This Is the Year of the Vape

Vape wholesale Bestone OEM – Forget the year of the tiger, the year free from COVID lockdowns (at least in Australia) or the hedonistic year where everyone played catch-up. 2022 is the year of the vape.

While it might sound futile, uninteresting and downright stupid, vaping has dug its claws into the heart of Australian culture as well as culture on a global scale. In fact, you could argue it’s become a culture of its own and a signifier of the In-Group (just as the cigarette was to the leather jacketed, thunderbird-types of the 60s or the grunge, behind-the-bike shed alt-rockers of the 90s).

Most concerningly, it’s an addiction many are finding hard to shake.

This year, VICE started its coverage of vapes focusing on the climate: “Here’s What to do With You Empty Disposable Vapes”. Back then, vapes had been around for years, but it quickly became apparent that, in 2022, the cigarette was well and truly on its way out.

A few months before, as the use of vapes ticked upwards, the Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA) had made the flimsy and somewhat performative announcement banning the importation of nicotine e-cigarettes into Australia. Unless, of course, they were for a prescription. Did that work? No. Vapes were still readily available to those that knew where to look (in other words, every single corner store in Australia).

Vape wholesale Bestone OEM-Our coverage was inspired by our own reporter, Arielle Richards, whose full-brimmed drawer of colourful, plastic, nicotine-filled tubes became a focal point of discussion. Why? Well, it wasn’t just her. People found it relatable.

In May, having just moved from Sydney to Melbourne, I had a sudden realisation: Why did everybody vape in Sydney… and why did everyone smoke ciggies in Melbourne? So I wrote about it. Intended as a piss-take and slightly nonsensical article about the nicotine habits of users in two different cities, it was received either in complete agreement or denial. The takeaway: vapes and cigarettes were in competition. And we’d soon learn that vapes were in the lead.

Reporting on vapes trickled through various news outlets – sirening the health precarities of vaping, of teens getting addicted, of vape detectors being installed in school toilets – and the subject of vapes in the office became popular fodder for conversation. You could see the culture taking shape through discussions with friends and colleagues: This person was trying to quit; this person failed; this person went 6-weeks; gunpods were “elite”. However, with more negative coverage came more initiative to leave the habit behind. But it was hard to stop.

Halfway through the year, the NSW government proudly boasted a $1 million seizure of nicotine vapes. They were “cracking down” with a “zero-tolerance approach” that introduced heavy fines for distributors. But the effect of that approach was nowhere to be seen, and if anything, vape use became more obvious: at parties, as litter in the streets, at after work drinks. Because the war on vapes, just like the war on drugs, wasn’t going to work.

As VICE AU’s Brad Esposito wrote, “the government’s continued pride in disrupting the burgeoning illegal vape industry impresses about as much as the Australian Police excitedly celebrating massive busts of weed or coke while just about everyone with an iPhone and a semi-functioning brain can get both delivered, to their door, in a 2-hour window”.

And it was true – if not a little exaggerated. You can actually get your hands on vapes a lot quicker than that.

At one point in the year, a Four Corners investigation on vapes aired on ABC. The corresponding article detailed a journalist slinking into a car with a “dealer”. They cited buying a vape off the “blackmarket”. Was it satire? No. Didn’t they realise that all you really had to do was walk 100m in any city and you’d find one, no dealers needed?

In fact, jump on any social media platform and you can buy them in bulk. That was especially true for my TikTok FYP, where chinese manufacturers would disguise links to websites behind ASMR and brain soothing, dopamine-inducing videos of vape creation in factories. It was tactful yet sneaky. Though it went against TikTok guidelines, it became obvious that there were ways around it.

But then the ultimate question arose: Now that everyone was doing it, and now that everyone was hooked (including me), were vapes worse for you than ciggies? And what was actually in a vape?

So we decided to send a few of the most popular vapes on the market to Dr. Celine Kelso at the School of Chemistry and Molecular BioScience at The University of Wollongong. While she said that vaping was better for you than smoking cigarettes (is it really?) – apparently a vape has less chemicals – she also said vapes were not devices that were successful in helping you quit nicotine.

Shenzhen Bestone Technology Co., Ltd. is a global leader in offering vaping OEM/ODM solutions with cutting-edge R&D technology, massive manufacturing capacity, wide range of product’s portfolio and diverse client base.All our products are ISO9001:2000, RoHS, CE, FDA, PSE, UL, and SGS certified.With a decade of OEM/ODM experience for top vaping brands, BESTONE has developed unique heating technology as well as structure, material and design solution to revolutionize the e-cig industry.