Written by Smoke Signals | 29 February 2012

What If.....?
SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - March - April 2012

The continuing anti-smoking trend shows no signs of letting up (ironically, even as the eventual legalization of marijuana seems inevitable), our pessimistic side believes more firmly than ever that sightings of female smokers are destined to dwindle to almost nothing. And with the smoking rate continuing to drop, the number of smoking models available for video shoots will most likely continue to decline as well.

With that in mind, we've started to wonder lately whether women or models, smoking electronic cigarettes will someday have to actually be a somewhat-viable alternative for those of us with smoking fetishes. We believe we have been as vocal as anyone out there, in our disdain for "fake cigarettes" and for those who would suggest video of e-cigarette smoking as any sort of alternative to smoking video. We continue to feel that the two are anything but interchangeable; smoking an e-cigarette is NOT smoking.

However, our curiosity has gotten the better of us. It's hard to tell from promotional videos released by e-cigarette companies whether a real smoker could actually look like she was smoking when she was actually using an e-cig.

And so, we have tried electronic cigarettes. Among other things, we wanted to see whether there's any chance that our smoking fetish could be "fooled" into thinking that e-cigarette vapor was really smoke - and whether they were palatable enough so that people would actually consider them as viable alternatives, rather than quit smoking entirely.

Here's what we found. First of all, they ARE palatable. In fact, they're actually not bad. They taste and feel, more or less, like cigarettes do. It would take a while, however, to get accustomed enough to the taste and feel - before anyone would consider them "normal." They also sometimes require several inhales in order to accumulate enough vapor to get the feeling of full lungs - since the ones that won't blow up in your mouth have safety features that prevent you from dragging on the device for too long.

Secondly, they look like cigarettes...at least, from a distance. Up close, you can see that there's no smoke coming from the cigarette itself or ashes accumulating, and the cherry looks like a little LED (which is what it is). Some brands have different colored LEDs (and some even have different colored "filters" or "cigarettes") which makes it pretty obvious that you're looking at an e-cig, once you get close.

Now for the important question: what does the "smoke" look like? Here, we're happy to say, is where the good news comes. If a smoker takes in enough vapor (sometimes, as we say, requiring several inhales), there's plenty of vapor to exhale. We were able to do french inhales, snaps, thick nose and mouth/nose exhales, residual exhales, talking exhales, and lots of smoke rings without any problem. Two caveats: we understand that some e-cigarettes are nowhere near as strong as others and the weaker ones don't create big enough vapor clouds to actually resemble a real smoking experience. And we understand that dark side desires would probably never be satisfied by watching someone use an electronic cigarette.

So the bottom line for us is: if the unthinkable ever happens - e-cigarettes would be at least a partial solution from a smoking fetish point of view. Certainly not desirable, but we believe it WOULD be better than nothing.