Curban Urge – Is This the Future of Smoking Cessation?
There was a time, not too long ago, when many of us truly believed that vaping could render smoking tobacco obsolete, but a lot has happened since then, and I for one am not that naive anymore.
But just because vaping can’t be the future of smoking cessation, it doesn’t mean a piece of plastic can’t be. Introducing Curban Urge a simple device designed to distract you from lighting your cigarette; it uses no batteries, no e-liquid or nicotine, just the air that you breathe. Sounds pretty cool doesn’t it?
Created by South African artist and inventor Darren Aiken, Curban Aiken is essentially a whistle-like resin tube that is closed up completely at one end so as only to take in air through a small vacuum when you draw on the other open end of the tube. To use it, all you have to do is cover up the vacuum slot with the index finger, suck on the open end of the stick and release the finger slightly, just enough to let some air in and mimic the restrictive draw on a tobacco cigarette. Genius, right?
Although Curban Urge can’t really help with the nicotine withdrawal part of smoking cessation, it can allegedly be used in combination with nicotine patches, gum or other solutions, because we all know how effective traditional nicotine replacement therapies are…
But Aiken claims his device can actually help people better mitigate the symptoms of withdrawal, by mimicking some of the physical actions of smoking without the actual smoke. I’m not sure the South African inventor wants to use that as a marketing pitch, as it’s sure to attract tobacco control zealots and maybe even get the Curban Urge registered as a tobacco product. I know, I know, there is no tobacco in it, but that argument didn’t help e-cigarettes did it, not even nicotine-free ones…
Anyway, back to our innovative little device. Just like e-cigarettes, it can be worn on a lanyard around on your neck for easy accessibility, it’s a lot cheaper to use that tobacco cigarettes, and is said to reduce the urge to smoke a cigarette. How? Well, I’ll just let Darren Aiken explain:
“The deep breath this accelerated air affords the smoker – because the shaft of air accelerated into the back of the mouth is narrow – bypasses the ‘scratch zone’ in the smoker’s mouth and produces a sigh before exhalation, which appears to destress the smoker as the body’s mechanism for de-stressing is a physical sigh,” he told South African newspaper The Citizen.
And before you even ask, no, this is not a joke. Curban Urge is a real product, with its own website, and you can even order your own online. As the title of this article suggests, it may even become the future of the global fight against smoking. Sure, it sounds preposterous, but at least it won’t have people bashing it even worse than the thing it was designed to replace.
These days it seems like every vaping-related article in the Google News section is about the unproven, but definitely dangerous, link between vaping and Covid-19. Every public health expert and their mother is warning people to quit vaping while conveniently omitting to even mention smoking, as though all these people didn’t take up e-cigarettes as an alternative to tobacco. And if it wasn’t the coronavirus pandemic, it would be the EVALI epidemic that never really had anything to do with vaping, or something else.
Vaping just has too many enemies, and it seems like things are only getting harder, so I am definitely not as optimistic about its future as a smoking cessation aid as I was five years ago. But Curban Urge, it has a shot. It’s a simple piece of plastic, but it may be the alternative to tobacco cigarettes that anti-smoking activists and policy makers won’t have a problem with.
I’m not sure if the inventor of Curban Urge ships overseas, but it is currently available on its official website for 80 rand ($4.5).
Featured photo: curbanurge.com
Thank you for your review of April 2020 of Curban Urge, Vaperank. I was unaware of your review and you understand the device and how it works and explained it well. I initially invented and patented the Curban Urge to help smokers and vapers in tobacco banned areas where they cannot smoke, as an aide to smokers and vapers in the office, on a plane, in restaurants etc. It could just be the most relevant product in SA today during the smoking ban and could help smokers and vapers while they cannot buy legal cigarettes and save on the exhorbitant illicit prices while still feeling like they are smoking. I would love to supply every vape store in the world for areas where vaping too is prohibited. I would be happy to do an update review with you. 0827872470 , or [email protected]. Thank you