Certainly better than cigarettes. And if you use cartomizers with a drip tip as a mouth piece, the vapor is brought into your mouth in a wider less concentrated stream and often further into your mouth. I also use juices that are clear other than their nicotine. Many juices have red and blue and yellow food colorings in them because many pro flavorings contain coloring.
When you blend your own juices at Gourmet Vapor, most flavorings list their food colorings. I also bought a LOT of premade juices and I prefer ones that are pretty clear and light (some are a colorless as water w/ very low or no nicotine so nicotine is their only coloring).
So it definitely is possible to avoid highly-colored juices. I don't like highly colored juices because they usually leave flavoring/coloring sediment behind in cartomizers, ruining their drag and shortening their useful life.
And there is no tar in ecigs.
I recommend a model that uses stuffing cartomizers (like SmokelessImage, or use cartomizers on Ego), not a method that can get a quantity of juice in your mouth.