Ready for e-smoke?
Smokers, what if you could smoke a cigarette that didn’t contain any tobacco or carcinogens and didn’t stink?
And nonsmokers, how would you feel about walking past a pack of smokers without coughing, or worrying your lungs were filling up with chemicals from secondhand smoke?
Ivon Patel, of Naperville, waves to Shabana Mohiuddin, manager of Tobacco and Cigars in Naperville, after buying a pack of Newport cigarettes. “I wouldn’t stray from my menthols, but if they come in menthol I’ll give it a try,” said Patel of electronic cigarettes, which are smokeless so may be used in public places.
A new product on the market, widely known as the electronic cigarette, is changing the rules of smoking for those wishing to puff wherever and whenever they want.
Two businesses at Westfield Fox Valley mall in Aurora sell the e-cigarettes, including retail store Cigar Box and Chicago-based Elxtro Vapor Cigarette Co., which has a kiosk near the mall’s Carson Pirie Scott store.
Elxtro has caught the most attention by far at the mall. Employees take drags on the e-cigarettes as shoppers pass. They exhale what looks like smoke, but actually is a vapor mist.
“People tell me all the time that there’s no smoking and it’s good advertising because I unscrew (the cigarette) and say, ‘It’s not a cigarette,’” employee Chris Trajanovski said while manning the kiosk at the mall this week.
The e-cigarettes look like a real smoke at first.
Up close, each cigarette includes an LED tip that lights up when the smoker takes a draw. Unscrew the metal cigarette and inside is a battery, a microprocessor that controls heat and light, a sensor that detects when the smoker is taking a puff, a heater to vaporize the nicotine and a cartridge that holds the nicotine in propylene glycol so it doesn’t come out in the vapor.
When you exhale it isn’t hot, and there are none of the ashes that fall from the end of a cigarette.
Elxtro claims that the product contains no tobacco, tar, carcinogens, carbon monoxide or secondhand smoke.
And you can tell when you need to “recharge” the cigarette, too.
Trajanovski took a drag and a cloud of vapor barely formed. “It’s time to charge this one,” he said.
He unscrewed the cigarette and placed the battery in a charger.
Choose your poison
Trajanovski, 24, said he first heard about e-cigarettes from a fellow smoker friend. Both were trying to quit, but nothing seemed to have worked in the past.
Trajanovski decided to buy a kit, which costs about $100 for the cigarette, five cartridges and the charging equipment, so he could smoke inside his house and not disturb his roommates.
The former pack-a-day smoker says the e-cigarettes have helped him nearly quit. After about two months, he is down to smoking a few times day. His e-cigarettes do not contain nicotine though.
That’s the other thing about e-cigarettes: You can choose cartridges with low, medium or high nicotine levels or, like Trajanovski, no nicotine at all.
“We’re promoting a product to help you quit smoking or at least smoke healthier,” he said.
However, the company does not guarantee that e-cigarettes would help anyone quit smoking.
Its Web site states, “This product in no way claims to assist user in quitting or lessening frequency of smoking traditional cigarettes.”
Health officials don’t buy it
The product doesn’t sound appealing to at least one smoker, Priscilla Hollingbird, 26, of Aurora.
“It just takes the whole idea of smoking out. I would think it would be weird,” said Hollingbird, who said she has about five cigarettes a day.
She admits, though, that she despises the smell her cigarettes leave on her furniture, clothes and carpet.
The e-cigarettes have perplexed anti-smoking groups and officials — it’s still unclear if e-cigarettes obey the Illinois Smoke Free Act, said Donna Sperlakis of the Kendall County Health Department.
Because they contain nicotine, however, the products are banned in some countries and have come under fire from anti-smoking groups in the U.S.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration stopped shipments of the product at the borders earlier this year, saying it has no data on them.
In March, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Heart Association, American Lung Association and Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids put out a joint news release lauding a New Jersey senator for calling on the FDA to remove e-cigarettes from the market. The agencies said no studies have been done on e-cigarettes regarding their health effects or cessation aides.
Lauren Johnson of the American Cancer Society in Batavia said she believes products like these are “a ploy to circumvent the law.”
“They may have found a loophole” to the Illinois Smoke Free Act, she said.
Elxtro’s e-cigarettes also come in 31 flavors like vanilla and coffee, which Johnson says makes smoking attractive to children and teens.
“The major issue here is that they’re trying to make it look like a cigarette and function like a cigarette. … It’s essentially showing that it’s normal to smoke,” Johnson said.
According to Chicago-based Elxtro, e-cigarettes cost a smoker about $2 a day.
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