Sidestepping laws against smoking in public, Californians now can puff nicotine without lighting up from "cigarettes" that contain no tobacco.
Electronic cigarettes are touted as a way to smoke anywhere, anytime, without harmful tar, odor, butts, flame or secondhand smoke.
"No one can tell you 'No' anymore," claims one e-cigarette company, Smoking Everywhere, which describes its product as looking, feeling and tasting like a "real" cigarette.
But using high technology to satisfy smokers' cravings is sparking a backlash from some California lawmakers, largely because e-cigarettes are not regulated and can be sold to minors.
State Sen. Ellen Corbett has introduced Senate Bill 400 to allow only adults to purchase e-cigarettes, which produce a nicotine vapor and come in flavors that might appeal to youth.
"Just because there's a new technology, why would you make nicotine available to young people when you don't normally?" the San Leandro Democrat said.
The Senate, by passing a Corbett resolution, also has urged the federal government to ban all sales until the federal Food and Drug Administration deems e-cigarettes safe.
Tobacco companies have taken no position on Corbett's legislation.
E-cigarettes are sold online, at some retail stores, and at mall kiosks in Fairfield, San Jose, Santa Clara, Pleasanton and elsewhere.
Buyers can opt for nicotine levels from high to zero. Flavors range from tobacco to mint to chocolate or strawberry.
The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, in a letter to Corbett, said its public health department has received "multiple reports of teens being offered e-cigarettes at local mall kiosks."
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns that e-cigarettes could be a gateway that leads youth to try tobacco products.
But Matt Salmon, a former Arizona congressman who runs the Electronic Cigarette Association, representing about a dozen firms, said that members are committed not to sell to minors.
"I just think it's common sense that you don't want kids hooked on nicotine," Salmon said. "That's a bad precedent, bad policy."
Besides, kids who are determined to smoke would seek cheaper tobacco products rather than fork out about $80 for an e-cigarette starter kit that accommodates $2 cartridges, he said.
"It's committed, long-term smokers that are buying this product," Salmon said.
Australia and Hong Kong have banned the sale of e-cigarettes, while several other nations have restricted the product.
In the United States, it would make little sense to crack down on e-cigarettes while permitting the adult sale of tobacco cigarettes, whose health dangers are indisputable, Salmon said.
"It's about freedom," he said of e-cigarettes. "It's about a whole host of things. But many people out there feel that this is a far better alternative for them than tobacco."
E-cigarettes are not marketed as a smoking cessation product, but many consumers have used them for that purpose, Salmon said.
The fledgling industry, several years old, projects nationwide sales of about $100 million this year, Salmon said.
Smokers interviewed randomly Wednesday in downtown Sacramento had mixed views.
Sheila Tripp, 46, said the benefits would be well worth the $80 start-up cost.
"It's a good thing," she said.
But Ezechial Taylor, 20, considers e-cigarettes an unnecessary gimmick.
"I think it's ridiculous," he said.
Made primarily in China, e-cigarettes can closely resemble tobacco cigarettes in color and appearance – with circuitry to light up the tip when puffed – or they can be far less conspicuous, resembling a dark ball-point pen.
Smoking Everywhere, one of dozens of firms selling e-cigarettes, says one of the attractions is that puffing produces "vapor-like smoke just like a real cigarette."
An e-cigarette consists of three parts: a rechargeable lithium battery and indicator light; a heating element to create the vapor-like mist to be inhaled; and a disposable mouthpiece cartridge containing nicotine, flavoring and propylene glycol, a colorless liquid commonly used as antifreeze.
The FDA issued a consumer warning last month after testing two e-cigarette brands – 19 cartridges – and finding detectable levels of nitrosamines and other potentially harmful chemicals, including nicotine, which it said can be ingested in varying levels from puff to puff.
The Electronic Cigarette Association counters that the study was too narrow to draw any reliable conclusions, the product is meant for longtime smokers, and the FDA failed to mention that various smoking cessation products, such as patches or gum, also contain potentially harmful chemicals.
"You can go out and breathe regular air and find trace levels of harmful substances," Salmon said.
The sparring underscores the industry's failure to seek approval from the FDA, which contends that e-cigarettes involve drugs or a drug-delivery system that require such approval.
Two e-cigarette firms, Smoking Everywhere and NJOY, have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the regulatory authority of the FDA, which has not banned e-cigarettes but has blocked about 50 shipments to the United States.
Judy Leon, FDA spokeswoman, said the agency's recent testing was not designed as an exhaustive study and that the industry's failure to seek evaluation leaves much unknown about e-cigarettes, except for the two brands tested.
"We simply don't know what's in them, we don't know what's not in them, we don't know what health effects they may have on folks who use them – that's exactly the problem," Leon said.
Dr. Richard Pan, a Sacramento pediatrician, said consumers can get hooked on e-cigarettes just as they can with tobacco products.
"Although they don't have the smoke part, they have the nicotine, which is the addictive quality," Pan said.
But Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor at Boston University's School of Public Health, said e-cigarettes don't contain the range of harmful chemicals found in tobacco cigarettes and offer a promising substitute for traditional smoking.
Unlike nicotine-cessation patches or gum, e-cigarettes can respond to behavioral and psychological aspects of smoking, Siegel said.
"Addiction is more than just nicotine," he said. "It's also the whole behavior of blowing the smoke and holding the cigarette, putting it to your mouth and inhaling," he said.
"All those behaviors are simulated by an electronic cigarette."
Call Jim Sanders, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5538.