Smoking electronic cigarettes inside

Posted on October 4th, 2009 by Jack Stone

I’m not the type of person that likes to draw attention to himself, so when my worries when I first got my electronic cigarette was whether or not I’d be able to smoke inside without attracting too much attention or risking anti-smoking zealots yelling at me or some other kind of crazy reaction. I didn’t want to have to explain to every single person that I was actually smoking a real cigarette, so I was a little worried about that at first. But what I found out was that this crazy scenario I had built up in my head about people going nuts in drawing too much attention to myself because I was smoking an electronic cigarette indoors didn’t actually even happen.

When I first got my electronic cigarette it took me about a week or two before I got up the nerve to take it to a bar or restaurant. Like I said, I’m just not the type of person that likes to draw attention to himself. So, one night, I finally decided to take it with me to a local restaurant I frequent and see what happens. As soon as we sat down I pulled out the device and started smoking it, and to my surprise, no one said anything except my server when she came back to greet us.

The thing I didn’t think about until I tried smoking at a restaurant was that the electronic cigarettes don’t produce any smell and only produce a very small visible vapor that actually completely dissipates in a matter of seconds, so unless you were looking right at me as I was taking a hit in that restaurant you would never have even known I was smoking anything at all, which is probably the case for 99% of people in that place that night. It was only my server who said something when she came to greet us at the table and she didn’t even tell me I couldn’t smoke inside; she could tell right away I wasn’t smoking a real cigarette and, not being able to smell any smoke, only asked me what it was I was smoking. I told her what it was and she seemed really interested and, in fact, ask me for the website where I bought the device as I was leaving.

It was really that simple, the whole time I was thinking somebody was going to come out and throw a drink in my face for smoking inside or some other crazy scenario like that and in reality nobody even noticed I was smoking anything at all except my server, who wanted one for herself!

That gave me a little more confidence to try smoking my new e-cig at other restaurants and bars. I’ve since smoked in over 20 restaurants and bars and found similar responses every time. About a third of those times an employee actually approached me and said I couldn’t smoke inside, but when I explained that I was smoking electronic cigarette and not a traditional tobacco cigarette they had no problem with it at all. What actually found out, was that I actually received a bunch of good attention from people, mostly employees at the restaurants and bars who smoked themselves and were just fascinated with the device and wanted to know where they could buy one.

After this whole experience I feel like I should be selling these things because I could probably make a pretty good living at it considering the number of people that approach me and ask where to buy them.

So, the moral of the story is that smoking electronic cigarettes indoors, in my experience, was as easy as simply explaining to the occasional employee what the device was and where they could buy one. At no point did I ever receive any grief from anybody for smoking inside and no one told me to go outside or stop smoking when I explained what the device was, so that was a pretty big relief and now I’m a happy regular indoor smoker bypassing the smoking bans with my spanking new electronic cigarette.

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Can you smoke electronic cigarettes indoors?

Posted on October 3rd, 2009 by Jack Stone

All across the United States there are smoking bans in place preventing people from smoking cigarettes indoors. For anyone who is a smoker before this, you probably miss the days when you used to be able to smoke inside a bar or restaurant without having to be forced outside in the freezing cold or rain like some sort of animal.

One of the greatest things about electronic cigarettes is that they don’t actually produce any smoke. Instead, they produce a water vapor, so they are any different from running a vaporizer or boiling water inside. Because of this they are able to get around smoking bans and allow people to smoke inside even where smoking bans are in place.

I’ve personally tried this and most of the time, like in a restaurant, my server came up to me and said I couldn’t smoke inside. However, after a quick explanation of how the electronic cigarette works and the fact that it doesn’t produce smoke, nobody seem to have any problem with me smoking indoors.

Now, I can go out to bars or restaurants and smoke inside and more often than not the only attention I received is from people asking how I’m allowed to smoke inside and me explaining them smoking an electronic cigarette. Most people are amazed by the device and how it works and I almost always get asked where to buy them.

I think I’ve started a trend that a few of the bars and restaurants I frequent and am starting to see more and more people at those places smoking these things, many of those people asked me personally where to buy them and mentioned that they couldn’t be happier being able to smoke inside again.

One of the things I didn’t miss from before the smoking bans was coming home with my clothes reeking of stale cigarette smoke. I have to change almost right when I got home, especially if I was in a bar were a lot of other people were smoking; you just couldn’t continue wearing those clothes because they smelled so bad. So, in that respect, the smoking bans weren’t so bad. The good news for me now is that electronic cigarettes don’t smell at all, even when you’re standing right next to one, and so I can smoke all night at the bar or restaurant and come home smelling just as clean as I did when I left.

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