Cigarette Placebo

Since I've moved to Japan, I was taken by surprise by how wide-spread smoking is. It's still OK to smoke in public buildings, restaurants, and even schools. This is slowly changing...the school system I work for is going to forbid smoking in schools and city offices this April. There are going to be a lot of grumpy teachers and salarymen come April. It looks like there's a company that's ready to capitalize on this.

I was checking out at a drug store the other day when this caught my attention:

It's a nicotine inhaler, which is nothing really new. But the wacky thing about this one is that it's designed to look just like a lit cigarette, complete with the ash at the end. So this isn't just something you take a toke on when no one is looking. No...you're supposed to flash it about and look sophisticated, just like the real thing. It comes with 3 replaceable mint-flavored nicotine cartridges.

Whatever it takes to look cool.