Vaping

[fiat_knox]

In the early Nineties, I wrote a cyberpunk story, "Memory's Run," and as part of that story Memory, the protagonist, smoked these tobacco-free nicotine "smokes" that blew a hit of evaporated nicotine into the back of her throat for an instant, immediate nicotine hit. No carcinogens like formaldehyde, benzene and phenol; no tar and fine ash to coat the alveoli of the lungs. Memory also smoked a caffeine stick, delivering an instant hit, better than a cup of espresso.

Bring it forward to today. I spotted a new thing in the newsagent where I get my 2000 AD and pay my bills: electronic cigarettes. The main battery is in the long white part; the payload, in the brown part that looks like a filter.

From what I can tell, the things look like cigarettes. I saw someone using them in town, seemingly as a novelty. The end of it glows green, some sort of LED in the tip, and I saw a cloud of white smoke: but not smoke. Some sort of steam, laced with the nicotine payload.

I've dug up my old story and I'll probably want to bring it up to date for 2012, but damn did I get the vaping bit right.

Right doe to the caffeine vape and even an alcohol vape, both recent French inventions.

Comments

[zenten.livejournal.com]

These have been around for a few years now. There's actually a bit of a controversy here because our governing health body is taking exception to the claim "healthier than tobacco" given the lack of studies to back it up. Mind you, it's not like that's a particularly high bar there.

[fiat-knox.livejournal.com]

I suspect the hand of the tobacco conglomerates, sensing the presence of the habit that will ultimately succeed theirs and knowing that they missed their chance.

They'll have to come up with their own, but they'll have to conform to standards now set by those who opened the market first. The reins have been taken out of their hands. The world is turning against old style tobacco burning smoking, with smoking bans - but vaping is, in general, not covered by these bans because they are not perceived as posing as great a passive smoking threat.

Particularly not to kids.

If vaping is covered as an exception to the smoking ban, vaping sections could allow smokers to satisfy their nicotine hit in pubs and offices, reserving their smoking for the home.

Smoke at home, vape in public. Gods, never mind the issue of smoking cessation - imagine the streets getting cleaner, with no more cigarette butts despoiling the floor around the entrances to schools, shops and business premises.

Changing Habits

[fiat-knox.livejournal.com]

Another thought, because at 2am my mind likes to make these connections at random that make sense tonight but might not make the least bit of sense in the morning.

When you light up a cigarette, cigar or pipe, you can't turn the burning smoking matter on and off. Once lit, you have to commit - so smokers puff away until the smoke is finished, and in between puffs most of the cigarette is wasted, burned into the air.

That is not the case with an electronic cigarette, whatever the brand, or an e-gar or e-hookah or whatever Star Trek fancy toy they come up with. You toke, the payload delivers its hit ... and then it switches off until the sensor detects the vacuum formed by the mouth as you take the next toke.

No wasted material going up in smoke between tokes. And if you only need one toke, you just take one toke. If you need two tokes, you just take two tokes. Only as much as you need to satisfy you, because you know this thing won't be continuing to burn just because you've done with it.

People who start their habit with vaping rather than smoking could adopt entirely new habits altogether. Sales of lighters and matches could drop through the floor, ashtrays becoming things of the past and so on.

Even if they only permit a vaper to toke outside with the smokers, they need only stay out long enough for as many tokes as they need. Literally seconds, instead of the five, ten minutes people usually take with a burning cigarette.

Like I said, if this thing catches on, so many habits could change, and even become endangered species.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I could see that from some circles.

I really don't think Health Canada is one of those circles though, it really doesn't fit previous behaviour nor how it works based on reports from people who've worked there (including my wife) that I know personally.

Instead I think it's more "here's a law, we're going to enforce it whether or not it makes sense because it's a part of our mandate."

I do think that while "healthier than cigarettes" is almost certainly true, there should be hard scientific evidence to back up claims beyond that. I mean, I'm not convinced that giving nicotine to kids is a good idea, even if the nastier chemicals are excluded.