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The Nicotine Nazis will hate this!

By Ian Urie

It had to come, didn't it?
As smoking bans creep around the world, there was always the chance that someone would find an alternative.

Imagine my surprise, when I was window shopping outside a computer shop.
E-Cigarettes available here, screamed the poster.
Well, I'm a smoker, I had to, didn't I?



Clicking on the grab will take you to wikipedia's piece on electronic cigarettes.
Above you can see one variety of e-cigarette.
The usb lead is to charge the "cigarette".
The cigarette is actually 3 separate pieces designed to look like a normal one.
The white part is the lithium-ion battery with electronics fitted inside it.
At the top of this is the vaporiser, more on this later.
The final part is the cartridge, the part that looks like a filter tip.

So, you buy the kit above, what next?
The tips actually hold nicotine (although you can get them without).
Once the battery is charged, and the kit is assembled, you simply suck on the tip as normal.
There is an air sensor in the cigarette which switches on the heater in the vaporiser.
This vaporises the mixture in the cartridge, which is inhaled by the user.
The mixture is normally nicotine and propylene glycol.
The end of the battery normally has a red led which switches on with the heater.
The mixture produces a water vapour which is exhaled and mimics smoke.
Each cartridge is roughly the equivalent of a normal packet of cigarettes (full strength).
you can buy various levels of nicotine and different flavours, such as menthol.

I bought one of these kits , purely to try it out.
Honest!
The cigarette is obviously heavier than a real one, but does look like a real cigarette.
Inhaling on the cigarette does bring on the led and you do exhale a small cloud of water vapour.

They have been marketed as both a means of stopping smoking (as with nicotines patches), and also as a safer alternative to smoking.
Well, you are inhaling nicotine and not all the tars and other chemicals associated with real cigarettes, so there may be some truth in this story.
I suppose the other part of being part of stopping could also be true.
You may well be able to cease smoking by using this as a means of either cutting down or using it as a prop instead of a real cigarette.

I'd recommend reading the Wikipedia's page on these.

For my part, I tried the e-cigarette and it did cut out any craving for a real cigarette by maintaining the nicotine.
I think there is a real chance you could over indulge, though.
As I said, one full strength cartridge is reckoned to be about one normal pack of cigarettes.
Each cartridge should last for around 120  drags on it.
Don't forget this, and use it sparingly, you could find that you've taken as much nicotine as a pack of cigarettes inside an hour, if you aren't careful.
Prices of these kits vary on the Internet from around £20 to about £50.