Just how big vejp is in London can't really be appreciated until you see it for yourself. Vejpkollen took a stroll through some of the city's innermost boroughs and spotted corner shops awash with disposable e-cigarettes mixed with specialised vejp shops and a new big trend in the form of white snus. "The Big Smoke" as the city used to be called is well on its way to becoming The Big Steam instead.
Through the drizzle and winter mist, central London looks as it should. There's not a flake of snow as far as the eye can see, but the theatre streets around the West End are packed with the usual mix of tourists and ordinary Londoners out running errands. From Covent Garden up through Soho, you traipse through the finer and more expensive neighbourhoods and it shows, not least in the prices in the shops and how people dress.
Once upon a time, the city went by the perennial nickname "The Big Smoke". It came about from the large-scale burning of coal that enveloped the whole town in a thick black fog. According to a slang dictionary dated 1874, villagers from the rest of the country could see the big, dark cloud hanging over the capital from afar. They simply took aim at the 'big smoke'.
The fact that the city is foggy - the more natural version - is part of the mindset. It's pretty low-hanging fruit to jump to the 1TP8 toe, which seems to have taken hold in London much more than in other cities with similar conditions. But why not?
White snus is a natural product
Sure - even in Sweden you can find disposable vejp in kiosks and petrol stations just about everywhere, but here in London it's of a completely different calibre. You'd be hard pushed to find a street in the city centre that didn't have at least one kiosk selling a mixture of souvenirs, knick-knacks, tobacco and vejp. Now even with white snuff as an equally obvious item.
Perhaps it is as simple as Mr Thuy Nguyen, charismatic owner of trendy Soho Vape, said in a interview here in Vejpkollen: that vejp is, in short, super trendy. But in the full truth, there are probably parts like the authorities here have chosen to see e-cigarettes as an aid to quitting smoking and focussed more on harm reduction than on bans in various forms, unlike so many other countries.
"Earlier this year, the Office for National Statistics published statistics on nicotine habits in the country, showing that 5.1 million Britons aged 16 and over use e-cigarettes. That's about one in ten and is the most commonly used nicotine product.
Suply and demand
The disposable corner shops are on every street corner you pass, and apart from their range, they seem to share a common distrust of Swedish journalists who pop in to ask questions. In many cases there's a language barrier, but it's also compounded by the fact that they don't seem too keen to answer anything at all - and also that they simply don't seem to know much about the product. Not one of them wants to be photographed, but Maiwan - who runs a small kiosk near Oxford Circus - says he sells huge quantities of disposibles.
That is of course why he has them.
From the point of view of Maiwan and other kiosk owners, they sell what is in demand, and that is what puts food on the table. Suply and demand in short.
Seen from The point of view of Thuy Nguyen and other more serious vejp shops kiosks are destroying the industry, and it is because of them that schoolchildren are getting their hands on brightly coloured disposable vejps, designed and targeted just for them. This in turn has led to political discussions and future bans as it against disposable vejp to be introduced this summer.
Maiwan's face lights up when he realises that the new popular cans of white snus, or "nicotine pouches" as they are called here, are a Swedish thing. He says that he has only started selling a lot of them in recent months.
"Vejp is huge"
Hadi Nassrallah has been a vejper for many years, and being a loyal regular, he started working at Soho Vapes a while ago. His real name has to be dragged out of him because everyone just calls him "Marco". History doesn't tell us how that happened.
"Vejp is huge. Everyone is vejping in London now," says Marco, like so many others.
He believes that the ban on single-use vejps will go relatively painlessly anyway.
"Of course, customers prefer to stay with what they are used to, but many switch to better machines after a while anyway, and there are so many variants now to choose from," he says.
Marco himself started with ciggalikes once upon a time and has since followed and changed through product development. He likes fruit flavours in general and cherries in particular.
Vejp in the gentrified punk neighbourhood
Travelling north through the drizzle, we end up in Camden, known for its large market, myriad subcultures and concert venues, fashion and curiosities. The neighbourhood is now almost completely gentrified, but when the evening darkness falls, it still pulsates with concerts, hustle and bustle. There is still an air of alternative culture and punk rock about Camden, although the cost of housing here hardly reflects the neighbourhood's roots anymore.
Seen through vejpspanar glasses, the offer has thinned out compared to Soho, but you still don't have to walk many metres before you see a vejp sign. In the parade of people passing by on the pavement and here and there in the abundance of outdoor cafés, the puffing is just as brisk.
In a Corner Shop on a cross street of Camden High Street stands Imran. To no one's surprise, he doesn't want to be in the photo or answer many questions. He shrugs his shoulders at the question of what he's going to do when there's a ban on the whole big wall of disposibles he has.
"If it is banned, it is banned. I have many goods here," he says briefly.
Here to stay - maybe
A day's walk from Covent Garden up to Camden Market via Soho is a vanishingly small part of the metropolis of London and all its suburbs. But if it can give any indication at all of the state of affairs when it comes to e-cigarettes in the British capital, it's here to stay.
Or maybe some other new trend is waiting around the corner - what do I know?
Maybe it's snuff.
Christian Egefur
Freelance reporter
