So you want to quit smoking.  You've tried the patch, hypnosis, acupuncture, videos that contain subliminal messages.  Plastic cigarettes that make you think you're smoking (yeah right).  Maybe it isn't the craving for nicotine anymore, it's the habit of lighting up a smoke.  That's where people find herbal cigarettes to be helpful. 

"Herbal" cigarettes contain no tobacco, therefore no nicotine.  There are many brands on the market today:  Ecstacy, Honeyrose, Smokin' Joe's, Magic, etc.  In some, the main ingredient is wild lettuce.  Some contain damiana, mint, passion flower, jasmine, yerba santa, or ginseng, just to name a few of the herbs.  It all sounds pretty healthy, eh?  Well those herbs ARE, if you're making tea with them or adding them to a salad.  However.........

The reality is, that smoking anything (i.e. anything that is burning and you are inhaling the smoke) is damaging to your health.  Think about it... people removed from a burning building are hospitalized for SMOKE INHALATION.  The elderly and people with asthma should not go outside when there are fires in the area due to SMOKE INHALATION.  Breathing ANY kind of smoke makes you cough.  Does this tell you something? 

Don't get me wrong.  Herbal cigarettes ARE a healthy(er) alternative  to smoking tobacco.  And they're just what some people need to replace that habit of lighting up a "cancer stick".  Herbal cigarettes are saving millions of people from the Terrible Tobacco, and helping them to kick the smoking habit altogether.  This is the final step in the process.

The best advice I could give anyone as far as herbal cigarettes goes is, "Don't inhale".  I know it sounds silly, but it's true.  If you light up just for the sake of holding a cigarette and going through the motions of "smoking", then by all means don't inhale.  Reasonably speaking, the best thing you can inhale is oxygen.  So do your body a favor: pamper your lungs, they're the only set you've got.  Don't smoke and stay away from forest fires!

:-)