| Very quietly and hardly noticed. People are giving up the life threatening |
| habit of smoking. No they are not turning to patches or inhalers. Instead |
| they are turning to what has become known as the Electronic cigarette. |
|
| The device consists of three parts. A battery (lithium ion lasting pretty |
| much all day) |
|
| An atomiser ( the device which creates the smoke like vapour ) |
|
| A refill, which contains the mixture of propylene glycol and nicotine, which |
| is responsible for both the smoke like vapour and the satisfied look on the |
| users face. |
|
| All put together it looks remarkably like a cigarette. |
|
| They cost about £25 to thirty pounds, for a starter kit and are invariably |
| bought on line. |
|
| They very cleverly allow someone to continue with their smoking habit, |
| retaining all of the upside and non of the down side |
|
| To know how they do this we need first to look at what does the harm in a |
| cigarette. Well it is not the nicotine. The nicotine in the sort of |
| quantities inhaled by smokers is pretty much harmless. Harmless as it may |
| be, it is the addictive part, the bit that makes smokers smoke. In a |
| conventional cigarette, tobacco is burned, and the consequential smoke is |
| inhaled so that the required nicotine, enters the blood stream and brain, |
| providing the hit, which the smoker has become addicted to. The problem with |
| this method if inhaling nicotine, is that it is accompanied by deadly carbon |
| monoxide, from the burning process. Tar, also deadly, due to it's |
| carcinogenic nature, and several other very nasty and life threatening |
| substances, anyone of which could quite easily kill you on it's own. |
|
| Seems a shame to go through all of this, just to get a little bit of fairly |
| harmless nicotine. |
|
| So, the very clever inventors of the electronic cigarette applied a little |
| lateral thinking (A La De Bono) to the problem of getting nicotine to the |
| lungs and brain, without all the other stuff. |
|
| What they did was to extract the nicotine and put it into a suspension with |
| the harmless and well proven oily food additive "Propylene Glycol" . |
|
| This oily suspension is then put into a foam carrier. |
|
| The electronic cigarette upon drawing at the filter end activates its |
| battery via a flow switch. This battery activates a small heating element |
| (Atomiser) , which heats the suspension enough to vaporise it. The user can |
| then safely inhale the vapour, the nicotine is released safely into the |
| lungs, (in much the same quantity as with a draw on a conventional |
| cigarette) |
|
| Result happiness |
|
| All the downside to smoking eliminated. |
|
| A fantastic side benefit, if one were even needed is that as well as saving |
| the lives of smokers, while at the same time allowing them to enjoy their |
| habit (unhindered, might I add by the smoking ban, which does not apply to |
| electronic cigarettes) It saves them an enormous sum of money. Electronic |
| smoking costs about 80% less than conventional smoking. Poetic justice I |
|
think for the poor, over taxed smoker
_______________________________
electronic cigarette
|
