What is vaping?

Vaping is short for “evaporating,” which is a chemical reaction: the definition of evaporate

When you smoke, you’re igniting a solid plant matter, combusting it, and inhaling the smoke particles that are released.

Not all vaping involves electronic cigarettes, as alluded to with other answers. There are both desktop and portable vaporizers, and both types can be found for herbal, liquid, or concentrate vaping.

Electronic cigarettes are just one small subsection of vaporizers, and they’re the cheapest (both price and construction) and most available. You can find these at Walmart, 7-Eleven, and pretty much every other store that sells cigarettes. 

Mark Ten, Blu, and Vuse are the bigger ecig brands. Mark Ten is owned by Altria, which is the parent company of Philip Morris (Marlboro, etc.). Blu was owned by Lorillard (Newport), but was sold last year to Imperial Tobacco when Lorillard was bought by Reynolds (Camel). Now Reynolds pushes their Vuse brand of ecigs.

If you go to a vape shop, they focus mostly on vape mod kits, which are typically portable vaporizers the size of cigars. They also sell tiny eyedropper bottles of e-juice, which is made of vegetable glycerin, propylene glycol, and different doses of nicotine.

Of course, that’s all marketing garbage, and you can make your own vape juice for MUCH MUCH MUCH cheaper than purchasing a $22 eyedropper of “premium” vape juice. A gallon of vegetable glycerin is ~$20, and seeping nicotine in it is accomplished by seeping tobacco in the glycerin. 

The process is described in this blog and will save you hundreds to thousands of dollars per month vs wasting your money on a bunch of marketing.

The vape industry is full of money, and don’t let them fool you into thinking they’re small businessmen who care about you. They’re jacking prices up astronomically. 

There’s no need for propylene glycol in vape juice, and many of the ingredients used in the often-mislabeled bottles of vape juice are very harmful to you (much more than smoking cigarettes). Acetyl Propionyl, Acetoin, and Diacetyl are a few examples of the dangerous chemicals being used, but there are more.

If you want free vape juice, here’s a blog I wrote for one of the vape clients I work for: 5 Tips for Landing a Vape Sponsorship (the Right Way!)

There are also 2-in-1 and 3-in-1 vaporizers designed to handle more than one type of material.

These are more commonly seen in smoke shops, head shops, and cannabis dispensaries, as they can be used to vape marijuana herb, concentrates, or liquid. 

If you’re interested in vaping, decide what drug (nicotine, THC, etc.) you want to vape, then look up it’s combustion and evaporation temperatures. This will give you an idea of what you’re dealing with and the best way to ingest it.

Keep in mind some drugs, like THC, must be heated to activate prior to vaping in order to get a result that’s comparable to combustion smoking.

Happy vaping.