“When we started we wanted to make it as realistic as possible,” Dimitri Kyriakopoulos, director of SuperSmoker, said at the launch of the product.

The electronic alternative to a cigarette contains no tobacco and does not burn – instead it consists of a microchip and a “harmless liquid that, when the user inhales, turns into a virtually odourless vapour and then provides the hit of nicotine.”

Kyriakopoulos said that as SuperSmoker contains no tobacco it can be legally used in restaurants, clubs and bars or any other public areas covered by the smoking ban.

“206,000 pieces sold in Holland in four months and the smoking ban hasn’t come into effect yet,” he said. 

Supersmoker now plans to target the almost 40 million smokers in the UK, with the product already on sale in Harrods and Rank casinos, and the company trying to find a major high street retailer such as Boots.

Kyriakopoulos doesn’t see it as an aid to stopping smoking, though.

“We are not selling it as a quitting aid, but I can tell you many people are using it like that,” he said.