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Local Voices

Cigarette graveyard on display at a local Clearwater Beach business.

Island Vape Shop on Clearwater Beach displays a cigarette graveyard from customers that have quit smoking.

A Clearwater Beach new business is steering smokers away from cigarettes by selling e-cigs, or electronic cigarettes. At Island Vape Shop on Clearwater Beach, smokers will find an alternative to regular tobacco cigarettes that allows them to have what they enjoy about smoking, whether it be the nicotine or the simple hand-to-mouth motion, without any of the negative side effects.

Island Vape shop has on display a cigarette graveyard of packs of analog cigarettes containing tobacco that customers disposed of and replaced with the safer alternative, e-cig’s or electronic cigarettes. Smoke from cigarettes create more than 4000 chemicals. They contain at least 50 carcinogens with several of them being poisonous. Tar from cigarettes is a toxic residue produced by the burning of tobacco. Inhalation of this residue results in damage to the mouth by staining teeth, damaging gums, and desensitizing taste buds. Tar also causes long-term damage to the lungs and contributes to lung diseases such as emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and lung cancer.

Island Vape Shop offers electronic cigarettes and accessories from starter kits to tank and everything in between. An e-cig basically consists of a battery-powered device offered in a wide array of colors, and the e-juice or e-liquid that contains nicotine. The juice is the element that is inhaled and which also creates the vapor clouds that many smokers enjoy.

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A typical starter’s kit at Island Vape Shop costs around $30 and consists of a battery, tank, and a charger. For the essential juice, customers will pay $10 for a 10ml bottle, which will last about two weeks for the average pack-a-day smoker.

There is no tobacco in the juice, Commonly known as e-juice or e-liquid, (it) is a solution of propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, flavoring, optionally, a variable concentration of nicotine. Juices are offered in 24mg, 12mg, 6mg and zero mg nicotine levels.

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For someone who smokes a pack a day and is looking to kick the nicotine habit, Island Vape Shop usually recommends starting between 12mg to 24mg of juice and then working down. Once you get the nicotine out of your system you can put your electronic cigarette down and step away. Once someone has quit nicotine, you will still be able to have the e-cig on hand in case you get a craving to smoke.

Because of the taste, the juice is often what draws smokers away from traditional tobacco cigarettes and to give e-cigs a try. Island Vape Shop has over 200 juice flavors to choose from. Since many people like to try things before they buy, Island Vape Shop has a full tasting bar where customers can try every flavor juice they carry before they buy it,  ‘try before you buy.’

Island Vape Shop patrons will not find the stereotypical “head shop” atmosphere. Most people aren’t comfortable going into head shops so all Island Vape shop sells is e-cig products, and personal vaporizers so customers can come in to taste, buy and set up their e-cigs. Island Vape Shop also have a lounge area with tables and chairs so you can hang out if you want.

About Island Vape Shop

Owned by Andrew Nawoichik, he started selling E-Cigs in November 2012 as an online retailer. Headquartered on Clearwater Beach, the company boasts an online store and now a brick and mortar location offering a wide range of electronic cigarette hardware, e-liquids and accessories.

More About Vaping

“Vaping” is the act of inhaling vaporized flavored liquids using an atomizer, a battery tube, a lithium ion battery, and a drip tip, all assembled in a hand-held cylinder designed to be similar to the shape of a cigarette.

Liquid flavors, or “juices,” available to be vaporized in customers’ atomizers range from banana nut bread, to menthol, to fruit, to tobacco itself. These juices – combinations of flavorings, water, and the pharmaceutical grade PG/VG base – are pre-mixed for sale for the Island Vape Shop. Some juices (also known as “e-juices” or “e-liquids”) contain nicotine and can help transition a smoker of traditional cigarettes away from the habit. Smokers can choose nicotine amounts from 24 milligrams, to 12 milligrams, and so on down to 0 milligrams as they wean themselves.

The Journal of Public Health Policy, a peer-reviewed medical journal since 1980, stated in a 2011 review that “electronic cigarettes may aid in smoking cessation and are likely to be more effective at this than traditional pharmacotherapy,” according to Wikipedia’s page on vaping.

Recent Study

Drexel University’s School of Public Health published a report last summer concluding that “the exposures from using e-cigarettes fall well below the threshold for concern for compounds with known toxicity.”

This report, written by Igor Burstyn, Ph.D., of Drexel’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, further claims, “There is no serious concern about the contaminants such as volatile organic compounds (formaldehyde, acrolein, etc.) in the liquid or produced by heating.”

The study contradicts previous findings that vaping was not a safer alternative to smoking. Burstyn writes that “the existing literature [on e-cigarettes] tends to overestimate the exposures and exaggerate their implications.”

The full study can be found online at:http://publichealth.drexel.edu/SiteData/docs/ms08/f90349264250e603/ms08.pdf

To contact Andrew Nawoichik for additional information or comments, please call him at 727-754-9751, or email him at islandvapeshop@gmail.com

Island Vape Shop offers a large selection of personal vaporizers, e-Liquids,  and accessories for both the novice and experienced user.  We specialize in educating the beginner on the various electronic cigarette devices and pride ourselves on offering our customers a money-back guarantee.  

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