At last, there seems to be a credible alternative to smoking tobacco - the e-Cigarette. Something which presses the same buttons, but completely guilt free.
Unfortunately, accessing and adopting this alternative isn't as simple as it needs to be.
There's no advertising worth talking about, no promotional material in shops, and it seems to be much more expensive than it should be.
Wherever you find this technology, its always a limited range, offered where you'd least expect to find it, and sales staff don't have the knowledge or skills in the topic customers might benefit from.
Quite why this should be the case escapes me. Surely the market for this stuff is going to be massive, and massively profitable. Why retailers aren't doing everything they can to switch customers over from the real thing is bewildering.
Everybody knows smoking tobacco is bad news for them and others around them. Pressures to not smoke are irresistible. The price of smokes is penal.
And yet around 20% of adult populations in the developed world still do it.
Anybody interested in finding out a little about this stuff before taking the plunge might benefit from our own experience, and conclusions.
The Experience
First, and most importantly, this stuff works. It isn't the same as tobacco wrapped in a paper tube, but it's close. In some cases very close. Close enough to offer a genuine alternative.
The tactile experience, putting a tube in your mouth and sucking, inhaling and exhaling, gets close enough to satisfy the most 'oral' requirements. As you suck the tube sounds as if it's burning. It gets hot, and the tip glows.
The e-Cig produces a harmless vapour, laced with nicotine to be inhaled and exhaled. That takes care of the nicotine craving. The vapour even tastes, more or less, like tobacco smoke.
And it's social too. You can have a vape together in exactly they same way as you can smoke together.
The Technology
A Lithium battery in the white bit heat the air, glows the tip while the cartomiser releases the taste and the nicotine into the stream of heated air from the white bit.Disposable e-Cigs come in one piece with both battery and cartomiser integrated. With rechargeable e-Cigs the white bit (battery) and tip (cartomiser) screw together. The battery is recharged via a standard USB connector. When the glow in the tip blinks its time to recharge, which takes a couple of hours. The cartomiser is simply replaced when depleted.
The Products
We've tried a range of e-Cigs which we bought- In our local pharmacy
- At the Tesco petrol station
- In the Tesco store
- A display unit at the Shopping Mall.
and included these brands
- 10 Motives
- Vapourlites
- Socialites
- AAAecig
The first three we've tried in both disposable and rechargeable versions.
The Verdict
10 Motives comes out on top. It's easier to find in Tesco Petrol Station, the refills are cheaper, it's available in regular tobacco and menthol, and it offers a more consistent smoking alternative experience.
The others all work. Try them all and make your own choice.
