First Experience with the Electronic Cigarette

I am starting a business selling Electronic Cigarettes and a few days ago I received some samples from a couple of manufacturers so that I could compare their products. Anyway, it is still legal here in North Carolina to smoke in bars and restaurants. However, being that my full time job is as a corporate pilot, I am often in places where smoking has been banned from restaurants by state laws. I was just recently down in Key West, Florida, a state where smoking has been banned in restaurants.

Anyway, I am getting ready to go out and test the reaction from people for the first time in a place where you are not typically allowed to smoke. So I catch a shuttle from my hotel to the downtown area and go to a place called the Conch Shell Republic (which, by the way, is a really cool restaurant and has some great food and fun atmosphere). When I first got there, I noticed others smoking and was a bit baffled as I was under the impression you were not allowed to smoke in restaurants. What I did not realize was that this was basically an open air restaurant so smoking was permitted. Bummer. Well, my luck was soon to change.

So I am sitting there at the bar drinking my beer and smoking my Electronic Cigarette. A waiter comes up and sets an ashtray down, but quickly realizes my "cigarette" is not lit and says "Oh, sorry, thought you were smoking." I tell him that I am but I won't need the ashtray. His face showed the expression of being a little baffled but he keeps his ashtray and attends to some other customers. This happens one more time with another bartender but he leaves the ashtray anyway.

I order my meal and about halfway through it starts to rain and they lower all the garage doors around the perimeter of the restaurant making it an enclosed restaurant which now means we are no longer allowed to smoke. So they go around and start collecting all the ashtrays and getting people to extinguish their cigarettes. I am getting a little excited now to see what happens. So I finish my meal and I get out my Electronic Cigarette and begin to puff away again. A bartender comes over and asks me to put out my cigarette so I simply set it down on the bar and say OK, it's out. He is quite confused at this time. He begins asking me about it and I explain to him what it is and how it works and I ask him if I can continue to use it. He allows me to (as it does not fall under the no-smoking laws which have been passed) and I continue to smoke. Pretty cool.

So that was my first experience using the Electronic Cigarette where smoking is outlawed. If you are interested in learning more, just click here or visit my website at www.sharpsmoker.com.