The First Nicotine Vaporizer, That I’m Sure Will Be Looked Back on Favorably
Is vaping safer than smoking?
The answer to that question is a resounding “probably,” which is really all the plausible deniability anyone needs to start housing nicotine like a 1950s plane passenger again. We’re all simply trying to get our kicks in before what feels like the inevitable other shoe drops.
The chances that packing your lungs with blue raspberry flavored vapor all day, every day, has what feels like a close to zero chance of not causing some serious problem in your body. The key is being able to say we don’t know that for sure.
Don't Miss
So, if this all, as most would predict, comes crumbling down? If there’s an entire generation coughing goodbye to their loves ones in clouds of cotton candy? Who, exactly, is the man who might shoulder the historical blame?
Gadgets capable of vaporizing some sort of payload are much older than the modern, ubiquitous doohickeys, but I don’t think it would be fair to lay the blame at the feet of someone tinkering in the 1920s. The weed vaporizer was also popular before e-cigarettes took hold, like the Volcano that was the de facto coffee-table decor of any serious stoner.
The first real e-cigarette, the one that would kick off a massive industry, is the work of a Chinese pharmacist named Hon Lik in 2003. Off his patents, the original e-cigarette, the “Ruyan,” launched in China a year later.
His motivation was pure, after watching his father die of lung cancer, and looking for an alternative to his three-pack-a-day habit. The safest alternative, obviously, was to quit nicotine altogether, but where’s the fun, or oral fixation, in that?
Did it work? Not even for its inventor. Vapes do help some people quit traditional cigarettes. For some users, though, like Lik himself, they just end up both vaping and smoking, because their lungs apparently committed some unforgivable sin for which they must be punished.
