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It did the trick. About 18 months ago, Mr. Sukhu stopped smoking entirely, though still puffs on e-cigarettes.

“They simulate the smoking: the motion, the sensation of taking a draw and then blowing the smoke out,” said the 26-year-old security guard. “It’s an easier way. … A lot of my friends did it, and that’s the way they pretty much quit.”

When the Toronto resident went to buy life insurance after being tobacco-free for a year, however, he discovered the insurance industry was not so impressed. Underwriters are insisting that e-cigarette “vapers” like him pay smokers’ premiums that can be almost three times the normal rate, adding another wrinkle to a heated debate over the electronic technology.

“I don’t think it’s fair,” said Chantal Marr, president of the LSM Insurance agency in Toronto, whose clients include many e-cigarette users. “It does not make sense to price a non-smoker as a smoker.”

The battery-powered devices look similar to cigarettes or cigars, heating up a liquid and producing a vapour that is inhaled. The vapour often includes nicotine to give users a hit of the addictive chemical, but lacks any of the 70 carcinogens packed into the real thing.

Health Canada has deemed e-cigarettes with nicotine illegal, though it permits devices that do not contain the chemical, and the no-nicotine law appears to be routinely flouted, regardless.

Life-insurance companies contacted by the National Post this month confirmed that e-cigarette users must continue to pay smoker rates, at least until more is known about their effects.