I'm not sure exactly how it would work, but the basic principle is this: A small cylindrical chamber, made of something like a thin waxed cardboard, the size of an ordinary cigarette. This cylinder is filled with a quantity of the cigarette "juice," a concoction of flavored water and nicotine. In the filter compartment, there is a set of about ten tiny plastic turbines whose blades are angled so that each one rotates opposite the one before it. When you draw on the "Juice Cigarette," the blades spin as a small quantity of the juice is drawn through them and "chopped" into something of a vapor. This vapor is inhaled into the mouth and lungs, and there delivers sweet vitamin N into the bloodstream. Pros: Does not cause cancer. Cons: May cause pneumonia. I don't know.
-- monk, Mar 18 2007

effects of nicotine http://health.allre...less-tobacco-2.html
[nuclear hobo, Mar 18 2007]

Thank you for smoking http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427944/
Home of the best quotes script writers have spawned thus far [methinksnot, Mar 19 2007]

Nicotine metabolism may spawn carcinogen http://www.sciencen...s/20001028/fob5.asp
Chalk up another potential way for smoking tobacco to cause lung cancer. A new study indicates that the body can metabolize nicotine into products that the lungs subsequently may convert into a potent carcinogen. [Galbinus_Caeli, Mar 19 2007]

Why do you say it does not cause cancer? You are still sucking up that carcinogenic nicotine.
-- Galbinus_Caeli, Mar 18 2007


Couldn't you just drink the stuff at this point? To me, the only appeal of a cigarette (apart from the insidious substance N) is the ability to blow smoke rings.
-- placid_turmoil, Mar 18 2007


1) The reason why they have most of that plant gunk and so forth in cigarettes is because it is all pretty much necessary in order to mask the HORRENDOUS taste of nicotine, which happens to be one of the most bitter, nasty flavors around. I am pretty confident that juice wouldn't really make the taste cut, unless you also pumped it full of tons of chemicals as well.

2) You're not going to "cut" liquid into a fine enough mist to resemble smoke. This is quite likely to trigger the gag reflex instantaneously in whoever tries it, and will probably feel like you just snorted coke up your nose whenever you take a drag.
-- Smurfsahoy, Mar 18 2007


Galbinus, as far as I'm aware and can ascertain, nicotine is not particularly carcinogenic. Of course, one of the great advantages of banging on about tobacco is that it is not considered necessary to have any knowledge of what you're talking about.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 19 2007


And [smurfs], same comment applies. Nicotine inhalators work just fine and dandy.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 19 2007


//as far as I'm aware and can ascertain, nicotine is not particularly carcinogenic//
Although we continue to research the subject matter, we have not found any conclusive evidence linking nicotine with cancer.
-- methinksnot, Mar 19 2007


Quite so, [methinks]. Was that a quote from somewhere?

And [monk] - come to think of it, how is this an improvement on existing nicotine inhalators, which are simpler and work fine?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 19 2007


[Max], If I'm not mistaken, inhalators cause nicotine to be absorbed via the mouth, not the lungs, which requires a much finer dispersal. And they do so by some sort of phase change/evaporation mechanism, not tiny little dicing turbines.

I didn't say that it's impossible to make nicotine vapor. I said that I don't think you can cut juice into a vapor with little blades fine enough to work (maybe if they were battery powered or something, but not just with your breath)
-- Smurfsahoy, Mar 19 2007


Max, it is a modified version of the final line of the main character in the movie "Thank you for smoking". It was about linking cellphones with brain cancer (the main character was a spin doctor).
-- methinksnot, Mar 19 2007


[Smurfs] the point I was making was that nicotine evidently doesn't taste particularly horrendous, at least not at the levels needed for a hit.

I'm not sure why inhalators deliver their nicotine mainly to the mouth (which they do, you're right). I can't imagine that it's a question of dispersal, if the inhalators produce nicotine vapour (as I believe they do).
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 19 2007


[Methinks] Aha. Not a film I've seen, sadly.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 19 2007


I dont know, that is a good question. Perhaps this particular vapor, being a complex laden with all those solutes and such, has a tendency to settle or condense particularly quickly or something. Which would make it not really fill all portions of the lungs evenly.

Or perhaps it's quite simply that when you put nicotine into its own vapor, it just turns out that it gets absorbed by the mouth so quickly that the whole lung question is purely academic anyway.

In any case, you're right that vapor is even more fine than smoke. I still think that the lungs require finer dispersal, but if you have something as ridiculously tiny as evaporated solution, the distinction doesn't really matter anyway.
-- Smurfsahoy, Mar 19 2007


Huh? If you think that the nicotine in cigarettes is just whatever happens to naturally be in the tobacco plant without any modification, you're crazy.

Modified nicotine levels and chemical enhancement (e.g. treatment with ammonia) requires compensating additional chemicals to counteract.
-- Smurfsahoy, Mar 19 2007



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