Disposable vapes to be banned in England and Wales | Hacker News Reader

Disposable vapes to be banned in England and Wales

bbc.com

149 pointsnithinj156 comments

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

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"

at least we'll mine them. with helium, we put it in party balloons and lose it to space.

There's plenty of helium in the solar system (granted, a bit further out) and the sun is producing 595 million tons per second.

Let me guess, you have plans that to mine that helium by working at night?

yes, and it'll be very easy to capture in commercial quantities, I'm sure.

What, you've never heard of star-lifting? Or just getting it from Saturn? Commercial/economic quantities are all about the necessity versus scarcity, and helium has unique properties that can't be synthesized in sufficient quantities even if you ran all of Earth off fusion of hydrogen into helium.

> Or just getting it from Saturn?

always love a good laugh in the morning!

I'm as much a fan of sci-fi as anybody, and the last 5 years of space x should make anybody optimistic about the future of space exploration, but strip mining Saturn is a long way away from providing for the needs of MRI machines and other essential modern technology. what will happen first is that the prices will rise and we will stop using it in party balloons, and then it'll be too expensive for the lower 95% of the population for any use at all for decades/centuries - and that's even if we do manage to escape the local gravity well for good. even that's doubtful - space is just unbelievably hostile.

I dunno.

The earth is pretty big, and vape batteries are tiny, and we keep finding substitutes.

I'm all for reducing waste, but it seems unlikely we'll run out of metals in our lifetimes.

Keep in mind, things keep getting more efficient, and rich nations are finally tending toward using LESS per capita.

Sure, the poor nations might eventually become rich and the global population has not yet peeked, but there's no reason to assume our materials usage will grow exponentially forever.

And, even if you assumed we were going to run out of whatever is in these tiny vape pens - the percentage of all usage going to tiny applications like this is a rounding error. It's not what you would attack if you really wanted to move the needle.

You'd probably try to reduce the number of people buying new cars, for example.

> in our lifetimes

Is the key here. We need to think beyond our lifetimes. We should be treating the earth like we're going to live on it for (tens or hundreds of) thousands of years, because I sure as shit hope we (meaning humans) are going to.

Yes, reducing creation of cars would certainly have a much bigger impact, and should be done. But it's also a lot harder than dealing with vapes.

Anyway, as far as I understand it, the main reason this is happening isn't happening to reduce waste, it's happening to stop a rise in nicotine consumption in children. Preventing waste is more of a nice side effect.

The UK isn't a 'free country' in the way American's use the term. It took me a few years of living in America to understand the nuance. I think the 'freedoms' Americans have raises it's own problems for society (eg guns) and there isn't a right or wrong, just different.

The joke I always like to make is that in the US everything is legal unless the government legislates to say you can't, in Europe everything is illegal unless the government legislates to say you can. :D

That's the joke they made about the Soviet Union; it's inaccurate for Europe. But in Europe the government isn't afraid to make things illegal.

> The joke I always like to make is that in the US everything is legal unless the government legislates to say you can't, in Europe everything is illegal unless the government legislates to say you can.

That's pretty good. It's a succinct contrast of the difference between a citizen and a subject.

> The joke I always like to make is that in the US everything is legal unless the government legislates to say you can't

Guess where the US got that from? Yes, the UK, and it still applies.

I think you're forgetting something called the CONSTITUTION which gives a number of rights that one doesn't have in the UK like

-Freedom of expression (can't be arrested for social media posts, can't easily get sued into the ground for libel[0])

-Right to bear arms (technically legal for citizens to organize their own militant force, though often discouraged)

-Right to remain silent (it is always advised to never talk to the police under any circumstances).

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act

As an American, I'm still often baffled by American Exceptionalism. Often people who say stuff like this have zero actual clue about how things are done in other countries. And it's laughable to call out the right to bear arms when just being suspected of having a weapon is enough to justify an execution by the police.

Especially considering the fifth amendment was specifically intended to allow for a militia to defend against the government, not to enable students to carry an automatic rifle into school—but here we are

2nd amendment, 5th is the "right to remain silent" etc.

Still, the issue with school shootings is mostly that it targets the wrong people. After school programs, community support for troubled youth, options for local service or a job placement program for kids would all be solutions, but the youth only sees other kids at school as the problem. If the system is so screwed up that a kid feels the need to take up arms to fight against it, then they should, but school shootings are unnecessarily cruel and generally fail to lead to progressive changes; more often than not they become justification for increases in the very authoritarian measures that promote the violence in the first place.

I recall the time the Japanese imprisoned the CEO of Nissan on trumped up charges and he had to smuggle himself out of the country to escape. Of course the US has Gitmo, but in general the justice system is remarkably fair compared to other countries, since its much harder to get a guilty verdict, which is why so many criminal court cases end with plea deals instead.

