I’m a UK vaper (former smoker) and while I’m sure I’m going to find this annoying (disposables are helpful in a pinch when your proper vape has run out of battery or liquid), it’s clearly the right thing to do.
The e-waste involved in that sub-industry must be absolutely horrifying. Tens of millions of tiny little batteries, surrounded in plastic, lingering quantities of nicotine-rich liquids…
I'm not sure how it is in the UK, but in the USA it's also next to impossible to find a disposable vape that doesn't have an insanely high amount of nicotine. If anyone is unfortunate enough to try a disposable as their introduction to nicotine, they'll be as hooked as a pack a day smoker in no time. I switched to vaping after the pandemic and saw in realtime vapes come out with higher and higher nicotine levels, replacing the lower nic vapes on the shelves.
The only reason I had to use disposables was that I couldn't get replacement coils & nicotine juice for several months. They can't use traditional shippers, and the services they use vary wildly in quality; I probably still have a shipment gathering dust in a storage warehouse after several failed delivery attempts. For anyone trying to quit smoking, my best advice would be to go to a vape store that has a lot of custom vape equipment and not just peddling disposables. They should be able to tell how much nicotine salt / freebase liquid you should use given your current smoking habits and goals for quitting.
I also noticed that the flavors I'd get in disposables taste a lot more "chemical" than the ones you can find for a vape mod. I suspect that people buying them in a pinch makes them a lot less discerning about what ends up in them.
Yeah, same. I'm all up for a "free country", and all that. But this was just absurd. I wonder if 30+ years don't the line, if maybe resources are scarcer, we'll think about these and say: "we were fucking crazy"
An ex of mine used disposable vapes and I was shocked by how beautifully designed some of them are - transparent covers with visible inner workings reminiscent of the Nothing phones; custom multi-segment displays for battery and temperature status; original artwork printed in vibrant color on the side. It made me even angrier that these things are meant to just be used once and then thrown out. Of course putting all this e-waste into the environment is a disaster, but to then also treat art and design as similarly disposable feels heartbreakingly cynical on another level entirely.
I collected a few that she was going to throw out, someday™ I'll build some driver boards for the displays and make a little art piece out of them.
If they're anything like the US, even though sales to children are banned, kids still get their hands on it. I have a family member who works directly with children and they constantly find kids vaping in the restrooms. At some point adults are distributing vapes to children despite the legality.
If the most modulatable link in the supply chain is sales to adults who then distribute to children, that's unfortunately going to be the point that lawmakers target. Sucks to give people a chance and then be shown why we were wrong.
It's weird how the article (and perhaps the law itself?) frame it as being "for the children".
Disposable vapes are an environmental disaster. If this new law forces the manufacturers to add a 5 cents usb port to recharge them or force them to make the cell removable so it can be charged (disposable vapes already use rechargeable cells, they just can't be charged currently), it's a win for everybody.
When I was a kid, there was a black market for trading cards, candy, cigarettes, and blunts in school. Schools are a lot like prisons, where the poorer kids needed a hustle to eat. Some kids were making tons of money selling to other kids in school. Mostly legal stuff, but some illegal. Usually they had an older brother to supply them with stuff they couldn't get on their own.
>Sucks to give people a chance and then be shown why we were wrong.
Is this just clumsy wording or a dog whistle for how you think society ought to be structured?
Because if the latter I take serious issue with the implied assumptions about the relationship between the government and the people.
Yeah, smoking is bad and vaping is only a little better but it's a pretty mild problem as far as societal ills go, adults are adults and you don't get to screw everyone because of a few bad actors.
I'm not sure this will actually end up changing much because of how they've carved out exceptions for refillable or rechargeable devices. I don't vape nicotine but I occasionally buy a disposable THC vape, and nearly every one of them is technically rechargeable despite the fact that the charge generally lasts the life of the cartridge and there's no use for it afterwards. I wouldn't be surprised if UK vape vendors simply make minor changes to be compliant without really changing the product.
Aside from the health/chemical-pollution aspects, these things have simply resulted in such ugliness because I see them strewn all over the ground every day.
