subject: Electronic Cigarettes and the Media – Lights, Camera, Action [print this page] Electronic Cigarettes and the Media Lights, Camera, Action
Whilst watching someone playing a videogame recently, I noticed that one of the special moves within the game involved tossing a cigarette out from a place cover to create a distraction for the enemy, who once distracted were then at your mercy.
What was even more fascinating was that this game was set in some futuristic time zone, with spacecraft, jetpacks, huge mechanical creatures and robots and plenty of fancy technology to go along with it all!
However, as far as I could tell, the cigarette used as a distraction appeared to be a bog standard, run of the mill tobacco cigarette that burned itself out. I thought that was a little bit strange, that hundreds of years into the future with super technology and a guy in a super high tech suit made of who knows what, that the cigarette had not really evolved at all.
Meanwhile, back in the present something called the electronic cigarette is already taking tentative yet forward thinking steps into the future. Billed as a cigarette without smoke, and cigarette without tobacco, the device is obviously electrically operated and waving itself in front of the world's media.
The e cig train has left the station and its momentum is steadily building up a head of steam. From humble and perhaps awkward beginnings, this electric cigarette is fast becoming a media darling!
Still mostly confined to the internet in terms of its distribution and sale it hasn't prevented this new kind of recreational nicotine delivery system from making headline news in many different countries around the world.
Although we have yet to see electronic cigarettes make an appearance in a video game or a Hollywood movie or a music video (there are plenty of words that rhyme with cigarette, so perhaps we will see a rap star concoct a rap song about them) they are at least being courted by celebrities who are seeking an alternative to tobacco cigarettes. Many very high profile stars have been photographed mid e-cig and some have even proclaimed them live on huge television shows with millions of viewers!
With less and less movies daring to use scenes in which actors and actresses are seen to smoke, I wonder which director and which movie will be the first to incorporate a scene in which the main star is using an e cigarette. I am convinced it will happen but who knows when.
