the debate in the US over the devices would end quickly.

(ED: Here in the UK we are more lucky, with support from the UK gov nudge unit.)

A Worthy Battle

Hands off my e-cig!

Despite the number of people actually being active to protect their safer alternative to smoking being much lower, many efforts have been successful. This seems to indicate that more than just the rabid fans of the devices are doing something about the unstable situation.

The fact that they are fighting means something. How many people would bother to become activists just to keep a specific gaming console or any other technology on the market? Yet when it comes to e-cigarette technology, that is exactly what people are doing.

It means that people truly believe in the concept behind e-cigarettes. It means that people genuinely believe that these devices have the potential to get people off of traditional cigarettes. For many people, e-cigarettes are literally a matter of life or death.

And that is worth fighting for.

Want to fight the good fight? Check out the following organisations which lobby on behalf of e-cig users and/or retailers:

Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives
E Cigarette Consumer Association of the UK
Electronic Cigarette Trade Industry Association
Campaign for Vaping in Pubs