Notes » Quit Smoking with the E-Cigarette
Notes » May 2007
Quit Smoking with the E-Cigarette
Trying to quit smoking?
Well now that smoking is banned in Hong Kong restaurants, the Ruyan "e-cigarette" may be the answer for those who can't live without a nic fix.
From Reuters:
It feels like a cigarette, looks like a cigarette but it isn't bad for your health.
A Chinese company marketing the world's first "electronic" cigarette hopes to double sales this year as it expands overseas and as some of China's legions of smokers try to quit.
Golden Dragon Group Ltd's Ruyan cigarettes are battery-powered, cigarette-shaped devices that deliver nicotine to inhalers in a bid to emulate actual smoking.
"The nicotine is delivered to the lungs within 7 to 10 seconds," said Scott Fraser, Vice President of SBT Co. Ltd., the Beijing-based firm that first developed the electronic cigarette technology in 2003 and which is now controlled by Golden Dragon.
"It feels like a cigarette, looks like a cigarette, it even emits vapor. In many ways, it is like an actual smoking experience, and that's what makes us different" ...
The cigarettes sell for around 1,600 yuan ($208) apiece and are already available in China, Israel, Turkey, and a number of European countries, but not yet the United States.
Then again if it works, smokers may not quit after all, opting instead to fuel their addiction with a product that won't offend non-smokers, which isn't a bad thing.
The one glaring mistake on the Ruyan web site was this statement:
Smokers are men of pleasure - a good book near the chimney accompanied by a pipe ... a good meal followed by a cigarette ... a cognac and a cigar with friends...
It looks like female smokers don't count. And no one reads near a chimney (though some smoke like one), though they might read near a fireplace. As for cognac with a cigar, that's blasphemy; the whole point of smoking a cigar is to taste the tobacco.
So while this device can help smokers to quit or at least stop damaging their lungs, I don't foresee the same level of success with the e-spliff, e-bong and e-crackpipe.
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