The electronic cigarette

For around five years now, smokers all over the world have been able to buy a small device that looks and is shaped like a cigarette, and that produces smoke like a cigarette, but that is not a real cigarette filled with tobacco.

This small device, known as the electronic cigarette or e-cigarette, is a metal cylinder filled with a flavoured liquid that evaporates at a low temperature (around 60°C), producing an aerosol that resembles smoke.

This electronic cigarette works by mixing the liquid in the cylinder with the air drawn in and releasing it as a vapour, which the smoker inhales. Although there is no combustion, a small light-emitting diode comes on, giving the impression that the tip of the cigarette is glowing.

The electronic cigarette, which can also be shaped like a cigar or even a pipe, contains no tobacco: manufacturers point out that, with no tobacco, there is none of the tar, hydrogen cyanide or carbon monoxide released by its combustion, the last of these being a gas comparable to the exhaust fumes produced by cars. They add that, as there is no actual smoke, non-smokers are not exposed to it in the way they are with tobacco.

Does the electronic cigarette live up to the claims made for it against the real cigarette?

Manufacturers of electronic cigarettes have no doubt about it and describe their product as a genuine technological revolution.
The scientific and medical view is more cautious, in particular because the absence of long-term toxicity of propylene glycol has not been established, nor has the effectiveness of the device for giving up.

The safest course is to treat the electronic cigarette as a real cigarette, and not as a medicine or as a way for smokers to give up. The differences between the electronic cigarette and the conventional cigarette lie elsewhere: its cost, the absence of ash and of lingering smells, and the rules that apply to its use.