cigarettes

From the age of dot, we're all told not to put gadgets in our mouths.

But along came electric toothbrushes--and then electronic cigarettes. Some will wonder how safe they might be after a 57-year-old Florida man was taken to hospital Monday night when his electronic smoke exploded while he was smoking it.

He ended up in an Alabama hospital, facing burns, the loss of part of his tongue and his front teeth.

Joseph Parker, division chief for the North Bay Fire Department, offered a graphic analogy to the Associated Press: "It was trying to hold a bottle rocket in your mouth when it went off. The battery flew out of the tube and set the closet on fire."… Read more

A study of almost 6,000 people trying to quit smoking cigarettes finds that those who receive regular motivational text messages are twice as likely to quit than those who receive neutral text messages thanking them for participating in the study.

The txt2stop trial, led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, measured cotinine (a chemical in tobacco) levels in the participants six months after participants reported to try quitting.

The randomly selected txt2stop group received five text messages a day for five weeks and then three a week for the following 26 weeks, with encouragements such as: "Cravings last less than 5 minutes on average. To help distract yourself, try sipping a drink slowly until the craving is over."

The txt2stop group was also able to text words such as "crave" and "lapse" to receive a motivating message during episodes of weakness and craving.

The control group, meanwhile, received only one message every two weeks thanking participants for being part of the trial.

Only 4.9 percent of the control group abstained from smoking throughout the six months, as determined through cotinine testing, while more than twice as many members (10.7 percent) of the txt2stop group succeeded.

"We are delighted with the results and hope that text motivation will now become a standard part of the quitting process," says Glyn Mcintosh of QUIT, which helped develop the text messages and find volunteers for the study.

The researchers, whose findings appear in The Lancet this week, say that txt2stop worked well across all age and social groups in the study.… Read more

Smoking these days can be lonely business, what with smoking now banned in many bars and other traditional smokers' hangouts. But a new handheld device is designed to help smokers find each other--and it might even help them kick the habit.

Meet the "blu Smart Pack," the world's first social-networking cigarette package.

The rechargeable package--scheduled to go on sale in June for $80--connects wirelessly to social-networking sites and even flashes a blue light and vibrates if it detects other packages within 50 feet.

"You'll meet more people than ever, just because of the wow factor," Jason Healy, the company's founder, told The New York Times.

Not everyone's as convinced it's such a great idea. … Read more

We all know pollution can be quite unhealthy, and the Warning Signs carbon monoxide-detecting T-shirt serves as a fashionable reminder of that.

Developed by two New York University graduate students, Nien Lam and Sue Ngo, the functional shirt turns from pink to blue when the offending gas comes into contact with it. In the two designs created--a heart and pair of lungs--blue, vein-like patterns appear on the pink organs whenever levels of the poisonous gas get high.

While we're not sure if the shirts still work after a few washes, this odd invention could be quite popular, should it ever be sold. Of course, the question remains: What do you do once the shirt tells you you're breathing in unhealthy levels of carbon monoxide? Presumably, it's then time to put on a gas mask--or this air-purifying gown. … Read more

Everybody knows how hard it is to quit smoking cigarettes, and how important it can be to succeed. Now there's an app for that, or an add-on, to be specific. Quitomzilla from Quitometro is a free Firefox add-on that can help smokers kick the habit by counting down the time until or since Q-Day; by telling them how much money they're saving or could be saving by not buying cigarettes; and by nagging or bragging on themselves with paste-in messages.

Quitomzilla installs and configures like any Firefox add-on. We installed it, restarted Firefox, and clicked Add-ons on the … Read more

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services today unveiled 36 graphic cigarette warning images, 9 of which will make their way to cigarette packages and advertisements in 2012, and they've given the public two months to weigh in, starting Friday.

Tobacco use is the leading cause of premature and preventable death in the United States, according to the HHS, and it is responsible for 443,000 deaths each year, with 1,200 current and former smokers dying prematurely every day due to tobacco-related diseases.

Dozens of countries around the world, including the U.S., already mandate the … Read more

It was a close call, but California voters yesterday defeated Proposition 19, also known as the "Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010," so we're canceling our S.F. holiday plans and staying in New York. Oh well, at least we still have front-row seats to the World Series riots thanks to the newly appointed Riot Badges on FourSquare.

Speaking of things that are harmful to your health, a new report co-authored by former government chief drugs adviser David Nutt suggests that alcohol is more harmful than heroin.

Professor Nutt judged 20 drugs on 16 degrees of harm that include lasting effects on physical and mental health, social harms including crime, and environmental damage, and alcohol is the most prevalent on this chart, topping other substances like ecstasy, LSD, mushrooms, crack, and methylamphetamines.

The results likely have more to do with alcohol being the only legal drug on the list, and cannabis surprisingly ranks fairly high on the list as well, just two under nicotine.

We all know cigarettes are lethal carcinogens, but a new company called Blu Cigs is manufacturing electronic cigarettes aimed at users who want to "smoke" tobacco without the addictive nicotine element.

We're obviously not condoning use of this product, but the tech angle on the device itself is interesting because they use battery-operated atomizers to warm up capsules of flavored liquid that then produce vapor you can inhale, making them technically "legal" to use in non-smoking areas, like on an airplane. Be sure to watch this segment's video to see an actual e-cigarette in action!

After we hit the break (and a small audio hiccup afterward), we have two jaw-dropping video voicemails queued up: the first is from our own Jeff Bakalar, who recorded a video of him and his new wife Stacie at some dreadful resort in who knows where, and the second is a relatively straightforward voicemail from "BMGreatness" that also features a disturbing prop. Check it out, and keep sending your video voicemails to the404(at)cnet.com!

Even in paradise, Jeff is still Jeff. BMGreatness: Please call back and verify the owner of that thingie.

Mercedes-Benz released new photos of the Cigarette Racing AMG boat. The 46-foot Rider is capable of reaching speeds in excess of 130 mph. A pair of twin-turbocharged, 552-cubic inch 1,350 horsepower Mercury Racing engines powers it.

The Rider is inspired by the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Super Sports Car. Engineers at both companies worked together to bring the SLS-inspired watercraft to reality.

Although the boat is inspired by the car, it is also an amazing-looking craft with hand-applied AMG Alubeam silver and AMG Designo Mystic White paint in a bold design that echoes the AMG logo.

From the man who invented the toilet car, the cigarette car, and the basketball car, comes the soccer ball car. It made its debut three years ago, but here it is driving around a mall.