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Electronic Cigarettes
For the poor long suffering smokers out there - and there are certainly a few at my club - having a carton a week habit now costs around $8000 a year to maintain. That's a nice big Takahashi up in smoke every year.
But depending on which State one lives in, one can replace the filthy habit with nicotine electronic cigarettes, which give the same amount of nicotine and puffs for a total cost of around $60 a year.
One can't sell nicotine liquid for the electronic cigarettes anywhere in Australia, but the Federal Government allows one to import a reasonable amount for personal use (i.e. about 3 months supply).
The actual electronic cigarettes can be bought legally in all States except WA, where a recent court decision banned them.
In Victoria, use/ownership of nicotine e-liquid is banned out right, but there is no problem using e-cigarettes with Zero milligram e-liquid , which is available in lots of shops.
Anyhow, electronic nicotine cigarettes are legal in lots of places around the world - UK, USA, Italy etc - and are having a huge impact on people switching from regular cigarettes, despite their prices not being anywhere as high as here.
But astronomy wise, the main advantage of electronic cigarettes is that they don't affect your night vision, like when you light up a normal cigarette. Nor does the second hand smoke drift across someone else's pristine optics at a club viewing night.
Health wise, if one watches the Euronews article on Youtube about them, you'll see that the health risks associated with electronic cigarettes are akin to those of pesticides in vegetables and too much salt in food i.e. orders of magnitude less than for the smoking real cigarettes.
Regards,
Renato
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