Apparently "disposable" means "throw on the ground".
The overlap between "Uses nicotine" and "Just throws plastic shit on the ground" is astonishing. You do not see nearly as much littering from weed smokers for example.
>The ban will not apply to rechargeable or refillable devices.
My impression was that these make up the lion's share of "disposable" vape sales. I've certainly never known anyone to use anything else, but I'm also not 14 and vaping in the bathroom.
I wonder if they meant 'and' because yes, many high capacity disposable vapes are technically rechargeable as the batteries don't last as long as the liquid.
They could have played with incentives and monetary returns on used devices, same we do with deposits for empty cans or bottles and let the manufactures deal with all the waste/recycling. These disposable devices are clearly an environment problem. Where I am, NY, I've seen thrown all over the place and at first I had no idea what they were. I picked up one thinking it was some kind of device someone lost. I did the right thing and put it in a trash can but then recycling thoughts came to mind. I'm all in for punishing the companies that manufacture these, large fines are needed from discouraging them creating future problems like these.
> I did the right thing and put it in a trash can but then recycling thoughts came to mind.
Is it the right thing to do? AFAIK you're not supposed to put lithium batteries in general waste because if they get damaged in processing they can start a fire, especially if they have a lingering amount of charge in them, which empty disposable vapes probably do.
I've never vaped (/smoked/done drugs/etc I'm v boring) but can someone ELI5 why disposable vapes have been the preference?
Don't you just buy the capsules and put them into your regarchable vape? Or if you want to get exotic e liquid. I would assume that's much cheaper than buying a whole device each time much must cost more $$/££.
IMO the main culprit is the over regulation of semi/non-disposable vapes/nicotine which still require more R&D to make accessible and easy to use for any consumer. This disposables are just plain better because the internals of vapes are finicky. Coils, wicking, batteries, juice, all in a very small package. it’s literally easier to just throw the entire thing away than to worry about the specifics, try to buy the separate components and replace them as they age, etc. It’s why semi-disposable pod systems like juul are also quite successful.
It's because they are inexpensive, require zero maintenance, zero mess, zero additional equipment needed to maintain and use it. You don't have to understand anything about how it works or is put together. You get to have new colors and styles frequently, you naturally keep up with the trends. If you lose it or break it, it doesn't matter. There's no compatibility between the cartridge and the vape to think about.
Basically, because they are as easy as possible and stay trendy by their revolving door nature.
Rechargeable vape pens are incredibly cheap, and disposables aren't noticeably more expensive overall so the cost difference is insignificant. Couple reasons for a preference (personally don't vape nicotine and I've never cared strongly about disposable vs not):
- Disposables won't die on you. Unless you're getting massive carts the battery tends to last the whole time and you never worry about charging.
- Guaranteed compatible. I've seen seemingly standard carts not work with certain pens which can be very frustrating.
- The standard 510 thread cartridge kinda sucks. I'm not sure if it's a design flaw or a lot of bad manufacturers but they tend to leak and develop blockages.
On box mods(the big vapes you might recall starting to see 10-15 years ago) there is a chamber up top you have to manually fill with nicotine. This can be a bit annoying to do but the real problem is remembering to bring liquid to refill with.
That’s really the only negative to the large box mods, other than having to recharge 18650 batteries all the time. But disposables are usually much smaller(easier to hide if you’re in school), use nicotine salts(which are much more potent) and they usually last a long time - sometimes 20k hits. So these aren’t “bad” products, they have a lot of selling points.
Think they really got started after the FDA/ATF started to crack down on Juul, which gained significant popularity over previous designs by focusing on usability and convenience by using a capsule as you have mentioned. Since that point, Juul shrank significantly and Chinese disposable vapes came in to fill in the vacuum and effectively dodge most regulations.
That's the story at least in my head and in the US.
For THC, they're cheap and convenient. They allow someone to try vaping without buying what people might think is an expensive "real" vape. Even though reusable vapes with 510 cartridges don't really cost much more, lots of people don't know that.
I tried a couple, once I found a strain/mix that seemed to work with my nerve and back pain, I bought a reusable vape and use cartridges now.
