It seems that overnight, the e-cigarette suddenly invaded the office where I work. In the office, my colleagues took a white or black box, took out the cigarette, inserted a cigarette, and then put the cigarette. When I sent it to my mouth, God sucked a few mouths without knowing it, then quietly took back the smoker, closed the lid of the small box, and put it in the pocket. Their smoking movements are so unobtrusive, if the strange smell floating in the air is perceived by non-smoking colleagues, most people do not notice that they smoke.

There are more and more e-cigarettes in the office. They have many reasons to smoke e-cigarettes. For example, they claim that e-cigarettes are harmless and healthy, can help to quit smoking, and second-hand smoke will not pose a health threat to others, of course. What's important is that in Beijing's strict tobacco control regulations, they don't need to take the elevator downstairs to the outside of the building when they want to smoke, and they can be "addicted" at the station. At present, most of the tobacco control regulations in various places do not clearly explain the electronic cigarettes. The electronic cigarettes are in the fuzzy area of ​​the tobacco control regulations, which makes the electronic cigarettes popular in the office.

Since China's pharmacist Hon Lik invented the initial version of mainstream e-cigarettes in 2003, e-cigarettes have grown rapidly as an emerging commodity. According to the 2016 World Tobacco Development Report, the global e-cigarette market has reached $10 billion by 2016. At the same time, reports indicate that China is currently one of the top ten e-cigarette markets in the world.

The commercial outlook for e-cigarettes is also expected, and San Francisco's e-cigarette startup Juul is currently valued at more than $15 billion, making it the sixth-ranked startup in the US.

So how did e-cigarettes quickly become popular in just over a decade or even years?

The biggest reason for consumption - harmless and quit smoking

You may have seen a small video about e-cigarettes. A young man smokes electronic cigarettes in the train waiting room, while the aunt on the side argues with young people to protect their grandchildren from secondhand smoke. Aunt accused young people to smoke in the waiting room, while young people repeatedly stressed that they are sucking harmless electronic cigarettes.

E-cigarettes use an internal heating system to turn nicotine into steam, and then accumulate into electronic cigarettes without tar. The e-cigarette brand IQOS is introduced as follows: “The IQOS system that only heats rather than burns tobacco does not generate smoke. When the tobacco in the tobacco rod is heated to a specific temperature, IQOS will produce – a visible and real Tobacco-smelling gases, most of which are composed of water, glycerin and nicotine, therefore, the IQOS emits significantly less harmful and potentially harmful substances than ordinary cigarette smoke."

There is no authoritative report on the e-cigarette debate, but most of the e-cigarette friends I know believe that it is harmless and can help them quit smoking. Ernst & Young’s report shows that 51% of people use e-cigarettes because they are “greater than ordinary cigarettes” and 49% of people smoke e-cigarettes because they “help to quit smoking”.

In the past, even smokers would not refute the fact that smoking is harmful to health, which makes it harder for smokers to know how to smoke. However, the characteristics of e-cigarette claiming to be harmless and helping to quit smoking allow smokers to fully absorb the smoke. When a “smoking cessation method” that is not much different from the smoking experience is spread among smokers, its lethality is bound to be great.

Street culture

The smoker naturally exudes a temperament that a non-smoker does not have. At that time, the temperament of the smoke to the smoker is - cool.

It seems that it is not a cool thing to smoke today, and it is not allowed to smoke in public indoors. The memory that belongs to the "cool" has gradually subsided. It is slowly being replaced by the "tidal" of electronic cigarettes.

More often, it appears on the streets as a “tidal brand”. It often appears with people wearing baseball bats and hip-hop styles, often in the hands of skateboarding, roller skating youth. These young people injected the "tidal" temperament into the electronic cigarette, and also made the electronic cigarette have this temperament.

According to statistics, in many countries, users of e-cigarettes are relatively young. In Russia, 33% of consumers are between 18 and 29 years old. If it is fashionable to smoke electronic cigarettes, then smoking ordinary cigarettes is old-fashioned and harmful to health.

Smoke screen vision

There are many types of e-cigarettes, one of which can make a huge smoke screen. I once saw a young man in a bar calling out a variety of strange-shaped smoke screens while smoking e-cigarettes and showing off to the partners sitting next to them. As shown below.

Social network boost

The mass epidemic of e-cigarettes began in the United States, and photos of some celebrities or fashionists holding e-cigarette smoking often appear on the Internet. This makes it a little bit of fashion.