So a company in South Africa operating from this website has started distributing a product called NJOY, a so-called “healthy alternative” to cigarettes and tobacco products.
It’s basically an electronic aromatiser that creates a vapour containing some scents, tastes and a little nicotine to give you the feel and look of smoking a real cigarette. There’s even a light at the front to mimic the cherry.
The benefits of course include the fact that there is no actual tobacco, no “smoke” for your friends and/or baby and you can conveniently sit in your office and smoke inside. Your boss is sure to love that, smoke or no smoke – but it’s still listed as a benefit on the website.
As a recent ex-smoker (170 days today) I think it’s a novel idea and I even looked into myself when trying to quit. The problem of course is the nasty little chemical called nicotine.
As one of the most addictive substances known to man (put it up there with cocaine and methamphetamines), it affects you physically and emotionally. It is a powerful stimulant (or sedative, depending on the person) that raises your heart rate and blood pressure and due to it’s very short half-life (60 minutes) you also require regular doses.
Smoking is still legal, I accept that, and I fully support all of the efforts to educate people including the ban on advertising and the warning labels. But what gets to me is that this product can be freely advertised anywhere it seems (including pages on Facebook) without anyone batting an eyelid.
I’ve been engaging the Facebook user that created the page (representative of the company, nameless for now) who is claiming on their behalf that the product improves health by the reasoning that people are quitting smoking and removing all of the other BAD chemicals. I like that, but just in case you were wondering, here are the health risks of nicotine which they are not sharing with you.
Increased heartbeat
Increased blood pressure
Dumping of glucose stores (not good for diabetics I’m sure)
Hyperglycaemia
Increase LDL levels (bad cholesterol)
For those very reasons, nicotine alone can be a cause of heart attack and/or stroke.
If you really want to quit, you need to quit and not keep the actual addictive substance in your body, it just means that you are leaving yourself a door open to fail. Fake cigarette to real cigarette does not seem as bad as no cigarette to real cigarette.
Here’s one last statistic, the nicotine patch (and gum) has a very low success rate – so this product will undoubtably follow that trend.
Sources here