If only I had a pound for every discarded vape canister littered on the ground I've seen in London over the past few years. Will the ban fix this? I barely even know what a vape is.
Not that you asked, but a vape is a device consisting of a metal coil that has electricity ran through it to vaporize a mixture of nicotine (either in its salt or free base form), propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, and other additives and flavoring that has soaked into a (usually cotton) wick so that this vapor can be inhaled. There are disposable vapes that provide all of these in one bright candy-flavored package, and diy-style “pod mods” and “box mods” with modular tanks/pods and coils (and parts of coils for real enthusiasts), the latter which is filled by bottles of the same type of nicotine pg/vg liquid. They are available in different flavors, different ratios of pg/vg, different concentrations, and with the salt of or free base nicotine. A disposable ranges from $10-40, a mod ranges from around $30-300, and bottles range between around $15-$30. They are kind of nice but addictive and pointless.
Do you have a citation for that? Most people would not consider a 3+ inch blade a pocket knife and even then it’s not illegal if you have a good reason:
There's a huge difference between restricting people's right to defend themselves and their right to purchase shitty single use electronics that slowly kill them
I’m a UK vaper (former smoker) and while I’m sure I’m going to find this annoying (disposables are helpful in a pinch when your proper vape has run out of battery or liquid), it’s clearly the right thing to do.
The e-waste involved in that sub-industry must be absolutely horrifying. Tens of millions of tiny little batteries, surrounded in plastic, lingering quantities of nicotine-rich liquids…
Glad this is happening.
I’ll take the inconvenience on the chin lol
I'm not sure how it is in the UK, but in the USA it's also next to impossible to find a disposable vape that doesn't have an insanely high amount of nicotine. If anyone is unfortunate enough to try a disposable as their introduction to nicotine, they'll be as hooked as a pack a day smoker in no time. I switched to vaping after the pandemic and saw in realtime vapes come out with higher and higher nicotine levels, replacing the lower nic vapes on the shelves.
The only reason I had to use disposables was that I couldn't get replacement coils & nicotine juice for several months. They can't use traditional shippers, and the services they use vary wildly in quality; I probably still have a shipment gathering dust in a storage warehouse after several failed delivery attempts. For anyone trying to quit smoking, my best advice would be to go to a vape store that has a lot of custom vape equipment and not just peddling disposables. They should be able to tell how much nicotine salt / freebase liquid you should use given your current smoking habits and goals for quitting.
I also noticed that the flavors I'd get in disposables taste a lot more "chemical" than the ones you can find for a vape mod. I suspect that people buying them in a pinch makes them a lot less discerning about what ends up in them.
Would it make more sense to properly tax those negative externalities instead of having some authority just picking one use case as "bad"?
> The e-waste involved in that sub-industry must be absolutely horrifying.
The human cost of making them doesn't look great either...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQacZNc33r8
Yeah, same. I'm all up for a "free country", and all that. But this was just absurd. I wonder if 30+ years don't the line, if maybe resources are scarcer, we'll think about these and say: "we were fucking crazy"
This begs the question: why do you use disposables, then, and will apparently only stop when they are banned if you think they are so bad?
I'm just pissed that my source of free batteries is gonna dry up lol.
*vapist
An ex of mine used disposable vapes and I was shocked by how beautifully designed some of them are - transparent covers with visible inner workings reminiscent of the Nothing phones; custom multi-segment displays for battery and temperature status; original artwork printed in vibrant color on the side. It made me even angrier that these things are meant to just be used once and then thrown out. Of course putting all this e-waste into the environment is a disaster, but to then also treat art and design as similarly disposable feels heartbreakingly cynical on another level entirely.
I collected a few that she was going to throw out, someday™ I'll build some driver boards for the displays and make a little art piece out of them.
Displays? I'm curious to see these if you know what brand these were.
If they're anything like the US, even though sales to children are banned, kids still get their hands on it. I have a family member who works directly with children and they constantly find kids vaping in the restrooms. At some point adults are distributing vapes to children despite the legality.
