E-Cigarette: The Future of Smoking ??

Just when you think you're through with huffing and puffing and quitting smoking ... here comes another Devil's Advocate trying to lure you to more huffing and puffing with ... Hark! its pseudo-nicotine flavor to boot!

So you muster enough guts, tear your hair and gnash your teeth, as you say to yourself and to the whole world: "No! No! No more smoking for me! No more smo..." And suddenly you find yourself melting, melting and melting: all your mustered guts and chutzpah giving in, yielding to this come-hither-dither advertising come-on.

And the seductive drop-dead come-on entices you, you Weakling you... As you finally give in: Okay, just one puff. The e-cigarette, you say, eh?

Check out Gamucci E-Cigarette's advertising pitch :

"Gamucci is essentially an electronic smoking device or an electronic cigarette as it is sometimes referred to. It is a completely non-flammable product that uses state of the art sophisticated micro-electronic technology to provide users a real smoking experience without the tobacco and tar found in real cigarettes. It looks like, feels like and tastes like a real cigarette, yet it isn’t, it is so much more. It is truly a healthier alternative. We at Gamucci really believe this is the future of smoking."

The future of smoking. Good Lord.

Meantime, Chinese manufacturers are saying the same of their product: looking much like a cigarette, feels like a cigarette, but " isn’t as bad for your health as its cancer-causing counterpart."

At least that’s what its Chinese manufacturer wants us to believe.

Scott Fraser, Vice President of SBT Co. Ltd., the Beijing-based corporation that allegedly is "the original" which developed the electronic cigarette technology back in 2003, says that the e-cigarette is a battery-powered device that —when smoked— will emit vapor and feed your nicotine-riddled body its addiction.

“In many ways, smoking the e-cigarette is like an actual smoking experience, and that’s what makes us different,” Fraser told media.

The e-cigarettes currently sell for approximately 1600 Yuan apiece (around $208 U.S. dollars) and are available in China, Israel and many European countries.

While they haven't reached Philippine shores, and have neither reached the US and Canadian markets, the heart-pounding media mileage that this latest technology receives could send the product endorsers hurling their brands for the eternally puff-hungry chainsmokers in different parts of the globe.

So do we say "Cheers" to this?