Users seek each other out online and arrange discreet meetings to discuss distribution channels. Vendors won’t speak to reporters on the record because they are afraid the government will shut them down. Until recently, it was not unusual for transactions to take place in back alleys; a plastic bag handed over in exchange for a fistful of cash.

The product is not cocaine or marijuana. It is nicotine delivered via electronic cigarettes, which cannot be legally imported or sold in this country, but are widely available south of the border. The users are smokers or former smokers who have unsuccessfully tried to stop using government-approved products such as gum and patches, but found the only quitting method that works for them is also the one that happens to be illegal.

West Vancouver resident Gary Adelson tried everything — gum, patches, willpower, acupuncture, even hypnosis — to get off cigarettes because he could feel the physical toll smoking was taking on his body. A two-pack-a-day smoker for almost four decades, the 58-year-old made about a dozen attempts to quit in as many years, but the addiction was just too powerful.

Adelson was a couple of days into his latest quit attempt in 2010 and surfing the Internet when he stumbled across electronic cigarettes, devices that were supposed to deliver the nicotine without the smoke. He found someone in Vancouver on Craigslist who sold them and met him in an alley, where he exchanged cash for a plastic bag containing the device along with a nicotine-infused liquid.

“I swear to God it felt like doing a drug deal,” he recalled.

Electronic cigarettes come in many shapes and sizes, but most work the same way. Nicotine-containing cartridges are screwed on to the end of a rechargeable battery. When the user inhales, the e-cigarette combines the nicotine with vapour, which is often flavoured. Because there is no combustion, the user does not inhale all the toxic chemicals contained in tobacco smoke.

The cartridges — which have the equivalent number of “puffs” as a pack of cigarettes — cost between $2 and $3 each. The amount of nicotine in them varies. Starter kits including batteries and chargers start at about $50.

When Adelson first tried the “e-cig,” he had low expectations. But when he felt the vapour circulating in the back of his throat, creating a similar sensation to cigarette smoke, he thought this was something that just might work.

“I exhaled it and I blew a smoke ring and I said ... ‘Holy shit, where have you been all my life?’”

He has been tobacco-free ever since.

Internet forums on e-cigarettes are filled with stories similar to Adelson’s, but they remain banned in this country for good reason, according to Health Canada: There is no clinical evidence of what’s in them or that they are safe.

“Although these electronic smoking products may be marketed as a safer alternative to conventional tobacco products and, in some cases, as an aid to quitting smoking, electronic smoking products may pose risks such as nicotine poisoning and addiction,” according to a 2009 advisory posted on Health Canada’s website, which says Canadians should not purchase or use electronic cigarettes.