The major hazards associated with smoking cigarettes are tar and carbon monoxide. If you still wish to enjoy inhaling tobacco without either of these, or many of the other harmful effects of smoking, choosing to vaporize tobacco may be for you.

Only the alkaloids anabasine, nornicotine, anatabine, cotinine and myosmine are released from leaf tobacco when it is vaporized. This would make it more addictive than purely using nicotine, but still eliminates the nasties associated with smoking. Inhaling vaporized tobacco is a different taste to smoking it as cigarettes taste mostly of combustion. Tobacco in fact has a nice chocoalte woody taste to it.

There are a number of ways to enjoy it, the easiest is simply buying leaf tobacco (I would recommend an organic brand such as American Spirit) and heating it in something like the Vapor Genie at only $55 USD

It requires use of a butane lighter to heat the bowl but the flame does not contact the tobacco. It heats it, creating vapour.

More versatile and high-tech is the Iolite, a self contained butane powered vaporizer able to take both leaf tobacco and shisha tobacco. It uses a catalytic reaction to create heat in a chamber by passing the butane over platinum.

Read more about the Iolite in my guide HERE

The Iolite can also be used for eliquid, homebrew and many herbal products.

Shisha tobacco is simply leaf tobacco dipped in molasses and flavourings. It is a wet, sticky product and is most often enjoyed in shisha/hookah pipes.

In fact, a hookah is a vaporizer - as it warms the tobacco rather than burns it. The health hazards spoken about with hookah smoking are largely concerning the charcoal rather than the tobacco. Using a vaporizer to enjoy it is a convenient, simple and low risk way to enjoy it with a controlled thermostat to ensure vaporization but not burning or the material.

Herbal, sugar cane based shisha molasses is also available for those wanting flavour and visible vapour without nicotine, or you can add some e-liquid to them for a tobacco free nicotine dose. You could even mix it with rolling tobacco for a highly economical method. They also tend to be drier than tobacco based products meaning they leave less residue in your vaporizer to clean up after use.

It is also perfectly possible to grow your own tobacco and perfectly legal in most countries. They are as easy to grow and maintain as a tomato plant. If I could grow these, anybody can do it!