Quitting Smoking With Vaping? 5 Tips to Ensure Your Success

Stylish young couple with vape in a city

In the little over a decade that e-cigarettes have been available, more than 40 million adults around the world have successfully quit smoking by switching to vaping. That’s a truly eye-opening statistic when you consider that probably many millions more have attempted to quit – and failed – with traditional stop-smoking aids like nicotine gum. Vaping wins against the traditional smoking cessation tools because it delivers nicotine in a way that’s more enjoyable and more satisfying.

Although vaping has many undeniable advantages over other smoking cessation methods, that doesn’t mean switching to vaping is easy for everyone. In fact, almost every person who switches to vaping continues to crave cigarettes at first. Vaping isn’t a magic wand – it’s just an easier way to get over those cravings.

If you’ve decided that now is the time to start your journey toward a smoke-free future, this article is designed to help. These are the five tips that can make your switch from smoking to vaping easier.

Choose the Right Equipment

One of the most important things that you’ll need to decide when you make the switch to vaping is where you’re going to buy your first vaping device. An online vape shop like Pure E-Liquids is almost always the best place to begin.

Other than buying online, your two other potential options are local vape shops and traditional retailers like convenience stores. Buying your first device from a local vape shop is often a bad idea because most vape shops have ceded the entry-level market to convenience stores. Vape shops, meanwhile, carry the expert-level equipment that convenience stores lack. It’s generally a bad idea to buy a high-end device if you’re new to vaping.

You can get a great entry-level vaping device from your local convenience store, of course, but the problem with the e-cigarettes sold in most traditional retail outlets is that they aren’t refillable. When you buy a non-refillable vaping device in the United States, you’re stuck with just two flavors – tobacco and menthol – and you’ll pay far more than you should for your refill pods or cartridges.

A good online vape shop will have plenty of beginner-oriented vaping devices that are refillable, and that’s the type of device that you want if you’re new to vaping.

Use Plenty of Nicotine at First

One of the things that gives vaping its magic – the thing that has made it possible for millions of people to switch to vaping and quit smoking – is the fact that vaping can create the same throat hit that you feel when inhaling cigarette smoke. You don’t feel throat hit when you use nicotine gum or any other smoking cessation tool.

The fact that you feel throat hit when vaping is what makes it so easy to convince yourself that vaping isn’t so different from smoking. The only way to feel that assertive, cigarette-like throat hit, though, is to use an e-liquid with plenty of nicotine. Start out with the highest nicotine strength available for your vaping device. You can begin to think about reducing your nicotine strength when you’re certain that you’ve transitioned fully to vaping and have no intention of ever smoking again.

Don’t Continue Smoking

Speaking of your attitude toward smoking, we can’t stress enough how important it is that you make every effort to stop smoking from the moment you start vaping. You simply need to make the decision that vaping is going to be your new way of getting nicotine going forward and that you aren’t going to smoke anymore.

One reason why it’s so important to stop smoking when you start vaping is because continuing to smoke will negate any harm reduction benefits that vaping might have had for you. Some medical experts have said that vaping is at least 95 percent less harmful than smoking, but you won’t enjoy that benefit if you’re still smoking.

The second reason why vaping and smoking concurrently is such a bad idea is because, although you may intend to phase out the cigarettes gradually until you no longer smoke at all, that’s not an easy thing to do. If you quit smoking when you start vaping, you’re replacing your tobacco cigarettes with your e-cigarette. What are you going to replace your cigarettes with if you’re already vaping?

Don’t Fixate on Tobacco Flavors

There are plenty of tobacco e-liquids in the world, but the first thing you need to know about those e-liquids is that none of them taste like cigarettes. You can’t make a convincing cigarette flavor with a liquid that contains no tobacco and doesn’t generate smoke. You can, however, use various combinations of flavors to make e-liquids that taste like all of the world’s most popular candies and snacks.

It’s great that tobacco-flavored e-liquids exist. Many people who vape enjoy those e-liquids very much. Most, however, do not. They’re far too busy enjoying the hundreds of other e-liquids that taste like fruit, candy, bubblegum, ice cream, cake and every other snack food you can imagine. Don’t fixate on tobacco e-liquids; they’re not the best of what the world of vaping has to offer.

Prepare Yourself for a Few Challenging Days

Although vaping certainly makes quitting smoking easier, it probably won’t make quitting easy for you. Remember that cigarette smoke is extremely complex and contains thousands of chemicals. Nicotine is just one of those compounds. E-cigarette vapor, in comparison, is far simpler. When you switch to vaping, you’re replacing the nicotine in tobacco smoke, but you aren’t replacing anything else.

Your body will begin ridding itself of the thousands of other chemicals in tobacco smoke when you switch to vaping, and you may not feel great for the first few days after making the switch. After you get through those few days, though, you’re home free. Consider making the switch to vaping during a long weekend so you won’t have the added stress of work to worry about during the transition. By the time you go back to work, you’ll feel like a new person.

Written by Megan Taylor
Megan is a beauty expert who is passionate about all things makeup and glam! Her love for makeup has brought her to become a beauty pro at Glamour Garden Cosmetics.