Smoking has always bothered me.  I remember being stuck in a car with one of my friend’s parents when I was young.  The windows were up and his Dad was smoking a cigarette.  The odor and fumes were intoxicating, leaving me with a headache and clothes that smelled awful for the entire day.  The first time I ever put a cigarette in my mouth and smoked it was in the 7th grade.  I was staying at a friends house and he stole a couple from his older brother.  As I coughed my way through it in the alley outside of his house, I remember wondering, “Why does anyone smoke these things?“.

I am older now, and I do a lot of things that my 12-year-old self probably would not understand.  However, we are still of one mind when it comes to smoking cigarettes.  I am grateful every time another law is passed that prevents smoking indoors, and support any increase in tobacco taxes.  Each time I see one of my friends light up I am not entirely sure why they do it, and wish that there was something I could do to convince them otherwise.

Recently, I learned of a new product called an Electronic Cigarette (E-Cigarette).  These devices look like cigarettes, and upon inhalation give smokers a hit of vaporized nicotine from a liquid cartridge.  The second hand smoke is harmless and has no odor.  While it still isn’t healthy to inhale nicotine vapor,  it is certainly less toxic than cigarette smoke.  I have already convinced one of my friends to switch to E-Cigarettes – her response after first taking a drag on one was “Wow, its so smooth!”  What’s even better, she is progressively reducing her dependence on nicotine by purchasing cartridges with a lower content of the drug.

While I care about my friend’s health, I really want people to switch to E-Cigarettes for my own selfish reasons.  Mainly, I don’t like the smell of cigarettes.  If you are currently a smoker, perhaps now is the time to ask – is an E-Cigarette right for me?