So PoWeRlEvEl TiMe but my mom was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and it looks like the battle is going well but the oncologist told her that she needs to cut back on the cigs.
She tried vaping before but she didn't like it. It made her cough.
Any suggestions for a vape that a confirmed cigarette addict will accept part of the time with the goal of eventually cutting out cigs mostly entirely?
I'll preface this by saying I won't be able to provide much useful info since my experience is with MJ vapes, but there are some constants across vapes in general which will help others make suggestions, specifically, given you mentioned that she complained that vapes made her cough previously: how comfortable is she, or someone close to her, fiddling with tech?
Typically the most customizable vapes as far as temperature and such are also kind of fiddly with menus and such, so the level of comfort with such things would make a difference for recommendations.
e: also, do you recall how it made her cough? Was the vapor too hot, or was it something else? I ask because what I've previous heard is cig smokers tend to like things harsher, not less harsh, but I don't think it's because it makes them cough, from what I heard (which again is like 3rd hand through MJ vape communities) is that they can't "feel it" (if that makes sense) which makes them not like it.
Any suggestions for a vape that a confirmed cigarette addict will accept part of the time with the goal of eventually cutting out cigs mostly entirely?
e: also, do you recall how it made her cough? Was the vapor too hot, or was it something else? I ask because what I've previous heard is cig smokers tend to like things harsher, not less harsh, but I don't think it's because it makes them cough, from what I heard (which again is like 3rd hand through MJ vape communities) is that they can't "feel it" (if that makes sense) which makes them not like it.
I both smoke and vape weed myself and I can describe it as more of a chesty cough versus a dry cough?
Where the wet, chesty cough sounds worse but feels more productive because there is active mucous generation vs. a dry cough where it feels like a splinter that you're only getting more stuck.
SMOK Nord 4 is a good device. Easy to replace coils and pods, both of which are cheap, good battery life, and it isn't some giant box mod that makes one look like a douchebag.
24 mg/ml got me off of a pack plus a day of cigarettes after almost 30 years. I make my own liquid, but if she is a menthol smoker, a good type of off the shelf liquid is Halo Subzero.
Okay since no one else will provide an actual answer.
The reason she's coughing is likely due to either the PG content or nic levels.
Something like the Aspire Pixo with a .5mg concentration of nicotine in the liquid at around 20-30w. It also has the benefit of being both lung drawn (breath in to activate) and button press.
Vapresso are also fairly good.
Avoid smok.
The general rule for liquids is that propylene Glycol is more throat hit, and Vegetable glycol is cloud and flavour. Generally you want a 60:40 to 90:10 mix vg:pg for most set ups and for a more pleasant vape.
It takes a little bit of trial and error to figure out what exactly the right nic levels and wattage is.
Agree, I have a vapresso xross 4 pretty good idiot proof device, with good auto activation and has never leaked.
Agree, SMOK devices are generally pretty shit.
Disagree on the reason why she'd cough though, I think it's more likely to do with the coils resistance. Low resistance coils generate more vapour and don't restrict airflow nearly as much as a cigarette filter, so when cigarette smokers use them they tend to draw too much vapour at once. Stick to a higher resistance coil it'll have more air flow resistance and lower vapour production and generally feel a little more cigarette like, they will require liquids with higher PG though. I'd recommend 70% PG and 1% nicotine, it will give more of a throat hit but it's close to what cigarettes feel like.
Getting her into DIY stuff would give her more range that disposable/pod stuff, but it may not be something she wants to fiddle with. That's always been the double edged sword of vape.
When it comes to the current market of mostly disposable gas station vapes? I feel they're all pretty much the same. They're all like low watt high nic salt vapes, and all the flavors are variants of fruit plus koolada which is the flavorless version of menthol meant to circumvent menthol bans (koolada is played out, I actually liked menthol goddamnit). Most of the cool/unique flavors are long dead and gone. When was the last time you saw a custard?
If people say it hurts, it's 1 too hot, 2 they're hitting it too much, and 3 the juice is probably too PG vs VG. Maybe 4 it's too much koolada and they need something not branded "cool" like that ass wood flavored "tobacco" flavor no one buys. The problem with that is finding actual 50/50 mixes nowadays and also building/filling/etc that comes with all of that (depending on how hard you want to go), most of what is easily accessible to the newb is all prebuilt/prefilled shit you just toss when it blinks empty and since it's low watt/low cloud it's usually high PG.
I stopped fucking with vape when DIY/mix your own juice died out/they made homebrew various shades of illegal depending on your area, but I'd say... aim for something you can turn down as a bare minimum? Bare bones pod/disposable shit is suck=vape, there's just a microphone in there to detect noise and trigger the coil. Better gas station/disposable stuff usually has an off/normal/high switch on the bottom so you can 1 turn the heat down and 2 turn it off.
Anyone who's had a shitty disposable without a cutoff switch short out and start auto firing while they scramble to rip it apart and break that wire to the lithium (or anyone who's seen a dumbass cloud chaser vent an 18650 in a fucking mechanical tube mod via a poorly built sub ohm coil) knows what I'm talking about.
I ran in circles that were way into the DIY underground phase of vape before the feds shut it all down to sell it to big tobacco, and honestly? That whole "won't someone think of the children" flavors scandal + "zomg kids are dying/popcorn lung!" scare a a few years before Covid was a big sleight of hand by the media (I assume directed by big tobacco interests trying to corner the market) mixing up the emerging facts between gray/black market counterfeit THC vapes adulterated with vitamin E oil, and actual water soluble glycerin/propylene glycol nicotine vapes already regulated by the FDA.
Once big tobacco got ahold of the market, no one gave a fuck about flavors or kids keeling over dead, the whole thing went silent. The whole controversy is mostly over outside of staunch anti vapers. It was the boot on the neck of private industry for circumventing lucrative sin tax code, and the various independent businesses that made up the market at the time wasted all their glory days knifing each other in the back over who could innovate faster and who could rip it off even faster. They wasted all their time on look we have more airflow now, look we have more coil posts now, look we put a kazoo fan in the RDA so you piss everyone within 50 feet of you off every time you take a hit! They mostly all got taken down one by one state by state.
That being said, I've always been of the opinion that if anything fucks vapers over in the long run that studies haven't nailed down yet, they're probably gonna get some weird variant of welder's lung due the kanthal used as the heating element to vaporize the juice. Especially anyone that was big into the super hot/high wattage cloud chasing scene that died ages ago.
Extra especially anyone super into the ultra hardcore cloud chasing cloud competition crowd that got suckered into buying actual welding wire repurposed as "extra good" wire. WTF was that shit called, hot wires or something? Anyone remember that? Before everyone figured out it was just SS316L? I distinctly remember an era where people were buying and reselling welding wire as "competition wire" because it could heat up faster/cool down faster and thus handle a hotter microburst from a super hot mech build...
