“What is THAT?”

I’m at this party the other day and it felt like I was the first caveman walking around with fire. There’s a group of people gathered on this giant deck and we’ve got the grill going. There are steaks, sausages, salmon, chicken wings – all the good stuff. A few people are smoking and I pull out a Finiti e-cigarette. A few people look, and then do a double take – the tip is white and illuminated. Immediately, a crowd forms asking me questions about it. I’m not a scientific expert in the field or anything, I just smoke the things. Still, I dropped all the knowledge bombs I was packing.

Most of the questions that came up are answered right on the box. No PhD necessary. But there was one in particular that I was confused about myself when I first heard of e-cigarettes. Is an e-cigarette a vaporizer? Well, one does inhale water “vapor” instead of smoke, but I wasn’t 100% sure how to answer the question. After doing some thorough research and time using e-cigs, it’s time set the record straight. Excuse me while I get a little “Bill Nye the Science Guy” on you folks. I’ll try to keep it brief.

Let’s start with smoking first. Smoking is considered to be the “burning of a lighted cigar, cigarette, pipe or other matter or substance that contains tobacco” (thank you again, nyhealth.gov). While a vaporizer differs in that it heats a nicotine solution with water. There are no toxins that are typically produced by smoke like tar. Instead, when an e-cigarette is inhaled, all you exhale is steam or water vapor. Yes, when using an e-cigarette one does exhale water vapor – simple as that. It sort of works more like a small humidifier than anything else, but there is no active burning or boiling of tobacco involved. So is an e-cigarette a vaporizer? Not quite.

It seems to me the word “vapor” was causing all the fuss. It’s not smoking. It’s not vaporizing. It’s just vaping, or as I like to call it, living the life of freedom.

-JT