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Nicholas Wanke was smoking up to two-and-a-half packs a day when he took his first puff of an electronic cigarette three years ago. “I’ve never looked back.”

Last month, the former IT specialist with the Department of National Defence opened Sir Vape-A-lot, a small shop on Cumberland Street specializing in e-cigarettes: battery-operated devices that heat up flavoured or nicotine “juice” and emit vapour to look and feel like you’re smoking the real thing.

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His store is one of several that have popped up recently selling the trendy gadgets, also known as personal vaporizers, smokeless cigarettes and electronic vaping devices. The biggest Ottawa retailer is e-Steam, which opened its first store in Gloucester about two years ago. It now has seven locations across the city and another seven throughout Ontario.

Online stores — capitalnicfit.com, canadavapes.com, evape.ca, to name a few — also sell a variety of sleek models, some that even look like real cigarettes or cigars and glow red on the end when inhaled. Prices range from about $30 to $150 and include optional accessories such as fruit-flavoured e-liquids, colourful carrying cases, lanyards and USB car chargers. “It’s a huge business and it’s getting bigger,” says Steve Moreau, co-founder of e-Steam Canada. “If the rate we’re growing — 14 stores in two years — is any indication, it’s huge.”