Electric Cigarette

After years of negative publicity, most people are aware that cigarettes are {insert expletives here}. Unfortunately, since they contain a particularly addictive drug, nicotine, many people who want to quit simply find it too difficult to do. And I suspect that even the ones who don't want to quit are somewhat concerned, thanks to all the accumulated data about cigarette smoking and cancer.

Now it happens that the main "bad" ingredient of cigarette smoke is not the nicotine, but instead is the stuff called "tar". This large assortment of molecules includes quite a few which are considered to be carcinogens. Nicotine is NOT a carcinogen (an indirect toxin); it is merely very addictive (and rather directly toxic if too much enters the body). One problem that "light" cigarettes have is that they tend to reduce the content of both "tar" and nicotine. For the smoker who is addicted to a certain quantity of nicotine, this means smoking more cigarettes to get a "fix", and possibly that person ends up accumulating about the same amount of "tar" as before. Ineffective, that! They OUGHT to make cigarettes that are low in "tar" and maybe even higher-than-normal in nicotine; a smoker might put that cigarette out after only smoking half of it! (But greedy cigarette manufactures don't want their customers to go through FEWER cigarettes, so such a product doesn't exist.)

Many smokers claim that cigarettes help them to handle stress. I don't know how much data there is in support of that, but I do know that nicotine acts as a "nerve stimulant", which implies to me that some of the claimed stress-relief might be illusory. In explanation let me compare the body's nervous system to the Internet. Both exist to transmit data, and both have limitations that can be expressed in terms of the word "bandwidth". A person suffering from stress could perhaps be likened to an Internet that is overloaded with spam and virus-laden emails, not to mention peer-to-peer video downloaders. What nicotine does, by stimulating the nervous system, is temporarily increase its bandwidth/capacity --while the data-flows related to prior stress aren't actually reduced at all. The PERCEPTION of stress, however, can diminish due to the diminished ratio of same-load to increased-capacity. Temporarily....

Let me digress a moment to mention possibly the most deadly organic substance known, "botulism toxin". It is my understanding that a quantity of this, if equal to the quantity of nicotine in one cigarette, will kill you, painfully. Nevertheless, this substance is considered to be a drug which has found a place in "cosmetic medicine" --have you ever heard of "botox treatments"? We may gain some perspective from that: Does nicotine, if obtainable by some means other than {insert expletives here} cigarette smoke, and apparently useful as described in the last paragraph, HAVE to be reviled?

Because nicotine is considered to be a drug, in the U.S.A., the Food and Drug Administration becomes involved when alternative methods are considered, to introduce nicotine into the body. Skin patches and chewing gum and whatnot all had to be approved by the FDA; likely that will be true of this Idea, too. (And I wouldn't be surprised a bit if other countries have similar organizations overseeing nicotine delivery methods.)

And now for the Idea: The refillable electric cigarette! A smoker buys only ONE, ever (unless accidently broken), and the ordinary cigarette manufacturers are welcome to take their greed and go out of business.

The outside of this cigarette is covered with solar cells. Internally it contains some small rechargeable batteries (ladies-watch-battery-sized), and a charging circuit. It also contains two refillable chambers, one for nicotine crystals and one for "flavor". So many cigarette ads have made claims that cigarettes have some kind of enjoyable flavor that probably more than a few smokers believe it, and so this aspect of smoking needs to be retained. Here we have two advantages, in that most of the "flavor" of cigarette smoke is found in the carcinogenous "tar", while this gadget allows us to specify ANY flavor, using only harmless compounds.

This cigarette has a filter, but its purpose is solely to restrict air-flow. Smokers are used to EXERTING themselves to pull air through their cigarettes, and so they won't feel like they are smoking, if air flows as easily through this thing as it flows through a straw.

The mouthpiece of the electric cigarette contains a piezoelectric crystal. This is not the typical crystal which made the scientific news when it was discovered that pressing on it generates hundreds of volts; here we need only a lesser crystal that only generates a few volts when pressed. This voltage is then applied, inside the cigarette, to a standard electronic device known as a "field effect transistor". When activated, it turns ON the main power circuit in the cigarette. When pressure on the crystal is reduced (or when the cigarette is rotated in the mouth to a position where the crystal isn't pressed), the main circuit goes OFF. (I should mention that the battery-recharging circuit is separate and almost always "on"--it's only off when the batteries are fully charged).

What the main circuit does when activated is to heat the crystals of nicotine and flavorant. A small amount (less than a microgram!) of nicotine vaporizes and is drawn through the filter into the mouth and lungs. {EDIT: Actually it would be better if the filtering happened BEFORE the vaporized substances were added to the air stream. Don't need condensation inside the filter, after all.} Probably a larger amount of flavorant will need to be vaporized. Nicotine is strongly absorbed in the lungs, almost none exists in "secondhand" cigarette smoke, so when exhaling, only some of the vaporized flavorant will leave the vicinity of this smoker. Since the flavorant is by-design nontoxic and possibly even pleasant to others (and may even be invisible) --and no ashtray is ever needed!-- perhaps this sort of cigarette can become socially acceptable. After all, all it does is provide an addict with a mostly-harmless "fix"; nicotine addicts are not generally known to behave, when "under the influence", in a socially detrimental manner.