John Safran - Puff Piece

The folks that bring you Marlboro Philip Morris are wheezing, slowly dying. Cigarettes are out of favour with everyone, from world governments and investors to, increasingly, smokers. So, whats their plan?

Prepare to be dazzled. Or, at the very least, befuddled.

Philip Morris has announced they will shut down as a cigarette company and relaunch as a health enterprise, dedicated to convincing the one billion smokers of the world to quit.

The ever-curious John Safran leaves his apartment to find out what on Gods green earth is going on. As he starts digging away he discovers a company up to brand new shenanigans, wangling their way into unexpected places, desperately trying to keep their tobacco business alive by brandishing a mysterious new doohickey called an IQOS.

And not only that, now theyre upending language itself, changing the meaning of words. Will they slip past bans by convincing governments they dont sell cigarettes but rather HeatSticks, and that these dont emit smoke but aerosol? Can John get the real story out of them without his life catching fire?

Wild, hilarious and thought-provoking, Puff Piece is a probing look into Big Tobacco and the vaping industry, and how words can be literally a matter of life and death.

I pull into Doncaster Park n Ride, in north-eastern Melbourne. The man told me to meet him here. The place sounded like a water-slide park, maybe with a few other attractions, like dodgem cars and a ferris wheel. But now that Im here, 10.30 at night, I see its a bus terminal. Powerful streetlamps render the view out my windscreen dreamlike, drizzle sparkling up the asphalt, giant train-set trees bordering the carpark. You park your car here and ride a bus to work. No fairy floss.

You know those Fast and the Furious looking cars? Where the dude cant afford a Ferrari so hes pimped up a Subaru? One of those slow-rolls into the carpark and pulls up alongside me. I wrap up the audio notes Im recording: So anyway, when someone does a true crime podcast about my murder in Doncaster Park n Ride, theyll be able to play this. It will be haunting.

A man, Im guessing university-student age, steps into the hyper-real light, continuing the film trailer vibe. Hes Asian, so now its the third instalment of the franchise, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift . Despite his eBay name JapShop he turns out to be Chinese. Makes sense: middle-class Doncaster is one-quarter Chinese.

JapShop is immaculately groomed. He wears a denim jacket covered in red words, giving the effect theyve been painted on with lipstick. Later, typing up this encounter, Ill wish I could remember those words, but in the moment Im disoriented this being the first time Ive bought contraband out of the boot of a car.

JapShop passes a white box through my window. I peel off the shrink wrap, open it at the hinge and there it is. My little baby Jesus, resting in a little manger: the IQOS.

Like an iPhone, JapShop tells me breathlessly. Right down to the I.

The packaging makes you think of Apple. The IQOS itself looks like a fat pen, which slides into a charger you can fit in your palm. This is Philip Morriss take on the future of smoking; importantly, they say its not a vape.

This afternoon I sat with an old school friend, who knows science, and threw questions at him about the claims Philip Morris make about the IQOS. Thats when I realised I needed the device itself I cant just spend a whole book poring over sheets of paper with technical specifications. The problem was that its illegal to sell the IQOS in Australia. I hit up Reddit, Craigslist and Gumtree, before finding JapShop offering one on eBay for $290. Thats more than twice the price of buying one over the counter in New Zealand, where theyre legal.

In the carpark, JapShop has something else for me. Through the drizzle, he passes me a box of HeatSticks. A HeatStick is what you slot into the IQOS and bring to your lips.