E-cigarettes Usher In Smokers

E-cigarettes usher in smokers’ new generation, sans stigma

May be it was the thumping music, the alcohol or the beating sun, or some hallucinatory combination, but for a moment in early July, it appeared as if a waterfront state park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, had turned into a smoker's paradise.

Bikini-topped women and sweaty guys in muscle tees were puffing away as they danced at a techno party hosted by Verboten, a roving nightclub. The surgeon general might have had a stroke. 

One of the revelers, Howard Wang, 28, an information technology consultant from New Jersey, took a deep drag in apparent disregard for the law and decades of antismoking campaigns. But on closer inspection, he wasn't puffing a Marlboro but a Bedford Slim, a brand of electronic cigarette marketed to the skinny-jean set. "It's the future ," said Wang. 

Ten years after Mayor Michael R Bloomberg banned smoking in public places, it is returning to the city's bars, restaurants and workplaces, thanks to the growing popularity of e-cigarettes . 

They can be spotted wherever traditional cigarettes had been outlawed. Tattooed web designers and writers chain-smoke at their desks at the vice offices in Williamsburg . Models inhale at No. 8, a Chelsea lounge, as they order Champagne. Leonardo DiCaprio has been spotted smoking an e-cigarette at several clubs and while riding a Citi Bike in SoHo. 

Manufacturers say that ecigarettes are safer than their conventional counterparts and cheaper because they can last longer and are reusable; critics, however, say they glorify smoking and turn back the clock on public health advances.