How electronic cigarettes are changing our lives

Electronic cigarettes or the e-cig as it is more commonly referred to, is changing the world of smoking as we know it. There was a time when the world was filled with smoke. It's hard to believe it now, prompted by the movies of the fifties and the sixties where the superstars of the day oozed coolness when holding, lighting, or drawing on a cigarette, at that time the world followed suit and almost everybody became a smoker. The image of coolness was further propagated by the plethora of war movies where the dying soldier's last request was for a drag of a fag. It was the height of sophistication, it was normal to smoke in offices, restaurants, cinemas and on public transport. I remember as a youth when five or six of us, all around 16 or 17 went to visit a friend in hospital who had just had his tonsils removed. We sat around his hospital bed, smoking. It is unimaginable now, but that was the reality back then, very few places were off limits, maybe the church, that was about it. Smoking is taboo… or is it?

In the 21st Century it's a totally different story, smoking is taboo, prohibited in offices, restaurants, cinemas, public transport and especially hospitals, and rightfully so. The image portrayed in the 50′s, 60′s and to some extent the 70′s is long gone. Smoking is a killer and second hand smoke is not welcomed by most non smokers. Big tobacco companies have been sued numerous times for colossal amounts of money for the damage caused and education regarding the dangers of smoking has filtered through to the new generation of youths. So you would be justified in thinking that cigarette smoking is in decline, and maybe soon it will be gone altogether. Well it seems that is how it should be, but is that the case? No, unfortunately it's not, figures show that there is a sizable proportion of youth who have taken up smoking, and of the millions of smokers who have managed to quit, a large number of them never really do stop, instead they become social smokers, controlling the urge most of the week but having one or two at the weekend with friends who are also social smokers. The cigarette never really left their lives, it retains a warm spot in the mind, igniting memories of better times of youth, with no thoughts of smoke damage, always waiting for the right circumstances to take control of all that is rational. Enter the Electronic Cigarette

A product of the electronic age that we live in, a digital solution to an analogue problem. Well not really, it's actually not digital, is in fact quite physical. The electronic cigarette is a device that replicates the experience of smoking without the harmful effects associated with the burning of tobacco. The reason it can do that is because it isn't actually smoking in that no smoke is produced because nothing is burned. Instead a liquid known as e-liquid or e-juice is heated to a vapor. This is inhaled like you would inhale the smoke and is blown out looking just like smoke, but it is, in fact just water vapor, it contains none of the thousands of additives that are in tobacco. The ingredients in the e-cigarette is only a fraction of those in real cigarettes, click the link for a comparison that will make you shudder. There has been much discussion about the e-cigarette and whether it is safe or not to the extent that some countries have banned it altogether, while countries like the UK have welcomed it and promoted it as a real alternative to giving up cigarettes. In fact it has an 83% success rate in helping smokers to kick the habit, which is magnitudes above the traditional methods, that for the most part just don't work. With e-cigarettes you get to work your way off the addictive nicotine while still enjoying the rituals associated with smoking. Whether it's cool or not is another question, but that's it's safer is beyond doubt, if you're not so sure take a look at that list of ingredients comparison again and ask yourself which one you'd rather put into your lungs. For me it's been a win win switchover, it's smoking, but Spock certainly wouldn't have been able to compute it.

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