Good thing we don't have a history of mistreatment of Japanese nationals. We clearly have clean hands in this regard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

> in Europe everything is illegal unless the government legislates to say you can.

That doesn't seem accurate. I'm guessing you haven't lived in a country where that's much closer to reality?

That sentiment originated in discussions of English common law, where it was being contrasted with European legal codes.

That's just nonsense.

I have a different thought about that kind of stuff in that in 100 years or so landfills will probably be literal gold mines (or whatever else you're looking for).

I'm just pissed that my source of free batteries is gonna dry up lol.

Are the batteries any good? What do they have in them? 1100 mAh LiPo?

The cells themselves are pretty good - pretty much only every come across Lipo's even in "non-rechargeable" disposables. mAh basically depends on the size of the vape / the puff count, but yeah I normally find them to br between 500 and 1500 mAh (give or take).

I figured any disposable vape would have its batteries glued in. How straightforward a task is it to remove the battery? What do the batteries generally look like?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65DpT2nqEI <--- BigClive scavenging cells from vapes. (Basically where I got the idea from)

The cells are generally just "push fit", maybe with some kapton tape or foam to give them a snug fit. As for taking the vapes apart, A pair of pliers and some brute force is typically all that is needed to get them apart.

Cell shape is either cylindrical or rectangular, depends on the vapes shape really. You get the knack of remembering/guessing what the shape will be just by looking at the vape.

Nice, thanks for the info!

EDIT: those batteries look like they'd be very useful for some ESP32/PI2350 type projects.

Yeah they really will be, I need to find a vaper.

Came here to mention Big Clive's salvaging. Haven't tried it myself yet - the feral youth around here tend to be more whippet oriented than vaping, sadly.

My town is more a "active nightlife" town, so while I do see a far number of Whippets cartridges (though, thankfully, a lot less recently), you mainly find more discarded disposable vapes on Saturday and Sunday mornings/afternoons then you will whipped cream cartridges.

Wat? Disposibles have rechargable batteries?

Yup.

They're cheap but rechargable lithium-ion batteries, as well as a blob of electronics to make it heat an element when a button or microphone sensor activates to vape, and a lot of times, also a fancy screen with animations.

Some disposable vapes even include a USB port to recharge that battery, which is why it's certain that they're rechargable.

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 switched to vapes for a while and genuinely my lung health was worse than smoking.

In the end it was Allen Carr’s book that got me off them, and it was surprisingly easy.

The author died in 2006 so I wouldn’t even feel too bad about pirating it, I’m quite sure he wouldn’t mind.

My pet theory is that nicotine itself isn't particularly addictive to adults.

I think the combination of additives in cigs is what makes them so hard to quit. I have quit various forms of pure nicotine with no withdrawals over the years, and treat it a bit like caffeine -- a stimulant that I use for a few months at a time before cycling off.

The only time I've _ever_ desperately craved a nicotine product was after 2-3 days of smoking cigarettes. When getting on a near-day-long flight, the whole time back I was thinking "wow, it would be great to have a cigarette right now" every 5-10 minutes.

But agreed on lung health with vaping. Also, my whole upper respiratory tract was in shambles. My throat was so dry, and it made me get sick constantly.

That’s a pretty well established theory: MAO inhibiters in cigarettes (or produced as a metabolic byproduct of smoking or combustion) cause the nicotine to be more addictive [1].

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9424897/

What if it wasn't the ethanol that caused so many horrible health problems in alcoholics, but rather all the nasty additives in the stuff they drank?

Imagine how much adulteration goes on, especially with bargain basement liquors and beers. Surely, pure ethanol is not our lone enemy in this fight.

You’re right that it’s not ethanol alone. In a similar (semantic, not physiological) manner to the MAOI hypothesis for cigarettes shared in a sibling comment, the compound responsible for most of the negative health effects (not necessarily intoxication although it is involved IIRC) is acetaldehyde, the primary metabolite of ethanol.

As to additives, I’m sure certain ones contribute their own negative effects, sodium benzoate and tartrazine for example, but in that regard it’s the same situation as the food industry.

Yeah at this point, nicotine pouches might be the best smoking alternative. But I'm seeing the same thing happen there. Zyns start at 3mg which is already higher than the usual 2mg for tobacco pouches. Off brands are going as high as 8mg+, and I imagine it'll keep rising as their consumers raise their tolerance.

edit: This discussion is really bumming me out; quitting feels hopeless when we're preyed upon like this.

