Making your own vaping juice is not without risks

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Danielle Jones sits at her dining room table, studying the recipe for Nerd Lyfe (v2) vape juice. The supplies she’s ordered online are arrayed before her: a plastic jug of unflavored liquid nicotine, a baking scale and bottles of artificial flavors that, combined, promise to re-create the fruity taste of Nerds Rope candy in vapor form.

This is Jones’ first attempt to make her own e-liquid after buying it for the past five years. Jones, 32, wants to be prepared for the worst-case scenario: a ban on the sale of the e-liquids she depends on to avoid cigarettes.

“Even though I haven’t touched a cigarette in five years, the pull is always there. It’s so easy to go and buy a pack. And I don’t want to do that,” she said. “The only route I can see going forward if there is a ban is to try to create the product myself at home.”

As more states, cities and even the federal government consider banning flavored nicotine, thousands of do-it-yourself vapers like Jones are flocking to social media groups and websites to learn how to make e-liquids at home.

Users on the forums — many of whom have been mixing their own e-liquids for years — describe the process as simple, fun, cheap and, with the proper precautions, safe. But if not done carefully, making e-liquids at home may pose risks including accidental exposure to high doses of liquid nicotine, the use of dangerous oil-based flavors and possible product contamination.

“To have people mixing their own e-cigarette liquid is crazy. These are very toxic chemicals,” said Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine and the director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco. “If you drop a little bit of nicotine on your skin, it can send you to the hospital.”

But Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor of community health sciences at Boston University, said many people are able to make vaping liquids safely at home, by seeking advice from other vapers and following a few safety measures, such as wearing gloves and goggles.

Siegel worries, however, about the risk of contaminated products as some people use the bans as an opportunity to make their own concoctions cheaply and sell them on the black market.

“Who knows what they’re going to put in there?” Siegel said. “This is just what happens when you use prohibition as a regulatory approach. What’s really needed in this situation is actual regulation of these products to try to make them as safe as possible.”

Following a rush of new bans in September, a Reddit forum on DIY e-juice saw a spike in membership, the group’s moderator reported. The daily number of new subscribers had long hovered around 30; that number spiked to 336 new subscribers in a single day, followed by more than 200 the next day, and it remained high throughout the month.

Many of the safety risks of DIY vaping also apply to commercial products. The safety of inhaling food flavorings, for example, has not been established, even in commercially manufactured e-liquids.

Though a first-time DIY-er, Danielle Jones may have better access than many people to advice on making e-juice safely at home. She works for a company that manufactures the cotton wicking used in vaping devices, sits on the board of CASAA and hosts a YouTube Live show about vaping.

Jones wants to make the process as simple as possible.

She went online to purchase unflavored nicotine that had already been mixed with additives and diluted to her desired concentration. All she needs to do is add the flavors, also purchased online.

Next comes the nicotine, which resembles a doll-size plastic jug of gasoline.

The whole process takes Jones about 15 minutes, and the solution is ready to vape.

She takes a deep hit, great clouds of vapor billowing out of her nose and mouth. The air smells candy sweet, like inhaling a box of Nerds.