If you are thinking of trying electronic cigarettes for the first time, you might want to know some more detailed information about how e cigarettes work, how they are made, and how they can be used as a safer alternative to smoking normal cigarettes.

• An electronic cigarette is a battery powered device that simulates the action of smoking and provides the smoker with a ‘nicotine fix’.
• Electronic cigarettes are shaped and designed to look like regular cigarettes.
• In terms of their construction, electronic cigarettes have three constituent parts: a nicotine cartridge, a vaporiser and a lithium ion battery.
• Electronic cigarettes work by the battery providing power to heat the nicotine cartridge, vaporising the nicotine. This is a different process to conventional cigarettes, where the nicotine is burnt after the cigarette has been lit.
• The resultant nicotine vapour is then inhaled and subsequently exhaled. The exhaled substance looks like smoke, but is in fact water vapour.
• The majority of electronic cigarettes are reusable, with replacement parts including nicotine cartridges and batteries.
• The electronic cigarettes that we know today originate from a design created in 1993 by a Chinese pharmacist. The original concept of an electronically powered cigarette was in fact developed in 1963, but due to lack of available technology, the electronic cigarette was not put into production at this time.
• Communities/groups of people sometimes refer to themselves as ‘Vapers’ – the name originating from the vaporisation of nicotine during electronic cigarette smoking.

Electronic cigarettes DO NOT contain many of the harmful substances that are associated with smoking related disease, such as tar and tobacco.