I was able to successfully use Psilocybin mushrooms as a shortcut to quit vaping, all I did was say out loud to myself that I was done using and when I woke up the next day I just didn’t have that deep need to use it anymore. I still had the thought from time to time, but instead of the next thought being “maybe just a little bit” driven by an immobile subconscious need, I was able to refuse myself with relatively little effort. So if you get too fed up, don’t discount the more “magic” solutions (neuroplasticity seems pretty darn powerful). That being said those types of solutions do produce more or less irreversible change, and that change can and does go in either direction.

One of the things that stuck with me about that book was the author instructing you not to give it to someone else once you'd quit and to get them to buy their own copy so he may well mind it being pirated from the the grave.

This is a bit of a US problem. The UK and many other countries limit the strength and amount of vape juice, so they are weaker and give fewer puffs. There's a lot of evidence that this reduces the addictiveness.

UK disposables do still tend to be as high as they're allowed, while bottles of liquid come in various lower amounts of nicotine to choose from.

That may be, but the max strength in the US is 2.5x that of the UK.

Wow, even worse!

I was an occasional nicotine vaper, usually when taking a T break. The flavor was alright, and I couldn't feel much if anything from the hits in the 3-5% concentration range for e-juice. I never had problems just putting the device away for weeks at a time while enjoying other vices. I picked up some disposables while traveling and the experience was completely different. The flavor profile was much more rich. Things actually tasted fruity. More like a juice than the hint of a flavor I was used to from the freebase liquids I had tried. It hits far smoother. In addition I got a buzz from nicotine in a way I had never experienced before. I was literally high off my first few strong puffs. I don't get high anymore. But I also can't put it away anymore. After a day without, I'm almost constantly thinking about it. Freebase liquids do absolutely nothing to help divert my attention. Supposedly the nicotine salt vape is also only 5%. But holy shit does it feel different.

*vapist

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.

It's also possibly to do with the fact that disposables are almost universally nic salts, where as mod juices are usually freebase nic, and that can affect the flavor.

(Of course, I might be wrong, since it's been nearly a decade since I paid attention to the vape scene)

> 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

Would it make more sense to properly tax those negative externalities instead of having some authority just picking one use case as "bad"?

How would an additional tax address this? Paying more would hardly reduce usage, and definitely won't incentivize users to dispose of vape pens more responsibly.

I can imagine a tax so high that it's effectively a ban, and a tax half that size that might be a compromise between black and white ban/no ban

The UK taxed tobacco to high heaven and I don't think it did much to actually curb use. It's subject to the usual 20% VAT, plus an extra 16.5%, plus a flat £6.33 on 20 packs, so well over half of the sale price of tobacco is just tax.

https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/alcohol-tobacco

The people I know that would be affected by this just get duty free from corner shops under the table now. Last I heard it's around 8 quid for 50g of rolling tobacco instead of £38 buying legit.

Wouldn't be surprised to find out they smoke more than they used to with it being less scarce.

Tobacco smoking has been on a downward trend since at least the 70s, from 50 to 13%, and taxes have steadily gone up since then in real terms, but I'm surprised to see that the period when the government raised taxes the most is about the only flat part of the curve.

https://ash.org.uk/uploads/Smoking-Statistics-Fact-Sheet.pdf... https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/tobacco-bulletin/hi...

I would rather the government outright bans things rather than pseudo-banning them via the back door via taxes. At least then they have to expend an appropriate amount of political capital, and there is a proper amount of debate over it.

We had in the UK the sugar tax which was an effective ban on added sugar in soft drinks - you can hardly buy any drink without artificial sweeteners now, all of the old formulations were taken off the market because they were uneconomical. However, it never prior received attention as a ban, it was always described as just a "tax".

Do bottle deposits (a few cents that you get back for returning empty soda or whatever bottles to the right place) actually work? If they do, maybe the same model would work for this.

Denmark's bottle return system receives 92% of bottles and cans.

It could pay for additional people to clean up the streets, or you have a deposit on them, so that they be returned rather than littered.

It would encourage usage of reusable vapes, but still give people the option of a disposable vape of they for example forgot their reusable vape when traveling.

Simply, we should charge for negative externalities (not only for vapes) and let people decide what's valuable to them.

I think so but the practical issues are:

Tax is one big pool of money and I doubt the money will be used to fix the issues created.

A similar idea, carbon taxes and carbon credits trading seemed politically dead at least in my country even though it is a fantastic idea.

Edit: what might work is a 5-10 British pound ransom, released on return of the disposible to a recycling centre. Give the used devices free to a reclaiming merchant that operates out of the same country.

IMO the point of charging for negative externalities isn't necessarily to fund remediation of the negative externality but to internalize the cost and force the actor to make a decision about value to them and cost based on the real cost.

If batteries are a waste issue they should be more expensive till we as society feel we are adequately compensated for the externality created. We shouldn't pick and choose what use cases are valid for others. Everyone has different circumstances and preferences.

