Product Review : Electronic Cigarettes Vs. A Forty Year Habit

My wife has, at the age of fifity-nine, a forty year smoking habit. Thus, while electronic cigarettes are a relatively newfangled invention, her problem is definitely old school. Pam puffs her cigarettes lightly, inhaling very little--probably less than former President Clinton did, if truth be told--but she definitely needs to quit. Over the years, she's tried going cold turkey (husband says ouch!), using Nicoderm patches, using Nicotrol inhalers, and tapering off gradually.

To date, nothing has worked.

Oh, Pammie's made progress. By January of 2008, she'd managed to reduce her cigarette usage from four packs a day to somewhere between a pack and a pack & a half. A few times, she's managed to get that down to just eight smokes a day...but has never been able to hold it there for more than a week or two at a time.

Enter the electronic cigarette. In the autumn of 2009, we ordered (via the Internet) a Green Smoke starter kit and a big old bunch of electronic cigarette cartridges. How big? Oh, about $450 total out of pocket if memory serves. Most of that, unfortunately, is still sitting around here accomplishing very little. Because, with her very first drag of Green Smoke, Pam discovered a real problem with the product.

It made her throat sore. Instantly. Yes, it delivered nicotine...but, apparently, not enough vapor. E-cigs use atomizers to deliver nicotine (but nothing else) in a vapor mist produced by teeny tiny units contained within the "smoking" device. In Green Smoke's system, there's a separate atomizer in each flavor cartridge. Separate...but not terribly effective.

She tried. After a dozen or more coughing attacks triggered by an irritated throat, though, she had to give up on Green Smoke as she'd had to give up on Nicoderm and Nicotrol.

Dang.

After such a disappointing Green Smoke result, neither Pam nor I had a clue what to do next. For more than a year, we did nothing--other than continue to lay out nearly $4,000 annually for her conventional cigarettes and watch the health warnings in her body get louder. Then, while we were visiting her son, Zach, and his family one day, inspiration struck once again.

Zach is 25 years of age but has been a Marlboro Red smoker for some years already. Unlike his Mom, when this guy smokes, he smokes. Drags that stuff down deep, to somewhere around his toenails.

But his wife is pregnant, and that changes a man. At least it changes the good ones, and my stepson is definitely all that. No way he'll smoke in the house now, and he's highly motivated to quit completely in order to serve as a role model to his son (who is due in March). He decided to try electronic cigarettes, a fact Pam discovered when she saw the tip turn blue on his cigarette when he took a drag.

"Want to try it?" He asked.

She did...and discovered a most important fact: It did not irritate her throat one bit.

Turns out that Blu uses a different atomizer, for one thing--here, we'll let the wording from their website do the talking:

blu atomizers represent the latest in atomizer technology. Each one is hand-made from Ceramics, Copper and Stainless Steel. Atomizers convert the flavoring in each cartridge into water vapor, providing you with a streamlined nicotine delivery system. Our atomizers are self-cleaning and are specifically designed to work best with blu flavor cartridges and batteries.

Several key points sold us, but discovering that Blu cigs are manufactured entirely in America from American made components...that made all the difference. Green Smoke products are made in (where else?) China.

BLU CIG STARTUP FOR DUMMIES

I made a couple of mistakes in the process of helping my wife get started with Blu cigs. Oh, she's enjoying one right now--turns out the "Java Jolt" flavor trips her trigger so nicely that she has to be careful not to puff too much. Don't need to go straight to nicotine overdose in the process of quitting, doncha know. (You can taper off on nicotine strength, all the way to straight water vapor, but she's starting with the version containing the most nicotine.) So for the moment, at least, we're favorably impressed with Blu and give them an A+ rating.

Still, confession time:

1. When I ordered the Blu starter kit, I understood from the website that it (the kit) came with just one cigarette battery included...so I added a spare to the order. Not true; it came with two. Plus the spare, so now we have three. Not a big deal, but it wasn't really necessary to spend the extra ten bucks, either.

2. This is the dumba** move: Blu uses a 3-piece system. The atomizer screws into the battery, then the flavor cartridge slips over the atomizer. But when I got to that last part, the flavor cartridge was an awfully tight fit--had to kind of stretch and jam the thing into place.

Then Pam informed me she was getting nicotine but no vapor.

Turned out the atomizer had arrived in a "fake flavor cartridge" plastic cover. I'd jammed the real flavor cartridge over a shell over the atomizer....

Works fine when you do it right!

As most of us know, nothing will help anybody quit smoking who is not absolutely determined to quit right here, right now. Pam has reached that point, she is ready, and we have every reason to believe Blu electronic cigarettes will be enormously helpful in the process. Without doubt, there are people out there who do just fine with Green Smoke--or with any other method mentioned above, including "old school cold turkey".

But we'd love hearing from those who've tried electronic cigarettes in any form--as soon as they've been nicotine-free long enough to quit cursing, that is.