I used to work in the e-cigarette industry. AMA

What's the narrative internally about the harm e-cigarettes do to peoples lungs?
- The only study i will ever quote in my life at the moment is the study done by the UK royal college of physicians that said vaping is 95% safter than smoking. the problem with alot of studies saying how "this chemical was found its bad" that have been done in the past was that the fluid they used, the power level, the device how long it was fired for, etc... are so dynamic that it's not conclusive.
  Honestly, I treat it like smoking, do you current smoke? if not, i probably wouldn't vape. Do you smoke and want to quit or want to replace it with something else? then try a vape. Actually, Here in Canada, we were very strongly against selling e cigarettes to people who were not smokers (not saying we denied them service) because the message we were trying to get across was that this was a tool to reduce harm from tobacco. I have been vaping for 10 years now, and if i was not vaping, i would be smoking about a pack of cigarettes a day. some people have their vices in life, i don't drink, i just enjoy nicotine.
  
  the problem with alot of studies saying how "this chemical was found its bad" that have been done in the past was that the fluid they used, the power level, the device how long it was fired for, etc... are so dynamic that it's not conclusive.
  Oh man I used to skip straight to the Experiment setup section because almost every time it was designed with settings that NO ONE would vape at. Like that formaldehyde one, it was something crazy like 600+ degrees iirc. Like almost no one is going that high of a temp LMAO
  
  Nicotine users have gone way up since vaping was normalised, especially under children.

Why you did that?
- I was, and still am an advocate and user of e-cigarettes as a way to quit smoking/replace smoking. although im not as passionate as i used to be ever since variety stores started selling them.
  
  Amen. I quit smoking thanks to vaping, with all my friends being smokers, it really helped me to be able to keep socializing when everyone went out to smoke and to not feel the cravings by maintaining the reflex of taking something to my mouth when out and about.
  I quit vaping a year ago too.

I did too but I'd rather not talk about it
- fair. Nothing shady ever happened with the things i saw other than rich people trying to rich, and when the company i worked for started selling iQOS
  
  I view burned tobacco products like cigarettes, vapes, and “heat not burn” devices like IQOS as a scale of harm, where the most harm is burned tobacco, and the lowest is non participation.
  Vaping is WAY closer to non participation than it is to burned tobacco, and I suspect HNB devices are similarly way closer to NP than BTP as well, just not as close as vaping.
  When they’re marketed to existing smokers, I think vaping and HNB devices are net goods, they improve people’s health outcomes. They can also be a gateway to cessation, or a step along the way. That’s how I quit smoking a long time ago when vapes first came out.
  Full disclosure, while I don’t work directly for the tobacco industry, I do do some work on youth prevention technology for some of these types of products.

How much crossover did you see with the cannabis industry?
I know I wasn’t the only one looking for TCR settings on DNA mods.
- we also sold dry herb products. I have a decent knowledge on how that works as well. the TCR on the DNA mods were not really intended for that, it was for temp controlled coils made of a nickel or SS. some people like/liked temp control, i never found it iteresting. To have a really good dry herb vaporizer, you really want a dedicated unit, like a airizer air or a storz & bickel mighty or plenty. I had a air for a long time and it was a really good device and worth the investment. thoese 510 attachments and cheap vapes suck. I tested alot of them. The one upside was that i could get baked as fuck at work as long as i could do my job (but i never did juice production on my own stuff under the influence).
  
  I was asking more about concentrates which use a SS or nickel atomizer.
  I got the feeling it was a niche within a niche that has mostly been killed off by disposables. Dry herb vapes are still around, just not in 510 thread.

Wtf happened to DNA-based mods? It was so great for awhile, DNA250c came out, had great customization and hackability for those on the more technical side and then...it just dried up. Local stores stopped carrying them and online mods started getting few and far between.
It was a significant contributor in me quitting altogether (I got tired of fixing my 6 year old board)
- simple answer for that: pods. These things have dominated the market. Also, alot of past users have sadly gone back to vaping, as (such as yourself) liked using DNA mods with RTAs/RDAs. thoese are now illegal in our country as they are not "child safe". Sadly we have not been able to rein in the bills the goverment keep passing, with tax hikes on the liquid, and now the next ban is going to be any flavor whatsoever other than tobacco and mint, sadly the tight grip has choked the market, and we will start seeing a black market (if it has not grown already) pop up for juice. i know for hardware, your going to have to order it from fasttech or 3fvape as nobody is going to have anything than a handful of box mods and the rest pods. This of course is applying to the laws here in canada, I don't know how bad it is down in the USA

what did you do there?
- I was a store manager, had my own e-liquid line, and also was a advocate fighting government policy. I have extensive understanding of the hardware, the liquids that are put inside, and got to see the inner workings of some of these big companies.

How did you come up with recipes for the eliquid?
- Well, it was alot of trial and error like baking, but to save time, there is a online repository of recipes that people share online. What i liked to do was see what people said what % of what flavour tasted like, and note this down to see what i could get from other flavours. My most favorite flavor i made was a apple fritter that tasted like jelly apple pieces in it. of course i am making very small bottles of this not to waste material, then i would try it out on a RDA(rebuildable dripping atomizer). usually small amounts people make for personal use are made by weight, but the big companies measure by volume as its much easier when bottling 1000s of bottles.

How much of their marketing efforts are spent on minimizing their impact on rising childhood nicotine addiction through vapes?

Is it possible for me to vape so hard that I can blow smoke out of my ass? If so, what's the best ratio of propalyne glycol to vegetable glycerin?