It might work if nicotine wasn't addictive. And because it is, the rational actor hypothesis goes out of the window, and taxing it is just going to hurt poor people who are addicted to nicotine.

This is only banning disposable vapes. The goal doesn't seem to be to cut down on smoking but on waste from disposable vapes.

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?

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.

https://flumgio.com/mello/

Looks like one of them is Pyne Pod: https://www.pynepod.com/uploads/bd58c18e.png

The Geek Bar Pulse has the custom multi-segment on the side: https://oss.geekbar.com/products/meloso-ultra/2/Orange%20Cre...

And disposable, that boggles my mind.

> Looks like one of them is Pyne Pod: https://www.pynepod.com/uploads/bd58c18e.png

Is that a USB port on the underside? A rechargeable, non-refillable vape, oh my...

cali 8000 model has them as well.

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.

Huh? This is a ban for everyone, not just children

Correct. What do you think I wrote?

If it’s banned for everyone, how would adults be able to buy them for children?

I was describing the current state. Children cannot currently buy vapes; adults can. However, it still ends up in the hands of children.

I don't see why that's relevant to the ban

It's relevant to the article

> intended to protect children's health

It sounds like you disagree and are expressing that disagreement as a difference of understanding. Is that right?

GP's comment confused me too at first but after reading the article a second time, they do frame it as "for the children":

> Ministers in England said the move [...] is intended to protect children's health and prevent environmental damage.

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.

The ones here are both disposable and rechargeable.

The tank is larger than the battery would burn without a recharge, but not refillable.

>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 purely a consequentialist on this topic. Take that however you want

Vaping is significantly better.

In the US, sales of disposable vapes are not allow to anyone by anyone

At least here, kids vaping is basically normal and it's really bad

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.

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.

"We" does the heavy lifting.

Profiteers had no problem. Vapers had no problem. The government had a problem.

This shows democracy actually working IMO. You elect people you trust and then they do the right thing despite individual people not doing that collectively.

What are straws for anyway?

I non-disposable ones to keep cold and acidic drinks from washing over my sensitive teeth.

Kids love em. Although I am impartial to a straw into a cold milkshake or mango smoothie on a hot day.

in the US most people drink stuff with a ton of ice. it stops the ice from hitting your mouth/teeth when you drink. it's also easier to drink in a moving vehicle with a straw and not risk stuff splashing all over you

There are plenty of people with motor issues where a straw really does mean having the freedom to drink on your own. Also, in the US, ice is more popular to add to your drink and a straw means not getting blasted with a bunch of ice.

... 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.

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.

I don't think that prevents a programme to encourage responsible disposal. A $5 deposit on these vapes would get people to return them, and they could be recycled en masse even if it does cost more.

I like the idea of a deposit but you still need someone to accept the waste - point of a deposit is you get it back, so how do you fund the responsible disposal?

If I were, say, a US state government, I'd fund the recycling just to keep them from polluting. I don't think it's a case of trying to break even, just to reduce the harm done by throwaway electronics/batteries.

That's feels like it might be a hard sell with taxpayers in this day and age (unfortunately).

Obviously any retailer that sells vapes needs to accept them back for the deposit, and the vape manufacturers need to accept the dead ones which the retailers collect (and pay for whatever shipping is required). The manufacturers then get to decide how to recycle them, but are required to recycle them.

If you attach some sort of rebate to it, I guarantee there will be people who collect them off the ground who don't even vape, like how some do with bottles and cans and scrap metal.

> 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

>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 $$/££.

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.

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.

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.

> Guaranteed compatible. I've seen seemingly standard carts not work with certain pens which can be very frustrating.

The carts with longer mouthpieces just fit in my battery/pen, but yeah the cartridges need to be a standard length too.

> 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.

Blockages are an annoyance, yeah. I wonder if a "double-wide cart" would flow more easily?

I would go for multiple air paths over a wider one, don't want to end up with a smoothie straw you can suck liquid vape juice out of. But yeah length can be an issue and width also, for the ones that wrap around the cartridge to be more compact.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

That's a bit of a mischaracterisation of the point OP was making. It is a small consumer device with a battery, that only lasts a few days and is then tossed out. That should never have been legal in the first place.

Plenty of children's toys are just as bad. All those musical toys/books you see: most of them do not have replaceable batteries - or the battery is replaceable but the retail price of the batteries is more than the whole toy (you can get sketchy batteries from the usual sketchy places for cheaper)

Agreed, but they're not being tossed out into nature the same way these disposable vapes are.

Making a consumer electronics device with the intent of it entering the regular waste stream? Fairly sure that was already illegal under WEEE, but the enforcement of that is so loose it's meaningless.

Good to see the government is solving real problems.

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