Smoke the Chicken.

The trouble with gadgets is that once you've reached the limits of what they do, you lose interest and they go into The Drawer Of Forgotten Things. Or in my case, the entire chest of drawers. I have mini-digital cameras and mini-video cameras and a few versions of handheld computers even though the one I actually use is still an old monochrome PalmPilot. Some are broken, some have built-in batteries that have died and cost more to replace than just buying a new device, most are there because they just reached their limit of interest.

I thought that might happen with Electrofag. Why hasn't it? Today, one answer occurred when the new flavoured stuff arrived. I have smoked a roast chicken, a banana and absinthe, and laughed like an idiot while doing it. The flavours actually work! I had serious doubts about roast chicken but dammit, it really does smell like roast chicken!

So, to recap, I now have these flavours available for smoking:

Tobacco
Menthol
Cigar
Virginia
French pipe (didn't like that one too much but it's only a 5 ml bottle)
Coffee
Banana
Absinthe
Roast Chicken
(Also Unflavoured, for mixing with the chicken flavour and any others I might later try)

I can make the roast chicken into a nicotine-free preparation if any nonsmoker wants to try it.

Trying a new flavour costs about £3, just over the price of a half ounce of tobacco, and a bottle of flavour looks like it'll last longer than I'm likely to stay interested in it. You just add a few drops to the nicotine juice, which makes no discernible difference to the level in the 5 ml bottle.

(Note: always wash your hands after mixing this stuff. Nicotine can be absorbed through the skin and if, like me, you're saving cash by buying the super strength and diluting it, that absorption can feel like smoking ten Capstans on the trot!)

I think that's the main reason I persist with Electrofag. Aside from the associated gadgetry, if it starts to get dull, just buy a new flavour or two and it's a whole new gadget. The hilarity of smoking a roast chicken, with banana smoke for dessert followed by coffee and then a shot of absinthe will take some time to wear off. When it does, there are other flavours.

The antismokers who are so uptight about the sight of someone having fun, the doctors who push patches and gum and sneer at Electrofag, those Government departments of banning everything, and most of all ASH, should consider something important. Something very important,

I have made no attempt at all to stop smoking. I don't want to stop. I have no intention of trying. Since I bought Electrofag, my tobacco use has been cut in half. That is not only 'without trying'. That is with actively refusing to try.

Let me say that again to any Righteous who might still be so self-absorbed that they denied what they read the first time.

Electrofag has cut my tobacco use in half despite my determination to make no attempt at all to stop smoking.

It won't stop me altogether. It's not quite 'real' enough for that. I'll still have my roll-ups and I don't see them going away any time soon. Smoking the real thing is still top of my list. Even so, Electrofag is always with me and as long as I can vary the flavours, it'll be there next to my tobacco pouch. Electrofag wins when it's lousy outside but if I'm able to go outside at work (or if I have to at the pub anyway) I'll reach for the tobacco, not the gadget. Which is the second important thing the smoke-banners should realise.

If you ban Electrofag indoors, we won't smoke it outdoors. If we have to go outside anyway we'll smoke the real thing.

For those who genuinely want to reduce the number of smokers, letting them smoke Electrofag indoors is the best option. But then, none of these groups want to reduce the number of smokers.

If you genuinely want to give up smoking, Electrofag is your best option. You can stay on the nicotine version forever (nicotine is no more harmful than caffeine, despite what ASH would have you believe) or reduce to zero nicotine and still smoke. Patches and gum will never work. ASH know this. They don't want their stop-smoking methods to work.

Electrofag represents a serious problem for ASH, government, the NHS, all of them. If everyone switched to Electrofag-only overnight, tobacco duty would stop at once (it's already stopped from me and many others, but for another reason) and the treasury would lose a hell of a lot of money.

If it ever gets out that Electrofag really represents no danger at all to any bystander, and in fact removes 99% of the risk factors smoking is accused of for the smoker themselves, ASH are in big trouble. If they let Electrofag take off, they cease to exist.

The NHS also gets a lot of funding to 'combat smoking' and can use smoking as an excuse to deny treatment to an awful lot of people. If tobacco use stopped, the NHS would lose funding and lose a good excuse to reduce their waiting lists by removing smokers from them.

These so-called 'concerned people' don't want smoking to stop because if we stop, the duty stops and a lot of the funding these same 'concerned people' get will stop too. They don't want us to stop. They're having too much fun punishing us. If they really, truly, wanted to end smoking they'd have made it illegal by now. There have been no moves to do so. I don't recall even ASH asking for that. Restrictions, yes, more and more but simply reclassifying it as an illegal drug? None of them want that.

So they will ban Electrofag which is the most effective reducer of tobacco intake currently available. I actively resist any attempts to make me stop smoking and yet my tobacco intake is halved. ASH hate that. I can smoke Electrofag indoors, legally, causing no harm or inconvenience to anyone at all. ASH hate that too.

And that might be another reason I persist with it.

The main reason, though, is still the surreal experience of smoking a chicken.