The FDA is currently weighing the evidence for that claim. In reality, measuring any long-term health effects—knowing for sure whether the claim is true—would take decades. But the theoretical concept is that much of the danger of cigarettes comes from inhaling smoke of any sort. Plug your chimney, hover over a campfire, or smoke grass from your lawn, and you will increase your odds of lung cancer and various other means of dying. Instead of burning the tobacco, this new device heats it to a lower temperature. That releases some nicotine for you to inhale and feel temporarily stimulated. Or at least less unstimulated.

Vaping, by contrast, involves heating a liquid that often contains synthetic nicotine, among other substances, not tobacco itself. Vaping and heated-tobacco devices are both commonly considered “e-cigarettes,” but the difference between the two is especially relevant in the midst of national panic about vaping. Over the summer and fall, reports of several dozen vaping-related deaths surfaced, and autopsies found that the liquids put into some devices contain additives that seem to be the cause of acute inflammatory lung disease. People began to swear off vaping. Some states implemented bans.

Read: The actual harms of vaping

Almost all of these deaths appear to be linked to ingredients in black-market vapes; they’re not clearly tied to commercially available devices such as Juul. Nevertheless, the IQOS mall experience feels timed to appeal to the wary, weary consumer, conveying a sense of safety and authority absent from the off-brand vaping accoutrements on offer in dank bodegas. Arriving at this moment of panic, the heated-tobacco idea is poised to be a massively popular alternative. These devices could potentially become more ubiquitous than vaping, or even cigarettes.

At least, that is the stated goal of the company that makes them: the world’s most prolific seller of cigarettes, Philip Morris International (PMI). For the company (and its U.S. spin-off, Altria), heated tobacco is more than a dip of the toe into a novelty market. The cigarette giant says that it is staking its future on this new product, and that it has spent $6 billion in the past decade to develop it. The company apparently wants to escape the shadows of deadly warning labels and heavy taxation, and move into the light of mainstream commerce and high-end malls. PMI is positioning itself next to Apple and other corporations that many people earnestly believe are selling them solutions.

IQOS has been rolled out incrementally in various countries in recent years. It’s already big in Japan, and it’s gaining users in Russia, Spain, Italy, and elsewhere. Last year, it reached $900 million in device sales globally. Juul, by comparison, reached only $100 million outside the U.S. Just before Thanksgiving, a second U.S. store opened, in Richmond, Virginia, and IQOS is expected to begin distribution across the country in the next six months.