If the most modulatable link in the supply chain is sales to adults who then distribute to children, that's unfortunately going to be the point that lawmakers target. Sucks to give people a chance and then be shown why we were wrong.
It's weird how the article (and perhaps the law itself?) frame it as being "for the children".
Disposable vapes are an environmental disaster. If this new law forces the manufacturers to add a 5 cents usb port to recharge them or force them to make the cell removable so it can be charged (disposable vapes already use rechargeable cells, they just can't be charged currently), it's a win for everybody.
When I was a kid, there was a black market for trading cards, candy, cigarettes, and blunts in school. Schools are a lot like prisons, where the poorer kids needed a hustle to eat. Some kids were making tons of money selling to other kids in school. Mostly legal stuff, but some illegal. Usually they had an older brother to supply them with stuff they couldn't get on their own.
At least here, kids vaping is basically normal and it's really bad
In the US, sales of disposable vapes are not allow to anyone by anyone
>Sucks to give people a chance and then be shown why we were wrong.
Is this just clumsy wording or a dog whistle for how you think society ought to be structured?
Because if the latter I take serious issue with the implied assumptions about the relationship between the government and the people.
Yeah, smoking is bad and vaping is only a little better but it's a pretty mild problem as far as societal ills go, adults are adults and you don't get to screw everyone because of a few bad actors.
Huh? This is a ban for everyone, not just children
That's simply amazing: we fight with disposable plastic straws but we had no problem with single use electronics and battery. Insane.
Clearly we did have a problem.
What are straws for anyway?
... what? They do have a problem with single-use electronics/batteries, so much so that they're banning them.
I'm not sure this will actually end up changing much because of how they've carved out exceptions for refillable or rechargeable devices. I don't vape nicotine but I occasionally buy a disposable THC vape, and nearly every one of them is technically rechargeable despite the fact that the charge generally lasts the life of the cartridge and there's no use for it afterwards. I wouldn't be surprised if UK vape vendors simply make minor changes to be compliant without really changing the product.
Aside from the health/chemical-pollution aspects, these things have simply resulted in such ugliness because I see them strewn all over the ground every day.
Apparently "disposable" means "throw on the ground".
The overlap between "Uses nicotine" and "Just throws plastic shit on the ground" is astonishing. You do not see nearly as much littering from weed smokers for example.
>The ban will not apply to rechargeable or refillable devices.
My impression was that these make up the lion's share of "disposable" vape sales. I've certainly never known anyone to use anything else, but I'm also not 14 and vaping in the bathroom.
I wonder if they meant 'and' because yes, many high capacity disposable vapes are technically rechargeable as the batteries don't last as long as the liquid.
There are cheaper ($5-15) ones that I have seen commonly used that aren’t rechargeable, but that’s in the US.
They could have played with incentives and monetary returns on used devices, same we do with deposits for empty cans or bottles and let the manufactures deal with all the waste/recycling. These disposable devices are clearly an environment problem. Where I am, NY, I've seen thrown all over the place and at first I had no idea what they were. I picked up one thinking it was some kind of device someone lost. I did the right thing and put it in a trash can but then recycling thoughts came to mind. I'm all in for punishing the companies that manufacture these, large fines are needed from discouraging them creating future problems like these.
> I did the right thing and put it in a trash can but then recycling thoughts came to mind.
Is it the right thing to do? AFAIK you're not supposed to put lithium batteries in general waste because if they get damaged in processing they can start a fire, especially if they have a lingering amount of charge in them, which empty disposable vapes probably do.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn5zn6v2567o
It would probably cost more to recycle them; they are not like aluminum cans or glass bottles that can be easily recycled into raw materials.
>Batteries thrown into household waste also cause hundreds of fires in bin lorries and waste-processing centres every year.
More or less than cigarettes?
Serious question. I actually want to know.
I've never vaped (/smoked/done drugs/etc I'm v boring) but can someone ELI5 why disposable vapes have been the preference?
Don't you just buy the capsules and put them into your regarchable vape? Or if you want to get exotic e liquid. I would assume that's much cheaper than buying a whole device each time much must cost more $$/££.
