The reason disposables are so popular in the US is the FDA banned any flavored cartridges, which doesn't include disposables. The immense battery waste is a direct result of a relatively new law.
https://www.ft.com/content/f72f17e4-a83d-4494-b1e7-a349cc7ae...
It's one of those UK laws of "we are doing something!" but not actually do anything. These companies either pay backhand or know how to skirt around the rule. Who's enforcing it?
Many places apparently don't even sell the refills so it's practically the same.
Same thing with batteries. Ridiculous volume -> low prices. (Laptops and cell phones is why we have usable electric cars. If the EV industry had to drive up the volume all on its own it would have taken much longer to develop that industry)
Kids don't have to hide proof of their consumption in their bedroom (well at least until they are hooked enough they can't spend a night without vaping). They buy, consume and throw away before reaching home.
That would require a crazy high amount of smoking. AFAIK, disposable vapes usually last about a week.
But reuseable vape has more stuff to manage and hide, and they are more expensive in short run.
Wait, what? Where's the sense in that?
The FDA just hates flavored nicotine products because they're appealing (to both adults and children), and the FDA doesn't want nicotine products to be appealing (because nicotine is perceived to be a public health problem on the scale of tobacco).
I hate anything added to the air. Even perfumes irritate and make me sneeze in high quantity.
You want to buy a disposable? Ok, here, $20 and you're done.
But if you want to make the oil at home? Ok, $2000 for lights, timers, nutrients, seeds, and a grow tent. Plus another ~$10,000 for a basic short path distillation setup. And honestly to make anything close to what you get in the disposables, you'll need to hire an expert with experience. And you need a lot of space for your new secret lab. For 99.999% of people, it's super not worth it to make at home.
I promise you, if it was easy, you would see more people making carts. I tried C02, water wash, sifting, heat press, everything you can think of. Its nowhere near the same. And that's just for the bare minimum distillate. We're not even talking about live resin or anything fancy.
You basically need a small factory to get close to the quality of the carts.
And my home grow prices are low. You cant just grow 2 or 4 plants if you want even a small steady supply of full melt wax. Like, 20 plants minimum is more close. And they have to be good. Living soil, aeroponic, whatever you want.
And that's if you can get actually good yield. I've seen people get such bad yield that they turn 1 pound of flower into less than 3 grams of wax. That's why you need an expert. Even putting together a successful distillation operation is no joke. Besides chemistry knowledge, you need lots of "industrial equipment" knowledge. We're not talking about using a heat press or a curling iron to make "dabs". We're talking about making the real shit.
To be honest 10k is in the range of the cheapest alibaba eqipment. Most commercial outfits, even smaller ones, use much more expensive equipment.
This is why people prefer to just buy it from the store for $20.
Also, when you do get juice online or from other states, it doesn't hit as hard / the same as whatever they put in the disposables. Someone told me it's because the disposables have vitamin E acetate in them that makes the nicotine get absorbed into your blood quicker.
I think the disposables go around more regulations, which mean the chinese manufacturers can put more addictive stuff in the pods / disposables.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_vaping_lung_...