By Elyse Miller
News Channel 3

It looks like a fancy pen but it's a smoker's craving. It's a battery-powered cigarette. No matches or lighter, instead just plug it in, charge and puff.

A small cartridge inside gives the smoker a hit of flavored nicotine. With each drag, the end lights up but doesn't burn. Instead of smoke, an odorless water vapor is released.

"I feel a lot of nicotine," says smoker Tony Leong upon trying out the device.

The high-tech device is designed to get around smoking bans. It's tobacco-free and doesn't cause secondhand smoke.

News Channel 3 put the battery-powered cigarette to the test, taking it inside a restaurant where smoking isn't allowed. Most customers didn't seem to mind.

"It didn't affect me because I couldn't smell anything," says non-smoker Joe Appolito.

"It bothers me," says restaurant customer Leslie Grenfell. "When I saw him, I thought 'oh, my heavens! There is smoke coming in people's faces.'"

"I think it's fine," says restaurant customer Alan Terputac.

All patrons said the sight of our decoy smoking over a meal was shocking.

However, as a cloud of water vapor surfaces in the crowded restaurant, it proves to be odorless.

"I couldn't smell anything," says Appolito. "It's usually the smoke that bothers me."

Even the restaurant manager says this is something he'd allow despite the smoking ban.

"There's no ashtrays on the tables, no matches, no flames. Why not?" says Gordon Poster, Sherman's Deli General Manager.

Now, getting it passed the doctor wasn't so easy. Although the device contains fewer chemicals than its cancer-causing counterpart, Dr. Peter Kadile says the addictive component remains, nicotine.

"It's a drug, a foreign substance that you are introducing into your body that your body doesn't need," says Kadile. "It's a drug feeding an addiction."

Kadile compares this to a nicotine patch or gum, but it gives smokers an inhalation of reality without sending non-smokers up in smoke. If this trend catches on, health departments may decide to adjust the smoking ban's sparking a whole new debate.

The California Health Department says the battery-powered cigarettes are exempt from the smoking ban because they don't let off secondhand smoke.

If you'd like more information on the device, visit www.crown7.com.

For more information on the Great American Smokeout or for quitting tips, go to http://www.cancer.org/docroot/subsite/greatamericans/Smokeout.asp.