New E-Cigarette Store Takes the Smoke Out of Smoking

Philip Horne is trying to make smoking cool again. In a community and state where smokers are often treated like criminals, Horne has a new electronic alternative – the e-cigarette.

Capitola’s first store of its kind, e-Smokey Treats, tempts customers with all the benefits of smoking: nicotine, a social bond, and the activity of smoking itself, without any of the drawbacks: tar, chemicals, smelly breath and clothing, second-hand smoke and a hole in your wallet.

“It’s basically smoking, without smoking,” Horne said, taking a drag from pen-like instrument as he sat in a neighboring café.

E-Cigarettes first emerged on the market in 2004 in China and have since grown from a novelty item into a popular alternative to smoking.  Slightly to significantly larger than a regular cigarette in size (depending on the model), e-cigarettes use a battery to vaporize a liquefied nicotine solution, also called e-liquid or e-juice. Users hold down a button and inhale, exhaling an odorless and smokeless vapor, supposedly ridding the ritual of tar and other cancer-causing agents.

“A lot of people after a few weeks will feel a significant difference in how easy it is to breathe. Your taste buds come back!” Horne said.

Horne, a Santa Cruz resident, plugged into the e-cigarette movement after 20 years of smoking and trying to quit so many times that “it’s not even funny,” as he writes on the shop’s website. There was only one problem: he liked smoking.

“I wanted to be able to continue to smoke because I enjoyed it and a lot of my friends still smoke, a lot of the bars I go to in Santa Cruz, even though they aren’t allowed to, people still smoke in them and stuff like that, so it was a way for me to continue to smoke without getting all the nasty carcinogens and tar and all the other crap that’s in there,” Horne said.

After five years of selling the gadgets out of a warehouse in Scotts Valley, Horne opened his first retail store in the Capitola Mercantile this past May. The small glass-enclosed shop boasts an array of electronic cigarette components (batteries, cartridges, atomizers, chargers), accessories, kits, and over 100 flavors of e-liquid ranging from an assortment of tobaccos to fruit medleys to “cinnamon bun.”  Customers can also choose from a range of nicotine strengths, satisfying non-smokers who just want something to do while accompanying their smoking friends to even the pack-a-day type. Horne, who can often be found happily puffing one of his products, brags, “if we don’t use it, we don’t sell it.” Horne has had all the liquids in the store tested and says they all proved free of carcinogens.

But the flameless technology of electronic cigarettes has kindled growing concern from members of the medical community and sparked a fiery debate over its regulation. While many independent studies have found nothing harmful in electronic cigarettes, many have their doubts; perhaps the reason that nothing harmful has been found is because we’ve only just begun looking. E-cigarettes escape the F.D.A. regulation, and approval, of their conventional heritage because they contain no tobacco.

California is not the friendliest place for a smoker; the state has outlawed smoking in most places, even proposing a bill which would ban citizens from smoking in their own homes if they lived in a housing unit that shared walls, floor, ceiling or ventilation systems. Although you must be 18 to purchase one, e-cigarette companies boast that they can be used virtually anywhere: bars, restaurants, offices, and, as Horne insists, even on airplanes.

“I’ve flown all over the world and used electronic cigarettes,” Horne said.

But while Horne says he gets more questions than “freak-outs,” government officials at the state level are not so complacently curious. State Senator Ellen Corbett introduced legislation this year which would treat e-cigarettes like regular ones, banning them from clubs, restaurants, bars, public buildings and any enclosed workplace.

"These are cigarettes," Corbett told the Sacramento Bee.  "They might be fancy, high-tech cigarettes, but they're still cigarettes."

But opponents of the bill, including the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association (CASAA), the California Association of Alcohol/Drug Educators and thousands of e-smokers across the state, disagree. The Bee reported that over 150 of them filled the hallways of the Capitol building, e-smoking in protest. Corbett claims that passersbys coughed and choked on their byproduct.

Horne, however, does not seem worried about the proposed bill. Since opening e-Smokey Treats in 2008 he says he has sold tens of thousands of electronic cigarettes.

“The electronic cigarette industry is really new, but I think it’s getting more and more acceptance … it’s definitely gaining popularity” Horne said.