This post is meant to help those who smoke tobacco and want to quit combustion with the help of a DHV. I have no intent to make anybody vape tobacco who is not already smoking it anyway. Tobacco is unhealthy and highly addictive, regardless of how it’s consumed. Vaping it is not a healthy habit, just a potentially less harmful alternative to smoking.
TL;DR
- The transition from smoking to vaping tobacco went smoothly for me
- Zero thoughts about cigarettes after 4-5 days
- Finding the right tobacco is crucial for the experience
- Vaping tobacco is very well suited for everyday use
- You can continually reduce nicotine by mixing with other herbs
- You can save a lot of money as long as you don’t get VAS (Vape Acquisition Syndrome)
Contents
- My transition
- Practical experience
- Choosing & preparing tobacco
- Financial aspects
- Questions to the community
My transition
How I switched
It all started when a friend of mine got a vaporizer for his weed 2 months ago. Unfortunately, I can’t tolerate THC anymore, but that sparked the idea that I could use it to stop smoking. After some research I ordered an electronic vaporizer (more on that further down) and was ready to start my experiment one week later.
I must say, it went very smoothly and the transition was way easier than I had expected. Coming from smoking 10-15 hand-rolled cigarettes per day over 28 years, here is how it went for me.
Starting at day one, I committed myself to smoking zero cigarettes and to cure any craving by a vape session. Nicotine-wise, vaping was fully sufficient. For a few days, I missed the typical throat hit and had some lung craving, but that ceased rapidly after I found the right tobacco that produced sufficient vapor. More details on different tobaccos are given in a separate section.
Within as few as 4-5 days, vaping completely replaced smoking for me in a way that I didn’t miss anything and had zero thoughts about smoking a cigarette anymore.
I am now in my 7th week of vaping instead of smoking and started to reduce the nicotine intake by mixing with other herbs. My tobacco consumption decreased to approx. 30% of what I was smoking, naturally without deliberate reduction, even without stretching with other herbs.
I am not sure whether I will be able to stop consuming tobacco completely. Even if not, my transition to vaping tobacco certainly has significant health benefits. Please keep in mind, though, that not inhaling anything is still healthier than vaping, and that I am not a medic and can’t give any profound health-related advice.
Why it worked
I can only guess here why the transition worked so well for me, but I have a few clues.
I think a very important point was to cut down to zero cigarettes from the first day on. This way, I was able to dissolve the associations between typical triggers (like coffee, work breaks etc.) and smoking a cigarette very fast. I just used the vaporizer instead, so I could keep the ritual and also satisfy my need for nicotine. I had minor lung craving, but only the first days.
In addition to switching from smoking to vaping, my tobacco consumption, and probably also my nicotine intake, reduced naturally without forcing it. Key aspects are the more efficient extraction compared to smoking, and smaller bowl sizes compared to a cigarette’s worth of tobacco.
Finally, I noticed that I am craving less for nicotine now and can have longer breaks than with smoking. This seems to have at least two reasons. First, without smoking, you don’t inhale carbon monoxide, which is often blamed for part of the cigarette ‘hit’, though I’m not entirely sure how big that contribution really is. Second, nicotine peaks are smoothed when vaping compared to smoking, so you don’t have extreme heights followed by steep declines that make you want to smoke now.
Taken together, I believe the key was decoupling the ritual from the substance rather than fighting both at once: I didn’t have to give up my coffee-break routine or go through nicotine withdrawal, I only had to change the tool. Everything else seems to have taken care of itself.
Practical experience
The taste of vaped tobacco
From the start, I liked the taste of vaped tobacco. I didn’t find it overly harsh, contrary to what most people report in vaporizer forums or on reddit. It is definitely somewhat harsher than weed, but I’ve come to really enjoy the sweet, mellow, full flavor of the tobacco I settled on after some trial and error.
I also find that the nuances of different tobacco types and brands are clearer than with smoking. However, there are also large differences in the vapor production and general feeling of satisfaction, so finding the right tobacco is crucial. More on that below.
Suitability for everyday use
There are different aspects to how suitable vaping is for everyday life compared to smoking.
Vaping requires some work, namely filling your bowl. This is comparable to rolling a cigarette, but certainly more involved than taking one out of a pack. Many vaporizers can be used with dosing capsules, which may help if you don’t want to fill your bowl while out and about.
If you get a compact portable electronic vape, it will look very similar to an e-cigarette for others. So nobody will think that you are vaping weed.
There is almost no smell from vaping tobacco, and it does not smell like smoke in any way. So you will likely be able to vape in situations where you could not smoke, and you won’t bother non-smokers with your stink.
As you will probably vape more frequently than the average weed user, your energy supply may be the most critical usability issue. Depending on your daily routine, you may need a vape with swappable batteries or a power bank.
You will need to clean your vaporizer regularly. However, contrary to what you may have read already, tobacco does not gunk it up too much. I clean mine every few days with isopropanol and q-tips, which takes me about 5 minutes.
