Did you ever get this to work for the herb vaporizer purpose?
Also, the AA-powered electric cig lighter is actually a product that exists. Or used to - I used to have one. It worked "ok" as I recall, barely lit the cig and yes drained the batts pretty quick.
You could just use a 9v battery (about the size of 2 AAAs), the steel wire as an element, and a momentary push-button switch in series. Of course, this is just in theory (I can't say I've ever done this before ) I know that a dead-short on a 9v battery for a few seconds doesn't really harm it at all.
Good luck!
Der Strom