Total
vaping ban in Honk Kong. Up to 7 years imprisonment for importing it.
A few days ago, I went to buy my rolling tobacco, as usual. It’s the cheapest tobacco without chemical additives that I can find in my city.
The shop owner is the importer himself. He told me that what he could assure me about this particular tobacco—he imports it from Argentina and changes its name to sell it here in Uruguay for marketing reasons—was that this tobacco is pure, containing no chemical additives, not even anything to enhance combustion, etc. And he told me that this was after the harvest and that he couldn’t tell me how they were handled during planting, how they cared for the plants’ growth, or whether they sprayed them with anything or not.
In any case, for now it remains the best tobacco option within my budget.
For various reasons, this gentleman, the owner of the tobacco shop, seems like an honest and decent person.
Actually, I found this tobacco shop a while back, when I was looking for pipes and healthier tobacco.
My plan at the time was to improve the quality of my tobacco and get rid of the paper-thin leaves. That’s why I thought of getting a pipe.
That’s how I found this place, where they sell all kinds of pipes, cigars, pipe tobacco, and everything related.
I only buy my inexpensive tobacco and some excellent Spanish leaves, but you can find everything there.
There’s a wide variety of pipes, ranging from the most affordable to the most prestigious and super expensive—each one more beautiful than the last. The same goes for the selection of tobacco for connoisseurs. As if that weren’t enough, I think the shop’s specialty is Cuban cigars, if I’m not mistaken.
The truth is, I love walking into that shop, because in addition to seeing the display cases full of beautiful pipes for sale, the place is decorated with all kinds of antique pipes, super curious and strange artifacts that were used in the past for smoking—true works of art.
But I’ve strayed a bit from the topic, because what I actually wanted to talk about was vaping.
As I said at the beginning, before I digress

, a few days ago I went to this shop to buy my tobacco.
The son served me, and he’s also very friendly.
So I told him about my interest in starting to vape, and asked if he had any information that could guide me. For example, where they sell the necessary vaping supplies, etc.
Then he told me:
Here in this country, all sales related to vaping are prohibited. It’s illegal. And everything you can get here is smuggled in somehow.
And I exclaimed, “Damn!!”
Then he told me I just had to keep looking until I found the right people. And to put my mind at ease, he said that even though it was somewhat illegal, I didn’t have to venture into dangerous neighborhoods. He explained that the environments where this trade takes place are, in some cases, quite sophisticated. In short, it was just a matter of keeping at it until I found the right places.
That conversation was very enlightening for me. Because I had already been looking before, and all I found were those online purchases, through Amazon and the like, and unfortunately I’m in a country where the restrictions on almost everything we need are quite extreme.
Believe me, that’s how it is. We’ve already seen our national government’s fanaticism on this matter.
For example, if I want ivermectin, the only way is to buy it at the pharmacy. And that’s three 6-mg tablets at an extremely high price.
A few months ago, my wife placed an order for nicotine patches on Amazon. She paid the money and followed all the necessary steps. Well, the package stayed in the United States, and so did our money.
When we were informed that our country’s government did not allow that product to enter the country, we also found out that the deadline for getting our money back had expired. And this despite the fact that my wife was keeping a close eye on it, tracking the location of her package almost daily.
Another thing I wanted to mention about the tobacco shop is that the owner said that some time ago he was fined several thousand dollars—I think it was eight thousand—for displaying merchandise in the storefront window, visible from outside the shop. And because the sign with the shop’s name indicated that it sells tobacco and related products.
However, they don’t prohibit the display in storefronts or at street stalls of items for smoking marijuana, which is garbage.
Currently, the tobacco shop has frosted glass, and you can only see inside through a few slits.
And at the top of the facade, it has the shop’s name, which doesn’t refer to anything in particular, but with the clever addition of:
“fine products for ? ? ? ? ? ?”.
Like a kind of wink. (The question marks, due to their shape, allude to both pipes and smoke.)
Thank goodness for a good sense of humor, to help us cope with and resist the pathetic reality they want to impose on us.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)