Electronic Cigarettes

Electronic Cigarette

Scientists have created an electronic cigarette which they claim beats the smoking ban. The battery powered device uses micro electronic technology to simulate the sensations of smoking, but because it has no tobacco and is non-flammable there is no law against it. While it looks like a regular cigarette the electronic alternative actually contains a nicotine cartridge, an atomization chamber and a computer-chip.

The XA Project:
In the 1970s, Liggett Group, Inc. embarked on its own safe-cigarette program known as the "XA Project." The project focused on blending additives to tobacco to neutralize cancer-causing compounds. The company discovered that blending certain catalysts with tobacco would destroy PAH's—the dangerous compounds which form behind the cigarette's burning tip. The problem was, the company had demonstrated this in mouse skin painting tests—the same type of test conducted by Ernest Wynder that the entire tobacco industry had spent years debunking. Nonetheless, skin painting tests related to the XA Project showed that cancerous tumors were virtually eliminated when the catalyst was added to tobacco.

Tara Parker-Pope, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, is the author of Cigarettes: Anatomy of an Industry from Seed to Smoke (The New Press, 2001), from which this article was excerpted.

Electronic Cigarette | Electro Cigarette | Smokeless Cigarette