Great big plumes of smoke

A few years ago if somebody had asked me what new trend was a really good investment I would have said a Vape café 

They sprouted in every corner and while they were targeting smokers who wanted to quit, the next generation of youngsters took to vaping like it came naturally.

Often we would see plumes of thick smoke trailing out of a car window and wonder if the car was on fire. Unlike regular smoking the vape crowd graduated quickly to the big guns. Vape heads that were designed to vaporise liquids at a starling rate.

An ex-smoker myself I saw this as the best way to get the billions of smokers out of their addiction. Or at the very least hooked to some lesser evil.

In my case the PG (propalene glycol) in the vape juice gave me a mighty pounding headache after about a week or two.

I tried all types and configurations. Spent a fortune on all manner of devices and mixes. They all had the same result and as much as I enjoyed the idea, I had to quit vaping. This was very disappointing as I imagined myself sitting in my car, generating huge thick clouds of vapour, and my allergies were a real drag.

Then a few things happened.

The big tobacco got into the game. They introduced their versions of the future that was predicated on them supplying the cartridges and refills and heets. This highly regulated production led to the bulk of ex-smokers going that way. The rise of Juul in USA and the local equivalent Vuse in South Africa brought a high quality product to the market. 

The other innovation in this area was the legalization of cannabis and this too has changed forever the vape landscape.

Either way the corner stores are gone. Malls  still have a stall that caters for the die hard Vape survivors, but largely the wave has passed us by.

The few reported fatalities in USA were related to vitamin E in some of the more thc intense juices. The rest of the health complaints, like popcorn lung and others were largely  unfounded.

The vape express seemed to simply  ran out of steam.

I for one have closely followed developments in this area but cannot truly explain what went wrong here.

Why did this fad burn itself out so quickly, after showing so much potential.

If you have any thoughts that could help explain this I would be very keen to hear your idea.

𝓜 𝓟𝓪𝓻𝓪𝓴

Dec 2021.