Why 20mg per ml e-liquid is useless for many.

The #EU #TPD proposals as they stand allow the ongoing use of 20mg per ml nicotine provided that it’s in a device (tank, cartomiser or whatever) that can contain no more than 2ml. The logic is that the total nicotine content of that device will be capped at 40mg which should be enough to sustain people.

Vapers across Europe are struggling to help the policy makers understand why this is not acceptable, and why these proposals will force them to move back to smoking tobacco, or sourcing higher strength liquids on the black market.

Vapers will already know the following, but it’s entirely understandable that non-vapers won’t, so here’s my attempt to explain.

We (vapers) self-titrate, usually via some trial and error in the early days to discover the optimum nicotine content in liquid to satisfy. In my particular case, I mainly use 25 – 30mg per ml concentration liquid, which gives me an optimum balance between nicotine intake and time spent actually inhaling on my device. This is not a significantly high level, many vapers prefer 36mg per ml, and some of the most popular sealed, generation one devices at the moment are filled with 45mg per ml liquid.

In a pinch I can use liquid of 24mg per ml concentration, but the volume of this I need to “vape” starts to become impractical and expensive. My first e-cig, a generation one “cig-a-like” device was supplied with 18 & 24mg per ml cartridges with approx. 0.5ml of liquid in each cartridge. Despite the manufacturer’s claim that each cartridge was equivalent to 20 tobacco cigarettes, I found that I was actually consuming five or six of these cartridges daily, and within two weeks I was looking for something better. Had I not found something better, I would not have persisted and returned to smoking tobacco cigarettes. (This is not unusual, as can be seen by looking in the “new users / introductions” section on just about any vaping forum).

The new proposals to restrict nicotine strength to 20mg per ml will essentially mean that my device will not sustain me. The cost and practicalities of using 20mg per ml liquid in a 2ml device, coupled with the lack of sensation that such a low strength liquid delivers would effectively render my ecig useless.

It’s not simply about that total volume of nicotine absorbed, the absorption rate is absolutely critical and if that rate is too low – the ecig fails to provide an acceptable alternative to smoking.

The current proposals, for many, are a ban on effective ecigs, and this is why I cannot accept them.

#NoecigBAN #ShameonEU