IMO the main culprit is the over regulation of semi/non-disposable vapes/nicotine which still require more R&D to make accessible and easy to use for any consumer. This disposables are just plain better because the internals of vapes are finicky. Coils, wicking, batteries, juice, all in a very small package. it’s literally easier to just throw the entire thing away than to worry about the specifics, try to buy the separate components and replace them as they age, etc. It’s why semi-disposable pod systems like juul are also quite successful.
It's because they are inexpensive, require zero maintenance, zero mess, zero additional equipment needed to maintain and use it. You don't have to understand anything about how it works or is put together. You get to have new colors and styles frequently, you naturally keep up with the trends. If you lose it or break it, it doesn't matter. There's no compatibility between the cartridge and the vape to think about.
Basically, because they are as easy as possible and stay trendy by their revolving door nature.
Rechargeable vape pens are incredibly cheap, and disposables aren't noticeably more expensive overall so the cost difference is insignificant. Couple reasons for a preference (personally don't vape nicotine and I've never cared strongly about disposable vs not):
- Disposables won't die on you. Unless you're getting massive carts the battery tends to last the whole time and you never worry about charging.
- Guaranteed compatible. I've seen seemingly standard carts not work with certain pens which can be very frustrating.
- The standard 510 thread cartridge kinda sucks. I'm not sure if it's a design flaw or a lot of bad manufacturers but they tend to leak and develop blockages.
On box mods(the big vapes you might recall starting to see 10-15 years ago) there is a chamber up top you have to manually fill with nicotine. This can be a bit annoying to do but the real problem is remembering to bring liquid to refill with.
That’s really the only negative to the large box mods, other than having to recharge 18650 batteries all the time. But disposables are usually much smaller(easier to hide if you’re in school), use nicotine salts(which are much more potent) and they usually last a long time - sometimes 20k hits. So these aren’t “bad” products, they have a lot of selling points.
Think they really got started after the FDA/ATF started to crack down on Juul, which gained significant popularity over previous designs by focusing on usability and convenience by using a capsule as you have mentioned. Since that point, Juul shrank significantly and Chinese disposable vapes came in to fill in the vacuum and effectively dodge most regulations.
That's the story at least in my head and in the US.
For THC, they're cheap and convenient. They allow someone to try vaping without buying what people might think is an expensive "real" vape. Even though reusable vapes with 510 cartridges don't really cost much more, lots of people don't know that.
I tried a couple, once I found a strain/mix that seemed to work with my nerve and back pain, I bought a reusable vape and use cartridges now.
Disposable vapes aren't legal in the US but they are available everywhere
If only I had a pound for every discarded vape canister littered on the ground I've seen in London over the past few years. Will the ban fix this? I barely even know what a vape is.
Not that you asked, but a vape is a device consisting of a metal coil that has electricity ran through it to vaporize a mixture of nicotine (either in its salt or free base form), propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, and other additives and flavoring that has soaked into a (usually cotton) wick so that this vapor can be inhaled. There are disposable vapes that provide all of these in one bright candy-flavored package, and diy-style “pod mods” and “box mods” with modular tanks/pods and coils (and parts of coils for real enthusiasts), the latter which is filled by bottles of the same type of nicotine pg/vg liquid. They are available in different flavors, different ratios of pg/vg, different concentrations, and with the salt of or free base nicotine. A disposable ranges from $10-40, a mod ranges from around $30-300, and bottles range between around $15-$30. They are kind of nice but addictive and pointless.
Next step they should put a minimum price on non-disposable vapes at £50-£100.
[flagged]
Good. Disposable vapes are a plague
Oh finally. I can't believe this bullshit was legal in the first place.
You can’t believe that making a small consumer electronic device was legal?
[flagged]
Do you have a citation for that? Most people would not consider a 3+ inch blade a pocket knife and even then it’s not illegal if you have a good reason:
https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives
There's a huge difference between restricting people's right to defend themselves and their right to purchase shitty single use electronics that slowly kill them
Good to see the government is solving real problems.