Editorial Policy
Who writes SmokeTastic, who pays for it, what we will and won’t do, and what to do when we get something wrong. Short version: we take affiliate commission and advertising, neither buys a recommendation, and we tell you when we’re not certain.
This is the policy the site is actually run to, not a page written to be pointed at. If you find a review that breaks it, that’s a fault worth reporting, and adrian@smoketastic.com reaches me directly.
Who we are
SmokeTastic is a small independent vaping site. It is not owned by a manufacturer, a distributor or a retailer, and it isn’t part of a publishing group. Editorial is run by Adrian King, Chief Editor, who is the byline on the reviews and the person accountable for what they say.
Independence
The rules here are short and there aren’t any exceptions to them.
- Nobody buys a review, a rating, a ranking position or a place in a “best of” list. There is no rate card for editorial and never has been.
- Advertisers and affiliate partners do not see content before it is published, do not get approval over it, and do not get to request changes to it afterwards.
- Commercial relationships are never a factor in a rating. The team that sets prices and placements does not set ratings, and on a site this size that means the commercial decision and the editorial one are taken in different places and at different times.
- We will publish a negative verdict on a product we earn commission on. That has cost us money and it will again.
How the site makes money
Two ways, and we’d rather you knew both.
Affiliate commission. Some links to retailers earn us a commission if you buy. It costs you nothing and it doesn’t change the price you pay. We link to whichever retailer we’d actually send a friend to; where the cheapest good option is one we earn nothing on, that’s the one we name.
Advertising. We sell display placements and clearly-labeled sponsored slots. Anything paid for is marked as advertising on the page itself — not buried in a footer disclosure. If it says advertising, an advertiser paid for it and it is not an editorial recommendation. Our advertising page sets out what’s available.
A sponsored placement never becomes a review, and a review never quietly becomes a sponsored placement.
Free samples
Where a brand or retailer supplies a product at no cost, that changes nothing about the verdict and creates no obligation to publish at all. A supplied product may end up with a bad review or no review. We don’t accept conditions attached to a sample, and if a condition is attached, we don’t take the sample.
Accuracy, sources and uncertainty
Specifications come from the manufacturer or the retailer, and where those two disagree — which happens more than you’d expect — we say so rather than picking the flattering one.
Where we’re estimating rather than measuring, the wording says so. We don’t publish a figure we can’t attribute, and we don’t present an inference as a measurement. Our How We Test page sets out exactly where our assessments come from, including what we do not do.
Health and regulatory claims get a higher bar than product claims. On anything touching health, we point to the published source rather than paraphrasing it, and we don’t offer medical advice. Vaping regulation differs by country and by state and it moves; where a page states a rule, it states the date it was accurate.
Use of AI
We use AI tooling in producing this site — for drafting, for structuring, and for consistency checking across a catalog too large to re-read by hand. We say so here rather than leaving you to infer it.
What it does not do is decide anything. Product selection, judgment, ratings and verdicts are editorial decisions made by people, and the byline on a page is a person who is accountable for it. Every article passes automated quality checks before it can go live, and anything that fails them is held for a person rather than published.
We think AI-assisted production is fine and pretending otherwise is not. What isn’t fine is publishing a claim nobody stands behind, and that’s the line we hold.
Age and harm reduction
This site is for adults of legal purchase age. Nothing here is aimed at anyone under 18, at non-smokers, or at people who have never used nicotine — and we won’t write it that way, whatever it would do for traffic.
Vaping is a harm-reduction tool for people who already smoke. It is not risk-free, and we don’t describe it as safe. Nicotine is addictive. If you don’t smoke, don’t start vaping.
Corrections and updates
We get things wrong, and the useful thing is what happens next.
Report a factual error and we’ll check it against the source. If we’re wrong, the page gets fixed. Substantive corrections — anything that changes a verdict, a rating or a fact a reader might have acted on — are made to the page and noted, not silently overwritten. Prices and availability change constantly and are updated continuously; those aren’t corrections, they’re maintenance.
We do not remove or soften a negative review because a brand asks. A brand is welcome to send us evidence that we got a fact wrong, and we’ll act on the evidence.
Right of reply
If you’re a manufacturer or retailer and you think a review misrepresents your product, email adrian@smoketastic.com with the specifics. We’ll read it, and where you’re right we’ll say so on the page.
Privacy and reader data
We don’t sell reader data. Affiliate links pass a referral identifier to the retailer so the sale can be attributed; they don’t pass anything about you that you haven’t given the retailer yourself. Our privacy policy has the detail.
Contact
Editorial, corrections and complaints: adrian@smoketastic.com. Advertising enquiries go to contact@smoketastic.com and are handled separately from editorial, which is the point.