Can E-Cigarettes Replace Tobacco?

In the movie "A Better Tomorrow," Chow Yun-fat's character, Mark Gor, lighting a cigarette with a fake dollar bill has become an everlasting classic for those born in the 70s and 80s. Regardless of whether you smoke or not, it is undeniable that such scenes give smoking a special charm.

Since the 1960s, both Chinese and foreign films have featured scenes of male and female protagonists puffing away, and tobacco has become a symbol of the era and culture alongside these classic films. In gangster films like "Young and Dangerous," smoking scenes are ubiquitous, making it a behavior that young people aspiring to the lifestyle of socialites can emulate. While they may not be able to learn how to fight, they can certainly learn to smoke, right?

Now, let’s imagine how it would look if Mark Gor and his buddy, Ho Nam, were to puff on e-cigarettes. The image would surely collapse immediately, and the audience would feel no emotional impact, perhaps even find it amusing.

Compared to traditional tobacco, e-cigarettes resemble children's toys in both appearance and usage. The atmosphere created by traditional tobacco, from taking it out to lighting it up and deeply inhaling, is something that e-cigarettes cannot compare to. In bars and nightclubs, if a man doesn’t smoke, he shouldn’t even use e-cigarettes; otherwise, he would feel embarrassed to approach women.

Moreover, tobacco has a social significance beyond individual use. The act of passing cigarettes among friends, clients, or colleagues, the knowing glance exchanged when borrowing a lighter at the airport, or the chance encounter with a stranger in a stairwell while smoking—all these interactions are absent with e-cigarettes. Tobacco and e-cigarettes are like online games versus single-player games; they offer completely different experiences. The social aspect of the latter is vastly inferior.

In business, the distinction between tobacco and lighters also represents a subtle competition of status. Tobacco brands like Su Yan and Zhonghua, while the starter kits of leading e-cigarette brands are only priced at 299 yuan. Can that still allow people to show off happily?

More realistically, e-cigarettes cannot compete with traditional tobacco in terms of taste.

The main product of traditional tobacco combustion is smoke, which consists of small solid particles of varying sizes. In contrast, e-cigarettes that use e-liquid, except for iQOS, heat and vaporize propylene glycol and glycerin, producing vapor, which is liquid. The sensation of inhaling these two substances is completely different, especially for someone like me who has been smoking for over ten years, particularly when it comes to lung inhalation.

The so-called throat hit claimed by e-cigarette manufacturers is merely a trick to fool novice smokers. The combustion of tobacco is a chemical process, producing complex combustion products, while the vaporization of e-liquid in e-cigarettes is a physical process. The so-called throat hit is simply the irritation caused by the hygroscopic properties of alcohols on the throat. In the face of real smoke, can that be considered a throat hit? Are you kidding me?

The only thing e-cigarettes can replace about tobacco is the act of sucking. Sucking is one of the innate reflexes of mammals and human infants. The act of smoking is also part of what alleviates tension and anxiety. However, even in this regard, the soft filter of traditional tobacco far surpasses the cold, hard plastic mouthpiece of e-cigarettes.

Therefore, e-cigarettes and traditional tobacco are two completely different things.