Mirrored Smoking

Description

So we have a new rule at home: no cigarette smoking inside the apartment (because this one is rented), we use the veranda for that.
Show More So we have a new rule at home: no cigarette smoking inside the apartment (because this one is rented), we use the veranda for that.

Inside, however, we stick to... heat sticks. This is basically a compacted leaf of tobacco which gets heated (as opposed to burned), which sort of releases the flavour (and nicotine!); but because smokers like, well, 'smoke', tobacco heating devices tend to get combined with a vaping system and therefore 'emit smoke' similar to a conventional, burning cigarette.

Heated tobacco sits between burning cigarettes and traditional vaping. Vaping just uses synthetically purified nicotine (plus some harmless addictives to give flavour) for the buzz & kick; however, you're essentially replacing 'tobacco smoking' by a _different_ product which has nicotine in it but hardly tastes like a tobacco product (granted, most purified medical-grade nicotine comes from tobacco leaves).

Heated tobacco uses real tobacco leaves, and actually, the way these are compacted into the 'stick' is similar to coffee capsules for Nespresso machines. This uses less tobacco, but requires much higher-quality leaves (for the flavour) and a more complex manufacturing process, so that the cost of 'heat sticks' is similar to regular, conventional cigarettes.

I'm using a device designed by Philip Morris: iQos. They also sell the heat sticks separately (under the brand 'Heets'). Now, I'm not paid to advertise for them, but I find it interesting as a marketing exercise. In most countries, as you know, tobacco companies are forbidden to do R&D to create a 'safer/healthier cigarette' and market it as such. Instead, Philip Morris invested some US$2 billion on something which is _not_ a cigarette — although heat sticks are 'tobacco products' and have to be legally labelled as such (and can only be sold in the same places as other tobacco products), the iQos device is... just a gadget. Without the sticks, it basically does nothing except get slightly warm. All the packaging is cleverly done so that the device looks much more like a cellular phone or a sophisticated MP3 player; nothing on the package says that it is a device used for 'inhaling tobacco smoke' (no heat sticks are included!). Philip Morris can, therefore, place those devices for sale everywhere. They even have a multi-level marketing strategy to get people to sell iQos devices to friends and family and get points on their site which can be exchanged for more devices or all sorts of 'personalisation thingies' you get for cellular phones, like covers and stickers and whatnot. In other words: they're bridging the gap between smokers and gadget consumers, just like the vaping industry.

They have an advantage, though. The heat sticks are 'real tobacco' — they taste as such, and the flavour is actually quite intense, much more similar to the experience of having a good cigar or a pipe, and not a synthetic flavour like vaping. It is _not_ the same thing as a 'real' cigarette, though; it's just a different tobacco product; as any cigar or pipe smoker will tell you, cigarettes simply don't taste the same as a good cigar or pipe tobacco; similarly, Heets do not taste like a 'normal' cigarette at all; it's arguable if it tastes 'better' or 'worse', and I have to say that I was slightly nauseated at first, but now enjoy it as an 'alternative' tobacco product — in the same way I enjoy a good cigar once in a while.

The gadget, as said, combines tobacco heating with vaping — heated tobacco simply does not generate any smoke whatsoever, so the sensation of smoke has to come from somewhere else. And here is where the iQos also includes a similar kind of vaping mechanism; the difference here is that it is actual tobacco providing the flavour.

Their research was _very_ thorough. Smokers have lots of habits associated with smoking. They tried to replicate — and sometimes replace — those habits. One heat stick will last as long as a 'normal' cigarette, for example. The actual device only holds a battery charge for the time it takes to consume a stick; you have to recharge it from a portable battery/charger which can be used about 20 times before recharging via USB — not a coincidence! There are a lot of similar tiny adjustments, and everything is cleverly done by the marketeers of Philip Morris. They know very well that the future of cigarettes is uncertain in Western countries and are getting ready for the 21st century... keeping smokers happy by giving them an alternative which is, indeed, healthier, less 'smelly', and does not leave the house full with ash and gooish tar on the walls...

Also, this place where we live in is big enough to allow us to have a closet for all our clothing — and a full-length mirror! I took advantage of that mirror so that you can see me front and back simultaneously :-)

Music: "Metalmania" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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