Devices
I don’t have enough experience with different devices to give detailed recommendations, but I would like to share my experience so far.
I have a small electronic vaporizer that basically looks like an e-cigarette that I mainly use in public. It is a Norddampf Relict for €120, which is basically a re-branded Weecke Rush with a glass mouthpiece. I am satisfied with it, but there are certainly better options available. I particularly value its compact stealthy format, but I can’t compare it with other electronic vapes as I haven’t tried any other. It has a 0.25g bowl with dosing capsules, and a bowl serves me for a session of about 4-5 minutes with a draw frequency similar to smoking a cigarette.
Further, I have a DynaVap M7XL which is my main device when not in public. It is more flavorful and more intense than my electronic vape, but handling it with the torch looks too suspicious for use in public. Its 0.1g bowl lasts me 3-4 heating cycles with 3 lung draws or 5 mouth-to-lung per cycle.
Both devices use conduction, so I can’t judge how well convection vapes work with tobacco.
Temperatures
I started out with 210°C (410°F) to get a sufficient throat hit and enough vapor production with the suboptimal tobacco that I had in the beginning. Within 2 weeks of getting used to it and after finding a suitable tobacco, I lowered it to 190°C (374°F). This is completely sufficient for nicotine extraction and vapor production.
Inhalation techniques
If you are a cigarette smoker, you will likely need to change your inhalation technique. Instead of mouth-to-lung (MTL) like with a cigarette, you will need to inhale direct-to-lung (DTL). With the Dynavap, mouth-to-lung (MTL) works too as long as the “airport” is closed, but it may be less satisfying, as the vapor is less dense than smoke.
Choosing & preparing tobacco
Finding the right tobacco
Finding the right tobacco is crucial to make the transition a good experience, and may even determine your success overall. Contrary to how I did it, you may even want to do this before you stop smoking. You will probably need to try several types and brands of tobacco, but I hope that I can provide some guidance here.
First of all, you should use hand-rolling tobacco without any additives. By now, there are plenty of brands of additive-free tobacco available. If you have friends who smoke those brands, you could ask them for a small sample to try in your vaporizer instead of buying a whole pack just to test it.
I tried several brands before I settled on Pielroja, which has a nice full, smooth and sweet flavor. Others I tried that didn’t work, mainly due to a lack of vapor production, were American Spirit, Pueblo and Pepe.
Just to be clear: I have no affiliation with any of these brands. I’m naming them purely because concrete examples are more useful than vague recommendations.
What I noticed is that Virginia tobaccos seem to work well, particularly those with a sweet and fruity smell. Tobaccos that smell “just like tobacco” (American Spirit blue) or those that have almost no smell, or merely like dust or a barn (Pueblo) produce very little to no vapor. Pepe was just harsh and unbearable.
Further, tobaccos with a fine cut work better than those with a coarse cut.
Preparing the tobacco
Most tobaccos are too moist for vaporization, so you need to dry them. I usually take my approximate daily ration, spread it out on a saucer and let it sit for a few hours or overnight. It should be just moist enough that it does not crumble to dust when you rub it between your fingers.
There is no further preparation necessary. If the tobacco has a fine cut, you don’t need to grind it. In conduction vaporizers, you can give it a relatively dense pack in the bowl, probably a bit denser than you would with weed.
Mixing with other herbs for taste and nicotine reduction
You can mix your tobacco with other herbs to improve the taste, reduce harshness, or to reduce your nicotine consumption.
For my electronic vape, where a full bowl already exceeds my nicotine demand, I go for a mix of 50% tobacco, 30% mullein for good vapor production, and 20% damiana for taste. I find this mixture really delicious and smooth.
Financial aspects
Initially, you will have to invest some money in at least one vaporizer. If you are not too ambitious, you will get a sufficient one for 100-150 €/$.
However, you will quite certainly reduce your tobacco consumption naturally for two reasons. First, a full bowl of a portable vaporizer contains way less tobacco than a cigarette’s worth (e.g. 0.2g vs. up to 1g). Second, nicotine extraction in a vaporizer is more efficient than combustion.
For me, a 0.2g bowl has been totally sufficient to replace a cigarette.
Further, if you come from smoking cigarette packs, you will save even more by switching to hand-rolling tobacco.
Personally, I reduced my tobacco consumption to 30%, without forcing anything or restricting myself, even before I started mixing with other herbs. From 1.5 30g packs per week, I reduced to one pack in 2 weeks. This saves me the cost of one pack per week, i.e. 6-7€. So the Dynavap redeems itself in 3 months.
However, you should be warned that there is VAS (Vape Acquisition Syndrome), which may more than cancel out these savings. For example, I am already flirting with the idea to get a Dani Fusion 2.0.
Questions to the community
I hope this post will be helpful for anyone who wants to quit smoking and considers using a dry herb vaporizer for that sake.
I would be very interested in experiences with vaping tobacco in this community, in recommendations for tobacco blends worth trying, and in the story of your transition away from combustion.
