E-cigarette users are accidentally smoking concentrated food flavouring drops and leaving poor reviews on Amazon | The Independent

People are mistakenly vaping food flavouring then giving it terrible ratings on Amazon because it doesn’t deliver their expected nicotine high.

A Twitter user spotted the array of one-star reviews for generic food flavouring drops on the online retail site, and decided to take a closer look.

Rob Whisman tweeted: “It’s fun looking up concentrated food flavouring on amazon and finding people who thought it was vape juice,” along with a few pictures of disappointed reviews.

While vape juices are widely available in speciality smoke shops, it appears that some shoppers have looked to Amazon for their fruity flavour fix – only to be let down.

On Amazon’s page for Capella Flavour Drops in Sweet Strawberry Concentrate, a clear disclaimer reads: “THIS IS NOT VAPE JUICE.”

But despite this, the strawberry flavour concentrate has a poor 2.9 stars with 38 reviews – thanks to multiple reviews complaining about the poor “vape juice” it makes.

One person gave one star, along with the review “Not an e-juice.”

Another one-star review, on the Creamsicle concentrate flavour, reads: “Taste is terrible and barely gives out vape.”

And on the Amazon page for Capella Flavour Drops in Blue Raspberry Cotton Candy – described as “great for use in coffee or tea, smoothies, protein shakes, and baking” – E-cigarette users are still having difficulty figuring it out.

In the customer questions and answers section, in response to the question “does this have nicotine in it?” someone responded, “It’s not vape juice.”

Yet, that has not stopped buyers from expressing their disappoint with the product.

One review reads: “Idk what it is but I put it on my vape and man is it terrible.”

And another said of the food flavoured concentrate “This vape juice doesn’t taste sweet, or blue raspberry. This juice just takes like an unknown medicine.”

However, while many appear to be ignoring the product descriptions while looking for their next vape juice, it looks like the mishap may be the fault of Amazon’s.

When you search for “vape juice” on Amazon, the top results point shoppers to Capella’s Flavour drops – an observation pointed out by one reviewer who wrote: “This is not what I wanted. Your product was listed under vape juice for smoking not flavour drops. You misrepresented your product.”

But it turns out the food concentrate drops can actually be used for vape juice – as long as they are properly diluted.

According to Veppo Cig, vape juice is “a mixture of water, food-grade flavoring, a choice of nicotine levels or zero nicotine, and propylene glycol (PG) or vegetable glycerin (VG).”

And you can make your own – as long as you know how to.

For most vape juices, nicotine and food grade flavouring make up only 10 per cent of the juice, according to Veppo Cig, with the rest comprised of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin.

So although the drops can be used, most E-cigarette users are unaware they would have to be mixed with the other ingredients – and are instead using the food flavouring concentrate on its own.

Is it harmful? It doesn’t appear so, considering the drops are made from artificial flavours and Propylene Glycol, an artificial liquid carrier ingredient.

However, as one person pointed out on Twitter – the mistake is probably quite confusing to the retailers.

“Oh man now I’m dying thinking about these retailers freaking out over all the negative reviews and having no idea what vape juice is.”

Reminder: always read the product description.