Electronic cigarettes get around indoor ban

   Their best customers are people who love to smoke. Cigarettes, cigars, pipes, you name it. Yet it's the crackdown on smoking in states like Colorado that's helping them get rich.

   At least two companies are selling battery-powered cigarettes, cigars and pipes that attempt to replicate smoking without burning tobacco. The gizmos use nicotine cartridges and water vapor in what is essentially a nicotine inhaler complete with a light on the end. The invention gets around smoking bans like Colorado's, where smoking is prohibited in nearly all indoor public places.

   The devices are not advertised as smoking cessation products like a nicotine patch or gum but rather as a way to satisfy the nicotine craving where smoking isn't allowed. One of the companies, Minneapolisbased Ruyan America Inc., says the products "allow users to effectively simulate the physiological and psychological attributes of smoking without creating any harmful secondhand smoke."

   By not claiming to help people stop smoking, the companies have avoided regulation by the Food and Drug Administration.

   Ruyan America Inc. produces the E-cigarette while another company, Crown7, produces a similar product called the Crown7. Ruyan claims to be the inventor of the electric smoking devices and is taking on competitors in a global patent dispute, said Chief Executive Officer Alex Chong.

   Cartridges used in both products contain about the same amount of nicotine as a pack or two of cigarettes, the companies say. Just a few puffs provide the same nicotine fix as a cigarette.

   They're pricey: Cigarette kits start around $80 and go up. The replaceable nicotine cartridges start around $2 each, according to Web site prices.

   In the Crown7, the devices produce a slight scent - various flavors are available - that doesn't extend far beyond the user's nose, said company founder and head Ron MacDonald. It also includes a tobacco flavor and another ingredient, propylene glycol.

   Since there's no tobacco used or smoke produced, they have so far held up against the anti-smoking laws in various states.

   "I didn't buy it to quit smoking," said Cripple Creek casino worker Carla Westfall. "I know people who quit smoking with them. I bought it because it was too cold to go outside to smoke. I used it through the winter. Now I am going outside."

   She said it is not as good as a real cigarette, but, "It does feel like you are inhaling nicotine."

   Bill Godshall, executive director of Smokefree Pennsylvania and a longtime anti-smoking advocate, said the electronic cigarette startups are part of a wave of several new nicotine products hitting the market as smoking becomes increasingly unpopular.

   Congress is weighing whether to regulate such products, and anti-smoking advocates have mixed feelings about the trend. Some argue that turning smokers on to alternatives will save lives, while others maintain that sooner or later people must make a clean break of the addiction and that these products discourage that.

   Nicotine, a stimulant, is the drug in tobacco and the source of its strong addiction, but the dozens of other chemical agents are considered the cancer-causing ones.

   Dr. Alan Blum, a family physician who directs the University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, says that doesn't mean nicotine-only products should be regarded as a risk-free alternative. Nicotine's health effects have not been well-studied in isolation, he said, and the drug is known to raise blood pressure, constrict blood vessels and create an elevated heart rate. And, as a drug, it affects the brain.

   Whatever is unknown about these nicotine inhalers, one thing is certain: They are making money.

   MacDonald, of Crown7, declined to discuss specific sales figures but said the company has made "north of $1 million" in its first eight months, and he expected as much as $5 million in another year.

   Ruyan declined to discuss sales.

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